Television Production Equipment Collection
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The Dodge had no MOT test and the brakes made it unsafe to drive. It was delivered on a low-loader. The links equipment had been stripped out, leaving empty racks, jackfields and cabling. Much of the inside was fitted with useless lockers and even a place for tea-making equipment.
We set about modifying the interior to make a production desk and monitor bay. There has been no progress made on the vehicle itself, in fact it is probably worse now after several years off the road- I do start her up every now and then and move her round to stop the brakes seizing.
The cab is also pretty rotten around the steps and arches, and this will need some serious attention- or even another cab. Otherwise, mechanically it is good, and should not need much work to make it roadworthy. |
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The present equipment comprises 4 Ikegami 323 camera channels, (3 tube) which are a mixture of heads and CCUs from Granada TV and BBC (Glasgow/Leeds). There are at present 2 studio format cameras with Canon lenses and 2 portable versions, all running via Triax. A third studio camera is a back-up, at present suffering from a lens electronics problem and in need of adjustments which require a head board extender (cry for help here!)
The vision mixer is a Grass Valley 200 (originally ex Barcud Facilities, but now with bits of BBC), 20 input composite, other inputs being a caption camera (not decided on the type yet, probably Sony or JVC), up to 4 VTRs, Quantel Picturebox (dual, ex BBC), Abekas A53D DVE and an Aston Caption ex- BBC cap gen. The vision monitors were sourced from various places including Carlton (Nottingham).
The sound area is luxuriously appointed with a Neve 12 channel desk, sources including DAT, quarter inch (Studer A810), Minidisc, CD etc. There is a comprehensive jackfield giving access to indvidual XLRs, multicore and Mkiv cables on the tailboard.
There is a Sony BVH2000 1" C format installed, and a further 4 VTR bays at present housing 3 BVU 900/950 VTRs, a BVW40 Betacam (SP converted) player and a JVC S-VHS machine. The BVU-SP format, while not being of true broadcast quality (they were only used for news) is quite good as long as it is not degraded by editing to multiple generations- and we have a large stock of new tapes. The machines are physically the same size as BVW75s so if these become available they can be changed in minutes. At the moment I would rather have really good condition 950s than dodgy SP-Betas with mega hours on the transports. There are 2 outboard Sony TBCs for the 900s and a further stand alone TBC/synchroniser that can be patched to any 'guest' VTRs or the BVU950.
Equipment wise, this has progressed fairly well but slowly. The 4 camera control units are at present functioning and wired in, with a sliding panel made for the OCP units. parts sought here are:
Extenders for Ikegami base station, any spare units, especially the MPU card, spare Vistek VSW switching cards (for the vision control matrix), and a spare OCP 323 would be nice. Special connectors for talkback and cues to CCU are desperately wanted.
The GVG vision mixer is all connected up and seems OK after a lot of time spent sorting out problems, only to then get another complete unit from BBC Glasgow!
The VTRs and editor are all set up now, so it is possible to set up the cameras (still problems with some areas of line-up out of range of the automatic system- any help available with knowledge of the Ikegami 323s?), cut and mix with each other and VT, and record the result. A rough line up has been done to time everything into the mixer . There are 3 Link coders, 1 used for the Aston, 1 for the Picturebox, and the third for bars. (Another unit or spare cards would be useful, one will not U/V balance reliably.) Sound cabling not finished yet but quite a lot done. A big area not yet tackled is talkback and cues/comms, although I have installed sound DAs for PTB and PS feeds. There is a lot of mechanical work in fixing monitors securely, rack rear supports etc. The picture shows some of the equipment in operation.
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