58 SPONSORED CONTENT Lawo
Lawo is defining the future of OB trucks with its IP-based solutions. Here, it shares three recent stories NEXT-GEN OB TRUCKS
held at 1pm where RTBF, NEP Belgium, Broadcast Solutions and Lawo reviewed what had been completed and what needed to be done to ensure everybody was moving in the right direction. This remote acceptance test was greatly facilitated by the OB truck’s full-IP backbone, which includes a 100Gbps Arista-powered network core (audio, video and matrix) that revolves around Lawo’s V__matrix C100 platform for SDI- and IP- based video and audio input/output. The trucks are also equipped with a Lawo VSM system that controls the V__matrix units, the vm_dmv multiviewers and the Sony vision mixer, as well as all stream routings. Both trucks support all audio formats (analogue, AES3, MADI with SRC, Dante with SRC, and AES67/Ravenna), which are mixed using a 48-channel strip mc²56
n 4 April, RTBF, Belgium’s public broadcaster for the country’s French-speaking community, delivered the first of two full-IP OB trucks. Due to Covid-19 and travelling restrictions between Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, the 12m long trailer had to be configured remotely using TeamViewer. “VPN would have been faster, because we would have been able to insert the required data directly into the right places,” comments Dirk Sykora, technical sales manager at Lawo. “Nevertheless, we managed to accomplish what needed to be done.” This scenario required a dedicated computer to which all config files were transmitted, allowing the team to configure and test the OB truck remotely. Over three weeks, daily video conferences were
audio production console and 512 DSP channels provided by A_UHD Core. Audio and video signals can be sourced from six video stage boxes equipped with V__matrix Silent Frames and A__mic8 audio I/O edge devices. In addition, there are eight audio stageboxes containing maxed-out Power Core units, as well as two stage boxes with one DALLIS I/O frame each, providing 128dB microphone inputs for exacting audio requirements. While reading through the tender documents, Sykora and Geert Thoelen, technical director at NEP Belgium, already had a good idea of what RTBF would need, but they wanted to be sure to address all requests in the most effective way. “Specifying boxes is only the first step for such a big project,” explains Sykora. He therefore decided to host a one-week brainstorming session at RTBF, during which he presented and demonstrated the potential of the V__matrix C100 blades. Considerations that played a part were: should RTBF use ST2110 or ST2022 streams, and would they need to accommodate the Dolby E signals often used for satellite downlinks? This informed the decision to support both 24-bit and 32-bit audio needs in any combination, with ST2110-30 and ST2110-31 able to be selected at the touch of a button on a VSM soft- or hardware panel. The V__matrix C100 blades, which Sykora defines as “a blank page, or a box of lego bricks that allows users to build whatever they have in mind”, can be programmed to provide all functions requested by RTBF – and can be retasked
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