TVN LIVE PRODUCTION Upgrades With Hitomi MatchBox

TVN LIVE PRODUCTION, one of Europe’s leading mobile production companies, has purchased three Hitomi MatchBox Generator and Analyser systems - complete with MatchBox Glass licenses – for upgraded capability across its studios complexes in Hamburg and Hanover as well as in its OB trucks.

The deployment gives TVN the ability to benefit from absolute synchronicity between video and audio and deliver parallel output formats such as HD, 1080p and UHD. The production company plans to upgrade all its studios and OB trucks to Hitomi MatchBox as it transitions more of its capabilities from 1080i to 1080p/UHD. 

Christoph Moll, Technical manager at TVN LIVE PRODUCTION, explained, “The Glass app gives us a huge advantage and means that we can once again extend the reliability of synchronous video / audio transmission, even when we process signals from external service providers. Everyone on the team has an iPhone at hand and can access the app and test audio and video links from in front of the camera quickly and easily. In the OB van, we can read the runtime with the Hitomi system and seamlessly make adjustments accordingly.” 

All TVN OB vans producing 1080p/UHD are now equipped with MatchBox, including TVN-Ü3, TVN-Ü5 and TVN-Ü6. The company’s flightcase-based production unit, TVN-MPU3, houses both the legacy system for 1080i projects along with MatchBox to support 1080p. The TVN-Ü1 and TVN-Ü2 units are now being integrated into the fleet with upgraded capabilities. 

MatchBox is a state-of-the-art toolkit that streamlines live broadcast synchronisation and is relied on by broadcasters worldwide to ensure the timing of live sports, news and events. It offers an intuitive identing feature, rapid measurement of lip sync, audio coherence, audio levels, phase inversions and video timing. The MatchBox Analyser tool sits in the OB truck or MCR and looks and listens for the specific Hitomi video and audio signatures produced by the hardware MatchBox Generator (which produces 4K test patterns) and/or the MatchBox Glass app. 

A new essential for high-profile remote productions, the MatchBox Glass app allows precision measurement of lip-sync and video to video timing alignment at the point of capture. The user holds an iPhone or iPad running the free iOS app in front of up to four cameras and feeds the signal back into the Analyser.

You might also like...

Designing IP Broadcast Systems: Integrating Cloud Infrastructure

Connecting on-prem broadcast infrastructures to the public cloud leads to a hybrid system which requires reliable secure high value media exchange and delivery.

Video Quality: Part 1 - Video Quality Faces New Challenges In Generative AI Era

In this first in a new series about Video Quality, we look at how the continuing proliferation of User Generated Content has brought new challenges for video quality assurance, with AI in turn helping address some of them. But new…

Minimizing OTT Churn Rates Through Viewer Engagement

A D2C streaming service requires an understanding of satisfaction with the service – the quality of it, the ease of use, the style of use – which requires the right technology and a focused information-gathering approach.

Production Control Room Tools At NAB 2024

As we approach the 2024 NAB Show we discuss the increasing demands placed on production control rooms and their crew, and the technologies coming to market in this key area of live broadcast production.

Designing IP Broadcast Systems: Where Broadcast Meets IT

Broadcast and IT engineers have historically approached their professions from two different places, but as technology is more reliable, they are moving closer.