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Touring Video Drives Flagship Production Truck into UHD/4K Future
Customer Profile
Established in 1989, Touring Video Inc. is a leading mobile production company servicing the West Coast entertainment, media and technology community. Specializing in high-end, Hollywood-based production of broadcast programming, the company also services live events ranging from corporate to concerts to awards shows. Among Touring Video’s notable television show credits are Deal or No Deal, Minute to Win it, Boom, Hollywood Game Night and Food Fighters.
Business Challenge
Touring Video’s TV-4 HD mobile control room, originally constructed in 2010, is a 53’ expandable trailer designed from inception to support HD production. While the broadcast industry has yet to see everyday deployment of multi-camera UHD/4K productions, many of Touring Video’s clients are already using 4K cameras in specialty situations. Rather than wait for the industry to agree on UHD/4K standards and make a broad move to 12 Gb/s technology, Touring Video recently embarked on an upgrade of TV-4 to ensure that their flagship truck is ready to roll whenever the market calls for UHD/4K production.
Their goal was to implement a fully functional solution ready to support a 12-camera UHD/4K production, while minimizing their investment requirements by leveraging much of TV-4’s existing infrastructure.
“Imagine Communications has been a reliable strategic partner for our business for the last decade, equipping our production trailers and flypacks with advanced technologies that ensure seamless and high-quality remote broadcasts, while offering on-the-ground support that is second to none.”
Technology Solution
Equipped with a fully 3G backbone, TV-4 was purpose-built by Touring Video to keep pace with the rapidly evolving mobile production market. The truck was originally designed to support 1080p60 production, therefore already providing ¼ of the throughput necessary to achieve UHD/4K.
A key enabler in transforming the TV-4 HD truck into a fully functional UHD/4K production center is a Platinum IP3 576×1024. Configured as a quad-link routing switcher — transparent to the operator — the Platinum IP3 is able to receive the four outputs from a 4K camera and route UHD/4K as four separate 1080p signals.
TV-4’s Platinum IP3 is layered in HD and UHD/4K, with the upper sector of the router configured to support Touring Video’s 1080p HD production workflow, while the bottom quadrant is set aside for dedicated UHD/4K products. As part of a live production workflow comprising Sony 4K-compatible cameras, monitors, replay servers and switcher, Platinum IP3 provides all necessary quad-linking to make UHD/4K possible today.
Touring Video also uses the Platinum IP3 to deliver an optical and long-distance extension of the truck’s I/O. TV-4 supports an extensive onboard fiber infrastructure that includes direct connectivity to the IP3 router from single-mode fiber — eliminating the need to use third-party throwdown converters between fiber devices and traditional truck I/Os, which is prevalent in mobile production.
Rounding out TV-4’s infrastructure is the Selenio™ media convergence platform, router-integrated Platinum SX Pro multiviewers, Selenio™ QVM6800+T quad multiviewer plug-in cards and Selenio™ X50 frame synchronizer/converters.
“This is not a proof of concept — it is a fully functional solution that is able to roll off the show floor and produce a 12-camera UHD show today.”
Doug Armstrong, President & Founder
Touring Video
The innovative design integrates a broad range of functionality within a single frame — including embedded audio processing, frame sync and ultra low-latency multiviewer capability — enabling Touring Video to minimize rack space, cabling, weight and power consumption onboard TV-4.
And to ensure reliable, 24/7 operation in unpredictable environments, Platinum IP3 is the only router on the market to provide redundant crosspoints that protect audio, video and multiviewer signals.
Business Value
With the move toward UHD/4K seemingly inevitable, yet ubiquitous uptake still nowhere in sight, Touring Video has taken a pragmatic approach to serving client demand. Integrating Platinum IP3 into an existing 1080p production truck has given Touring Video a competitive edge by enabling them to offer UHD/4K production capability today — without making a major equipment investment.
Platinum IP3 not only provides quad-linking to support UHD/4K, its unique architecture future-proofs TV-4 for growth — seamlessly expanding to more than 2,000 crosspoints in multi-frame configurations without the need for external distribution amplifiers or combiners. And its intuitive control system enables easy, on-the-fly reconfiguration anytime production needs change.