Vest-Pocket Live Sports Production Truck Packs Powerful Punch

Vest-Pocket Live Sports Production Truck Packs Powerful Punch posted: 21/11/2016

Once upon a time, television production trucks were like cruise ships on wheels. They pulled into a sporting event, swaggering with self-importance; fifty feet of gleaming metal pulled behind a pavement-buckling Peterbilt that belched diesel smoke and deafened every innocent bystander within a mile's radius. Once parked, these production trailers began unloading thousands of pounds of equipment and unspooled miles of cable. Inside one these lustrous fifty-foot beasts, you might find a dozen or more crew members, all working away happily, while the truck sucked down power like a thirsty brontosaurus.

While there still are plenty of those fifty-foot behemoths out on the roads, I'd like to encourage you to contemplate a different sort of picture. Imagine, if you would, a Ford Focus pulling up in front of that same venue with what looks like a horse trailer trailing behind, a five-by-ten-foot box, smaller than your average bathroom. Imagine the crew, running extension cords from their tiny truck to a pair of household outlets. Ask yourself what kind of show a production truck that size could put on.

Two standard power outlets are all that is needed to power the production truck

A pretty impressive one it turns out. How about a six-camera production with three announcers in the booth and one on the field, an eight channel instant replay position, four channels of intercom, and full IFB capabilities, as well as talkback? Once or twice a week throughout the spring, summer, and fall of 2016, Production Consulting Group has been producing top-quality soccer broadcasts for the Pittsburgh Riverhounds, a member of the United Soccer League, from just such a truck. John Powell, Director of Technical Operations for PCG, a company with offices in both Pittsburgh and Cleveland, helped build this tiny production dynamo three years ago, and he's understandably proud of what his baby can do.

John Powell, Director of Operations for Production Consulting Group

When I got started in this business in the 80s, video switchers were just video switchers, Powell says. They required enormous racks of equipment that ran from floor to ceiling. They ran on 220 power. But now, with the current line of TriCaster switchers, like the 8000 in this truck, I have multiple re-entry, a multitude of keyers, animated replay wipes, and all the various macro functions built-in. With this truck, I can put on a program and no one can tell what size truck we're using. Take that fifty-footers.

Game Time at Pittsburgh's Highmark Stadium

A few hours before every Pittsburgh Riverhounds home soccer game, the diminutive horse trailer slides into its parking space tucked beneath one corner of the grandstands at Pittsburgh's Highmark Stadium. The rear double doors of the trailer fold back to reveal video and audio patch panels, and the door on the side of the trailer opens to a control room large enough to seat two or possibly three crew members. But no one watching the Riverhounds' games live stream on the United Soccer League's YouTube channel, would ever guess at the modest vehicle being used to produce these major-league productions.

Live production is like making sausage .

That's the sleight-of-hand were able to pull off with this truck, Powell tells me. Producing television is like making sausage. You don't want to know what goes into it, you don't need to know what goes into it, as long as the output is delicious. That being said, there are very few differences between the output of this truck and the giant fifty-footers.

And that's all thanks to the NewTek products at the heart of this tiny production powerhouse. Inside the horse trailer, a NewTek TriCaster 8000 with Advanced Edition software is at Powell's disposal, doing everything those two-ton video switchers Powell once ran back in the Eighties can do, and then some. The truck is also equipped with an eight-channel NewTek 3Play system to provide replays for the broadcast. On this day, production veteran Jerry Schaad is at the controls. Other than Powell and Schaad, the truck is deserted. Graphics for the program are run from off-site, utilizing NewTek's NDI technology. The program's graphics operator works from his home office, more than 120 miles from the Stadium, and with the TriCaster's NDI technology, it's almost as if he's sitting right beside the director in the truck.

The crew arrives about five hours before game time, and with the truck's super light footprint everything is set and ready to go three hours later. Immediately upon arrival, the truck is plugged into two power outlets under the grandstands. Since it's a hot day, the air-conditioning unit atop the truck begins to purr almost immediately. The crew sets up three JVC hard cameras with long lenses, two at the top of the grandstands to capture wide-angle game action, and a third at low level near midfield. Tech coordinator, Doug Sicchitano also sets up a Go Pro camera in each goal net. Up in the broadcast booth, another Go Pro is set up to monitor what's going on with the announcers, since there is no floor director for the broadcasts.

Production Consulting Group President, Jeff Waller says, In designing this production truck, we like to refer to it as our big, little truck. It was built to this size and these specs so it could be used as an outside trailer to do sporting events like this. But we can also pull it into a convention center and, because of its small footprint, it's able to put on a big show while utilizing a small space. It's only a three-position vehicle internally, but we think it packs a powerful punch.

TriCaster 8000 control surface in action

It's a sentiment John Powell echoes. The wonderful

LINK:	http://www.live-production.tv/news/sports/vest-pocket-live-sports-prod...
	See more stories from liveproduction

Most recent headlines