As the world’s best cyclists begin the Tour de France, fans line up along the roadsides and tune in to the race’s extensive live radio and TV coverage. Produced by Euro Media, this year’s event finds a new Lawo-equipped OB truck in the mx.
The contest will take 22 teams of nine riders – a field of up to 198 starters – over 3,360km of road, through 21 stages in the Netherlands, Belgium and France. After starting in the Dutch city of Utrecht, the tour will close in its traditional manner on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.
The new Euro Media OB hybrid production vehicle supports 10 to 12 cameras, and is designed specifically to meet the demands of sports, variety, games and entertainment production. On the Tour de France, it will co-ordinate all the RF audio feeds before forwarding them to the truck responsible the international broadcast feed. It is also able to provide backup in the case of failure.
The OB will accompany the riders at every stage of the race, with its 48-fader Lawo mc²56 audio mixing console and space-saving 7U-high compact core providing 144 DSP channels and a capacity of 5120 x 5120 crosspoints in redundant operation. Three Dallis frames – two for use as stageboxes outside the vehicle – will provide the necessary I/O. A Lawo V__pro8 video processor unit will be used for colour correction of the video signals received from the motorcycle camera teams. Overall control of the devices will be assigned to an L-S-B Virtual Studio Manager (VSM) System, managing communication and switching of units from different manufacturers serving a range of functions.
The V__pro8 is a compact high-performance video processor that allows eight video channels to be used freely with 384 audio channels. It offers cross-format conversion, color correction and embedding and de-embedding, using protocols including 3G-SDI, Madi and Ravenna, under easy touch operation. The V__pro8 combines a number of different tasks in one tool, guaranteeing efficiency and operating safety at significant lower cost than alternatives.
More: www.lawo.com
