New Hampshire-based Game Creek Video’s new fleet of IP OB trucks offers both large working floor dimensions and Lawo IP technology for video and audio routing, multiviewers and overall orchestration and control. Bravo and Columbia are both 53ft Expandos with a HD Production Unit of 64ft x 24ft Recommended Working Area, providing 26 workplaces. Both have been in use this summer and will now take on NFL coverage.

The next truck in production called Gridiron is designed the same way but will feature also an additional B Unit. For early 2020 two more trucks are scheduled, featuring the same design.

For signal routing, Game Creek has decided on a Lawo/Arista ST2110 network based on the Lawo V__matrix IP routing and processing platform. Loaded with function-specific apps, the software-defined V__matrix C100 processing blades handle all IP/SDI conversion, video/audio processing and multiviewers. Looking into the trucks, each features a total of 83 C100 processing blades are hosted in eleven frames, providing the truck’s IP video core infrastructure. The blades are connected through redundant 40GbE (or 4x10GbE) Ethernet interfaces to the network and form a distributed IP routing and processing matrix that provides frame-accurate, clean switching just like a legacy baseband matrix. For integrating legacy equipment, the V__matrix installation furnishes a 432x528 SDI gateway solution.

The truck’s video switcher is a ST2110 capable GV K-Frame-X, the up to 20 Sony HDC 4300 cameras are built out for parallel SDI and ST2110 workflows, providing maximum flexibility when interfacing to venue infrastructure during productions. Also, the eight 16 channel EVS replay systems and the Spotbox are built for parallel SDI and ST2110 operation. When it comes to signal conversion, V__matrix C100 blades loaded with the vm_udx app will provide up to 64 Up/Down/Cross format conversion paths between SDR/HDR SD, HD and 4K formats plus audio embedding/de-embedding, frame-sync, proc amp and RGB colour correction functionality in every processing path.

The 288×96 IP multiviewer is also processed via the V__matrix infrastructure using the vm_dmv distributed multiviewer app.

‘The distributed multiviewer is an unusual concept at first glance, but by using the IP network as an unlimited backplane, you can immediately imagine growing the multiviewer system in ways that have not been possible or practical previously,’ says Game Creek Video SVP Technology, Jason Taubman. ‘Along with theWall configuration software, we can now offer our clients and engineers monitoring flexibility that has not been possible previously.’

For audio shuffling and connecting the Artemis console, 12 Power Core units, Lawo’s AoIP DSP mixing engine and I/O node, are used for Madi, AES and analogue audio gateways to AES67. The complete truck and its IP infrastructure are controlled and orchestrated by the Lawo VSM IP broadcast control system. Abstracting the complexity of the IP installation from the users, VSM significantly reduces set-up times at changing production requirements and enhances the workflows by giving ease of control for operational personnel – a paramount factor to Game Creek’s IP truck’s system design. For the approx. 60 user interfaces Game Creek decided on a combination of touchscreen-optimised vsmPanel software panels and traditional hardware button panels.

‘Maintaining a familiar router control workflow, or stream management in the IP world, for both our engineers and our clients is critically important when moving to IP. VSM provides us with a complete set of workflow tools, allowing us to leverage all of the flexibility that IP provides, while presenting a familiar, manageable, and powerful control interface to our users,’ Taubman expains.

For in-depth network monitoring, network stability and security Game Creek added Lawo’s Smart System Monitoring and Realtime Telemetry solution. Designed to bridge the gap between IT and video engineering, Smart straddles both sides of the operation to provide a comprehensive view of what the network is doing, if PTP is set correctly and how the media streams flowing across the network are behaving. The Smart OB package also integrates smartScope’s deep packet inspection and network analysing tools, providing the right monitoring and visualization technologies in place to proactively identify impairments and service disruption, which is imperative to the success of the operation.

‘Like Game Creek, Lawo is a family owned and operated organisation, and our two companies share similar core values of hard work and integrity, traits we work hard to put at the forefront of our everyday business. We look forward to delivering world class systems for Game Creek to meet their growing technology needs now and into the future,’ says Jeff Smith, Senior VP of Sales Americas at Lawo.