Outside broadcasting

Outside broadcasting (OB) is the electronic field production (EFP) of television or radio programmes (typically to cover television news and sports television events) from a mobile remote broadcast television studio. Professional video camera and microphone signals come into the production truck for processing, recording and possibly transmission. The mobile production control room (PCR) is known as a "production truck", "Scanner" (a BBC term), "mobile unit", "remote truck", "live truck", "OB Van" or "live eye". In the United States an "OB Van" is smaller in size than a production truck and generally require two or three people in the field to manage. For instance broadcast journalism news reporters providing live television, local news in the field outside a formal television studio.

Interior

A typical OB Van is usually divided into 5 parts.

Parts of the television crew are located in the first and largest part is the video production area. The Television director, Technical director, assistant director, character generator (CG) operator and television producers usually sit in front of a wall of video monitors. The Technical director sits in front of the video switcher. The video monitors show all the video feeds from various sources, including computer graphics, professional video cameras, video tape recorder (VTR), video servers and slow-motion replay machines. The wall of monitors also contains a preview monitor showing what could be the next source on air (does not have to be depending on how the video switcher is set up) and a program monitor that shows the feed currently going to air or being recorded. The (keyed dirty feed with digital on-screen graphic) is what is actually transmitted back to the central studio that is controlling the outside broadcast. A clean feed (without the graphics) could be being sent to other trucks for use in their production. The video switcher is usually operated by 1 person called the Technical Director (TD). and is responsible for switching the video sources to air as directed. Behind the directors there is usually a desk with monitors for the editors to operate. It is essential that the directors and editor are in communication with each other during events, so that replays and slow-motion shots can be selected and aired.

The second part of a van is where the audio engineer has an audio mixer (being fed with all the various audio feeds: reporters. commentary, on-field microphones, etc. The audio engineer can control which channels are added to the output and follows instructions from the director. The audio engineer normally also has a dirty feed monitor to help with the synchronization of sound and video.

The 3rd part of the truck is the VTR area. The tape area has a collection of machines including video servers and may also house additional power supplies or computer equipment.

The 4th part is the video control area where the professional video cameras are controlled using camera control units (CCU) by one or two operators, to make sure that the iris is at the correct exposure and that all the cameras look the same.

The 5th part is transmission where the signal is monitored by and engineered for quality control purposes and is transmitted or sent to other trucks.

Costs depend on the size and options of the outside broadcast vans ordered.