Vision View to showcase Gearhouse Broadcast HD OB vehicle at Mediatech Africa

At Mediatech Africa 2017 South African services company Vision View Productions will showcase its new state of the art, mid-sized OB truck. The vehicle was designed, built and integrated by Gearhouse Broadcast in the UK, and will be located on Vision View’s outside exhibit at the Ticketpro Dome in Johannesburg throughout the show.

Gearhouse Broadcast’s experienced systems integration team will also be on site to discuss a range of upcoming projects and highlight the importance of choosing the right SI partner.

The ten-camera mid-sized OB truck was recently delivered to Vision View and has mainly been used for live football, rugby and basketball productions.

Using a locally sourced 26 tonne Mercedes-Benz Actros truck to meet South African fuel and emission regulations, Gearhouse Broadcast modelled the workflow as closely as possible to its OBLite trailer that Vision View purchased in 2014. The new vehicle is equipped with nine Hitachi HD-SK1200s and one Hitachi HD-SK1500 slow motion camera and Canon lenses as well as two Q-Ball point of view cameras.

Inside the unit is a Ross Carbonite Black CB3X vision mixer, two EVS XT3 live production servers, a NewTek 3Play slow motion instant replay system, and a 32-channel Studer Vista 1 audio console. It also offers discrete 5.1 surround sound audio through an extensive set of Sennheiser microphones including the Esfera SPM 8000 with SBP800, four MD 42s and six MKH 416s.

What makes this equipment unique and useful in this instance, said Kevin Fitzgerald, system integration sales manager at Gearhouse Broadcast, is the fact it is “industry standard”. He added: “Ease of maintenance along high quality images was the brief. The Hitachi cameras supplied have proven their mettle around the world, and along with the Ross Carbonite vision mixer Studer Vista, and EVS units supplied, all [of the equipment meets] this criteria.”

He continued: “The truck was designed to be a true workhorse with reliability and flexibility at its core. The OB vehicle covers all of South Africa and into other countries in the region. Because of the huge area it covers we had to make decisions on equipment that would cope with the rigors of daily use in some extreme conditions. So far all of these aspects of the build have come through with flying colours.”

Commented Mafadi Mpuru, managing director at Vision View: “To put it simply, this new mid-sized truck from Gearhouse is beautiful. We’ve been delighted with the build quality, how well it performs, and how comfortable it is to work in. Its size gives us the ability to cover larger events, but still be flexible to take on a wide variety of jobs. The similarity in workflows and equipment with our Gearhouse OBLite trailer means we can switch crews between the two seamlessly.”

Vision View became the first customer to purchase Gearhouse’s OBLite trailer, having been on the lookout for an affordable and more flexible OB option within a compact footprint. The unit supports six to eight cameras, and houses a seven to eight person production and operational crew. It offers low power consumption, an ergonomic design, a production gallery, audio workstations and engineering control area.

As to what sports-related projects or events this solution is likely to be used on, Fitzgerald notes: “Again flexibility and functionality means that it is capable of covering all type of sporting and live events. So far, cricket, football, netball, basketball and many other events have been covered.”