Truck Challenge - EDIUSWorldWHITE PAPER: TRUCK CHALLENGE 5 Finding #4 Production truck setup...

Truck Challenge By David Cohen, Director, Outbound Marketing

WHITE PAPER: TRUCK CHALLENGE

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Finding #1Of all new technical developments, router-centric truck design has had the greatest effect on speeding up truck production setup time

For this first finding, we looked at the overall picture based on responses from the entire sample. One thing that immediately became evident is that the top three technical developments respondents felt saved them the most time are interrelated:

• New multiviewers that can display previous configurations

• The move from tape to digital storage

• The move from patch bays to digital routing

In combination, these three developments create the time-saving ability to view the entire configuration of the truck, make adjustments on it, store the configuration, and recall it. Only by working together can these three components achieve this result. If a multiviewer is not integrated with digital storage there would be nowhere to archive and retrieve configurations. Likewise, without integration to a router, adjustments on a multiviewer could not be made.

George Hoover, Chief Technology Officer of NEP, calls these components working together a “router-centric truck design.” He explains, “Most modern TV trucks use a router to essentially ingest all of the sources within the truck and external to the truck, and then feed them to various processing equipment, the production switcher and multiviewer. This allows us to have instant and total recall of all signal routing in a mobile unit. This is an advantage because you can recall all of the previous setups and configurations with a mouse click, which saves a lot of time.”

T he purpose of this study was to measure the technological challenges of mobile TV production. Why measure problems? The reason is simple. If we can better understand the problems

that most frequently occur during a mobile production, we will be better able to anticipate those challenges and counter them. Or, as the father of modern management, Peter Drucker, once said, “That which gets measured, improves.”

The study targeted high-end sports production professionals involved in mobile production. Our goal was to aggregate the experience of hundreds of people who work in, or manage, mobile productions, and arrive at a universal truth about which operational areas are most challenging. We interviewed industry experts from mobile production companies both large and small, and surveyed professionals at broadcast and cable networks, as well as mobile production companies.

By quantifying the challenges facing mobile production professionals, we hope to help them better prepare for what lies ahead.



Finding #2Small trucks realize only half the benefits of modern routing as average and large trucks do

While most challenges in truck setup are common to all mobile productions, it appears that a truck’s size, and how many cameras it carries, do matter, both in terms of which challenges are greatest and in how much setup time is saved with the new technical developments. To find out how truck size affects the degree of time-saving benefit realized, we sub-tabulated the top three technical developments chosen by respondents in Finding #1 according to size of truck and how many cameras it carries. Respondents were separated into three groups: Small trucks or vans with 1 to 4 cameras; average sized trucks with 5 to 10 cameras; and extra-large production trucks with 11 cameras and up (see accompanying chart).

When separated out in this way, it becomes clear just how different the relative benefits of router-centric design are for each truck size with regard to reduced setup times. We found that operators of smaller trucks see much less benefit in the move from analog patch bays to modern digital routing ,with less than a third (31.5%) saying it had sped up their setup. By contrast, almost twice that percentage of operators of average and large trucks report a time saving benefit (average sized trucks 57.6% and large trucks 59.7%).

According to Gerald Chustz, Engineer in Charge/Design Engineer at Turner Broadcasting, who has designed small mobile truck units, many of the connection points in smaller trucks are pre-wired and offer a limited number of router configurations: “The majority of the smaller trucks these days are wired point-to-point. Basically, they have an input on the side of the truck going to allocated equipment, so they don’t use a large output configuration.” With fewer connection choices and a limited number of router controlled options, routers are just not as important for smaller trucks.”

However, for average and large trucks, digital routing is much more important. Says Hoover, “Truck productions have become more complicated over the years, but the ability to recall setup configurations mitigates that. If you walk into a truck with a preconfigured setup, you are good to go. Typically, with every new football season the entire production crew comes in and spends a week configuring the truck. Then they show up at a stadium two days before the game to put out all the field equipment and set it up.”

Being able to recall the whole routing configuration without having to redo anything is a huge time-saver for average and large trucks, which explains the disparity in ratings for “point-and-click” (digital) routing between these two groups and respondents with smaller trucks.



Finding #3Fiber carrying multiple channels of video and audio is of greatest help for the largest trucks

Some other interesting contrasts emerge when responses are broken out by truck size. Looking at the averages from the entire group of respondents in Finding #1, “Fiber carrying multiple channels of video and audio” was ranked only fifth out of eight technical developments that can speed truck setup. However, when the responses were sub-tabulated by truck size, this choice actually tied for first place among trucks carrying 11 cameras and up. This makes sense, because larger trucks are more often involved in bigger productions where there could be several locations (or several trucks) that need to be connected or have long cable runs.

As Hoover illustrates, “In the 11-camera-and-up shows, you’re talking about golf tournaments and auto racing, which usually occur in places that are not pre-cabled. So there’s a huge advantage, when you’re putting up miles and miles of cabling on a golf course or race track, it’s very efficient to be able to do it on multiple channels on a tactical fiber cable. A good example of that is the Masters [golf tournament] where the international compound is quite some distance from the main compound and fiber is the only technology that would make getting those signals between the two compounds possible.”



Finding #4Production truck setup challenges are most frequently camera-related

To find out which steps in truck setup most frequently cause problems and delay, we created a list of all that could slow down setup and asked respondents to select all the ones that have impacted them. “Laying cable” was the top cause of delay, cited by two-thirds (67%) of all respondents as a setup challenge. Camera setup and placement came in second at 47.2%, and intercom setup was third, at 32.1%. Considering that most of the cable and communications on a truck shoot connect cameras to the control room, it seems that the top three areas respondents most identified as slowing down setup are all camera-related.

After camera-related challenges, the area that typically has the longest setup time is graphics. Graphics people are often the first ones in the control room because they have a lot of preparation work to do. And when the game begins, graphics problems can be worse than ones caused by cameras. Adds Tom Sahara, Vice President of Operations & Technology, Turner Sports, “Graphics can be the tail that wags the dog. If there’s a misspelling, a typo or the graphic is just wrong, it can derail the whole front bench of the truck. If a camera or microphone is not working, a crew can just shelve it and use a different one.”



Finding #5Smaller trucks face bigger challenges laying cable than do average or large trucks

When we took the top four operational areas (from Finding #4) that most slow down truck setup, and subtabulated the responses by small, average and large trucks, an anomaly emerged: Respondents with small trucks (1 to 4 cameras) reported a bigger challenge laying cable than did average or large sized trucks. At first this might seem counterintuitive since smaller trucks have fewer cameras to set up. However, as Hoover explains, productions with one to four cameras are not typically shot in pre-cabled venues. When every camera location in a venue is pre-cabled, laying cable for cameras is dramatically easier.

He adds two other reasons as well: “Until recently, some smaller trucks would have been using cameras that were running on multicore cable, which by its very nature is a little more problematic. Also, one-to-fourcamera shows have potentially less experienced crew people. There’s nothing more exciting than finding out your crew ran the cables in the wrong direction.”

But while laying cable is clearly a significantly bigger challenge for small trucks, it is still the top cause of setup delays for all three sizes of truck. However, if the venues where average and large trucks work are consistently pre-cabled, why is laying cable still a problem? If a venue is pre-cabled to all camera locations, then theoretically at least, laying cable should be one of the least challenging aspects of production. The answer, according to Hoover, is that pre-cabling does not solve all cabling problems: “There’s a trend that trucks are carrying more cameras than they used to, so in almost every venue we are putting cameras in where there are no cables. Also, most college football and basketball stadiums are not pre-cabled. If games are only televised six times a year, it is not an investment that makes sense.”

Finally, even when a venue is pre-cabled, for very big sports events there may just not be enough precabled camera locations to go around. As Hoover illustrates, “There could be a home team truck and an away team truck, and both generally put out their own cameras. So you might look around a baseball stadium during a major game and see 20 cameras, but there are actually two different networks working there. If it is a night when the baseball game is on ESPN, there could be three trucks’ worth of cameras in place: A home team truck whose signal is being blacked out for ESPN, an away team truck also blacked out for ESPN, and an ESPN truck for the rest of the country. It’s kind of like building the church for Easter; nobody cables a venue to support the maximum usage.”

From all of the above, it is not hard to see why laying cable is the top challenge by far with truck setups. It is a time consuming, labor intensive job where many things can go wrong, no matter what size the truck is.



Finding #6When a mobile production goes from setup to live, challenges with audio issues double

Having measured the tech challenges during mobile production setup, we next turned to the challenges faced once a shoot goes live. Respondents were asked to choose from a list of areas that had caused problems in the control room during a live shoot. The most frequently mentioned problem was connectivity issues with cameras. Since camera-related issues also presented the most common challenge during setup, this came as little surprise. However, the big news was that audio issues actually double in magnitude when a shoot goes live.

The reason for this is largely that it’s impossible to anticipate what an empty stadium is going to sound like once it fills up with fans. Offers Hoover, “It’s easy to put a shotgun mic on top of the dugout at a baseball game. But then the fans come in and the guy directly behind that microphone is really, really loud or he happened to bring his trumpet that day, and the microphone effectively becomes useless. You realize then it would have been better to put that microphone up on a pole to avoid [that guy], or the crowd noise or the guy selling peanuts who hollers out his call for customers.”

Because it is hard to predict where troublesome sound will come from, a truck crew is never completely sure they have the right audio connections into the right locations until the crowd shows up and the game begins.



Finding #7The bigger the truck, the bigger the problem equipment noise in the control room becomes

In the previous Finding (#6), we saw that respondents reported audio issues in the control room as the second biggest challenge during a live production. For this next Finding, we focused more deeply on this issue, by sub-tabulating the responses by small, average, and large sized truck. Although, as it turns out, there was little or no relationship between truck size and problems caused by microphones and audio sources, equipment noise was quite a different story: Essentially, the bigger the truck, the more frequently equipment noise in the truck control room is a problem.

The reason for this, according to Gerald Chustz, is that there’s simply more equipment on the truck. As he explains, “Mobile units are getting so much larger and have so much greater capability that we have a higher density of equipment, and the ventilation through the equipment needs to be greater than it’s ever been before. To get rid of the heat, equipment manufacturers are speeding up the fans, and using larger, noisier fan blades. We’ve actually gone into some of our frames and picked a medium fan setting, instead of the high-speed settings that most of the factories default to.”

In addition, truck design is limited by the legal weight that trucks cannot exceed in order to drive on highways. Most production trucks today run very close to the legal limit. When given the choice between using that limited weight to add heavy acoustical material to make a quieter control room, or carrying more equipment that can improve the market value of the truck, the economics favor equipment. The result is less soundproofing in the truck than a fixed control room would have. Says Hoover, “A typical fixed production studio is double-walled, with each of the separated walls built with multiple layers of sheet rock. A typical TV truck has one wall that might be an inch and a half thick, with a single sheet of lightweight acoustical fabric on both sides. As trucks carry more cameras, they need bigger routers, more people, and more equipment. Everything you put into a truck, whether it is equipment or people, all makes noise.”



Finding #8The bigger the truck, the bigger the challenges

During preliminary interviews for this project, we spoke with operators of all sizes of mobile production units. Among professionals working with smaller units, there was a perception that their jobs were harder than those of their peers working the 53-foot rigs because their technologies were not as well integrated. On the other hand, professionals working with larger production units thought they had the harder job because of the additional equipment producers were asking them to bring to make their programming more exciting. So, who really has the tougher job? To settle this question, we took the same list of technical and operational areas from Finding #4 that respondents said have delayed their truck setups, and subtabulated their answers based on size of truck. By comparing how frequently operators of each size of truck report facing those challenges, we were able to reach a data-supported conclusion.

It turns out that in 9 of the 13 technical and operational areas, the bigger the truck, the more frequently people working them report having had problems in these areas during setup. In only four areas did the number of problems reported in large trucks not surpass those of small and average size trucks. In two of these four exceptions, switcher configuration and slow motion, all three sizes of truck seem to have about the same level of challenge during setup. In only two operational areas do operators of large trucks report fewer problems than average and small trucks. However, one of these is power generation, where the relative lack of challenges is more likely due to assistance from an external source: on larger productions, power generation is most often farmed out. Says Hoover, “On an 11-camera-plus shoot, you are dealing with professional power providers. That’s what they do for a living. They just bring the electricity over to you and say, “Here it is, where would you like it to go, sir?”

All this is not to say that smaller trucks have it easier all the time. In fact, as the chart shows, when it comes to laying cable, small trucks have many more challenges than do either average or large sized trucks. As was mentioned in Finding #4, part of the reason for this is due to an external factor: few of the venues they roll into have camera locations which are pre-cabled.

The four exceptions aside, in 9 of the 13 technical and operational areas, the bigger the truck, the more frequently people working them report problems during setup. Therefore, to settle the debate over who has the harder job we’ll let the numbers speak for themselves: the larger trucks do.



Finding #9With each increase in truck size, challenges for router, multiviewer, graphics, and intercom setup increase exponentially

When sub-tabulated by size of truck, four areas of truck setup emerged as having greater stratification than any others measured: router, multiviewer, graphics, and intercom setup. In fact, in many cases moving up to the next larger size truck increased frequency of setup challenges reported by about 50% or more.

For example, in intercom setup, 15% of respondents with small trucks say this area has slowed them down or held up a truck setup. However, for average size trucks, that percentage is 32.6%, and for large trucks it is 45.5%. With each increase in truck size, the frequency of challenge rose by around 50%. With multiviewer setup we see a similar pattern: Only 1.4% of small trucks reported problems in this area. However, 13.7% of average size trucks did, as well as 21.2% of large trucks.

Why is the stratification by truck size more extreme for these areas? As each additional camera is added to a production system, it increases the complexity of the system by more than just one incremental unit: each camera must be viewed, have signals routed for it, and be communicated with, in multiple ways. Says Hoover, “I think the complexity is in large part a function of choice and options. You have many more signals that have to be seen by many more people. Each one has a unique set of requirements. The number of multiviewer screens increases exponentially because every camera has many different views which different people want to see. These views can include prompters, time code, video diagnostics, and some want to view both input and output.” Now that graphics have become live components instead of previously prepared ones, they are also included in the growing complexity of larger truck productions.



Finding #10Production trucks do more than sports events and are beginning to shoot for second screen programming

While the most frequently produced programming on mobile production units is live games (68.3%), trucks also produce nonsporting events, such as live concerts (48.9% ), political events (42.9%), and meetings and conventions (37.5%).

In addition, mobile production units are being tapped to create content for new programming forms, including content for second screens (15.9%), instant replays on demand (17.8%), alternate camera angles (19.3%) and game highlights on demand (21.3%). Broadcasters have great interest in these programming forms, which often make it into viewers’ homes as “second screen” programming viewed on tablets or mobile phones.

The question is, how much will these new forms of programming affect a live mobile production? The business models that support the new programming are just being worked out. If some become successful they will contribute to the challenges of live truck production. For example: If broadcasters find they can charge viewers for alternate camera angles on demand, it will pay to have more cameras on the field. Where there is money to be made or ratings to be gained, expect that more equipment will be loaded onto trucks.



Finding #11New programming designed to generate additional revenue streams is most often produced on larger trucks

A sub-tabulation of responses on the newer kinds of programming that mobile production trucks are being asked to create shows that larger trucks are producing a substantially greater amount of it than average and small size trucks, sometimes by a factor of almost 2 to 1. Because this new programming was not popular five years ago, it helps to explain why larger truck shoots seem to have become so much more complicated since then. Every additional camera adds to the complexity of a large mobile production, and more programming means adding more cameras to produce it. If streaming is a significant component of a live production, often an additional smaller production truck is included, which must then be integrated with the larger truck. In short, producing more streams of live programming means more cameras, equipment, trucks and people all contributing to the complexity of the shoot.

For now, the larger trucks are producing a majority of these new kinds of programming, but as the business models mature and revenue increases, the numbers of average and small size trucks producing this programming could increase as well.



Finding #12Three years from now, 3G/1080p, 4K and 1080i will dominate new truck builds

For the final round of questions, we asked respondents to look ahead three years from now and tell us which format they think they would build a new truck in. The big surprise was how little support 720p received as a new build format three years out. Keep in mind that this does not mean three years from now all 720p infrastructure will disappear. Currently there is a tremendous amount of 720p infrastructure at organizations like ESPN and Fox Sports which have standardized on 720p, and these will be with our industry for years to come. What will change is that 720p as a new build format will largely go away. From a look at the chart, it is not hard to see why. Only a few years ago, 720p and 1080i were the two HD formats to choose from, and of them only 720p was a progressive format. On this chart,

however, 720p is only one of four progressive formats that also include 1080p, 4K, and 8K. As greater numbers of people look to the more robust progressive formats now available, especially 1080p and 4K, interest in 720p fades.

The other surprise was that 4K did as well as it did, considering that, as of this writing, there are no transmission standards to get a 4K signal into the home, and consumer acceptance of the format has yet to be tested. Yet, apparently enough respondents believe that these obstacles will be overcome, and that consumer acceptance will be positive, to earn 4K a close second as a favored new truck build format three years from now.

Finding #13The bigger the truck, the more likely that it will be built around the newer production formats like 3G and 4K three years from now

Although it is hard to make predictions about the future, when asked what build format they think they would use for a truck three years from now, mobile production facility managers favored building large and average sized trucks with 3G, slightly ahead of 4K. For building smaller trucks, they chose 3G, 4K, and 1080i in relatively similar percentages, this time with 4K having a slight edge. We see 1080i emerging as the low-cost alternative to progressive formats most favored by smaller trucks. Finally, it appears that 720p will be abandoned as a new build format, as more robust progressive formats gain popularity.



In conclusion

Work on mobile production trucks is clearly more complicated than it used to be. As Tom Sahara illustrates, “The productions we do now are far more complex than they used to be. Today you have multiple layers of moving video with accompanying sound effects, playing in sync on a complicated timeline that brings multiple sources in and mixes them together. A few years ago, this would have taken hours or days in an editing room, but now we routinely do it as live sequences triggered out of a digital switcher.”

On the other hand, while productions have become more complex, advances in technology have mitigated some of that complexity through the ability to recall setup configurations, made possible by what George Hoover refers to as a router-centric truck design. In fact, this theme, of the “race” between the rising challenges facing mobile production units and the continuing introduction of new technology created to help manage it, was seen repeatedly throughout this study.

Finding #1 demonstrated the impact of router-centric truck design. When respondents were asked to pick from a list of advancing technologies that have helped reduce truck setup time, all of their top choices were router-related: multiviewers capable of displaying previous configurations, digital storage and digital routing were selected above all others. These components, working together, enable truck routing configurations to be viewed, manipulated, stored, and retrieved, helping to master complex productions. However, in Finding #2 we found that smaller size trucks do not benefit from modern routing as much as average and large sized trucks, because they are less dependent on routing. On the other hand, according to Finding #3, because large trucks more often shoot in locations that require networking over greater distances, they benefit much more than do small and average size trucks by using fiber capable of carrying multiple channels of audio and video.

Of the operational areas involved in a truck setup, Finding #4 revealed that the ones most frequently responsible for slowing things down were camera-related. Respondents first selected laying cable, followed by camera setup, and then intercom/communications as the most frequent areas delaying setup. Finding #5 demonstrated that smaller trucks have greater challenges laying cable than larger trucks. Even though small trucks have fewer cameras to put out, laying cable for them is harder because they work in venues that are often not pre-cabled.

Once a production goes live, camera connections to the control room led the list of challenges, as discovered in Finding #6. Interestingly, audio issues were next on the list. Although microphone placement measured low on the list of challenges during truck setup, it almost doubled as a source of problems once the shoot went live, mostly because it is hard to predict what a venue will sound like once it is filled with a crowd and activity. In Finding #7 we found that noise in the truck control room is also a major challenge during live production, and increasingly so, the larger the truck.

Finding #8 settled the debate over who has the toughest job among those working on small, average, or large sized trucks, by showing that respondents on larger trucks reported challenges more frequently in most areas. It turns out that some challenges are more truck-size-related than others: Respondents in Finding #9 pointed to four operational areas in particular where the challenges increased exponentially as the truck size went up: setting up the router, multiviewer, intercom/communications, and graphics all showed steep increases in frequency of challenge as we moved from small, to average, to large sized trucks. While live sports events are the most common form of programming produced with mobile production units, Finding #10 showed that in addition, trucks shoot live concerts, political events, and meetings and conventions, as well as creating content for new programming channels such as second screen and on demand services. Finding #11 revealed a new reason why large truck productions are becoming more complicated than average or small trucks: Large trucks are much more frequently asked to create these new forms of programming.

As we look three years into the future, Finding #12 predicted that 3G, 4K, and 1080i will dominate new truck builds. Breaking that forecast down by truck size in Finding #13, we saw that average and large sized trucks will look more toward 3G and then 4K, while small size trucks will look equally toward 3G, 4K and 1080i.

The very nature of live remote production makes it more challenging than productions which are done in a fixed studio where there are multiple chances to work out all the bugs. But mobile production units face another challenge due to the fact that often the kinds of programming they create is watched by viewers in real time. These live event productions, such as sports and awards programs, are among the most lucrative to broadcasters, because advertisers will pay a premium to run ads on television watched in real time, where a captive audience cannot fast-forward through their commercials. As a result, broadcasters keep adding more technology to the productions to keep pace with competitive programming. More equipment means more complexity and therefore more things that can go wrong for mobile production units. On the other hand, there is a bright side here too: While more technology makes the shoot more complicated, the continuing lucrative nature of the programming assures there will also be investment in technology to keep it manageable. And so, the race continues.


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About Josh Gordon Group

The Josh Gordon Group is a marketing services company specializing in the creative use of research to uncover technology trends and expand clients’ understanding of their customers to a new level. Our research-driven process helps organizations succeed by revealing insights about customers not previously known.

In a recent major study, we measured the marketing effectiveness of the top 34 suppliers in the broadcast technology market. This study attracted national attention as the first to document the relationship between product ownership and marketing effectiveness. Download it for free HERE

Josh Gordon is well known in the television technology market as an early trend-spotter. He is also the author of several books on the sales and marketing process. Learn more at JoshGordon.com

About the Survey

This white paper is one of several created from a study conducted on sports production professionals by the Josh Gordon Group in 2013, and is sponsored by the former Miranda technologies, now Grass Valley, a Belden Brand. The study was designed to help members of the sports production community better understand the technology trends and challenges they face every day. The questionnaire focused on trends and issues and contained no mention of any supplier brands or products.

The survey was deployed between June 5th and July 10, 2013. The target was high end sports production professionals working with mobile truck production. Results are based on 538 responses, an excellent result considering that sports truck production is a niche within the sports video production industry, which is itself a small niche within the production industry.

Almost three quarters of respondents are involved in the use of sports truck productions.

The respondents work mainly at broadcast networks and stations, cable networks, and truck and+production companies:

We would like to thank the Sports Video Group for their advice throughout the process of conducting this survey.

http://www.joshgordon.com/download-the-study-imporving-marketing-effectivness-?&__hssc=&__hstc&hsCtaTracking=2bedc5e4-4dba-4c94-9e65-b445bafaec68%7C69b1b954-bc12-438f-a4ca-ca4d1a2b2880

http://www.joshgordon.com/books/

http://www.JoshGordon.com

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