Nic Dugger
NASHVILLE—We provide television coverage of a wide range of national and local events, including concerts, award shows, sports, racing and mixed martial arts fighting events, each of which has its own set of unique and demanding audio and video requirements.
In constructing our third and latest mobile HD truck, Aspiration!, I was challenged with the design and buildout of a full service mobile television production unit to expand our capability for covering broadcast, entertainment and sporting events.
Cabling is an integral part of any broadcasting platform, especially so in trucks. For more than five years we've been relying upon Clark Wire & Cable products and services, and once again I made Clark my first choice as the supplier for Aspiration!'s interconnection requirements. I've consistently found Clark cables to meet or exceed specifications and to perform reliably in the hostile environments you face in mobile production.
Equal in importance to the quality of their products, Clark's sales and technical personnel have always delivered a high level of customer service and attention to detail. Their rapid delivery and attention to detail has really paid off in tight deadline installations by delivering solutions that have allowed me to complete such jobs on time.
I specified Clark's CD series HD/SDI coax for all of the coax interconnections in the new truck. These cables are rated up to 4.5 GHz and are SMPTE 292M/424M compliant, ensuring precision performance with a variety of SDI data-rate formats, including 3 Gbps video. For all venue-based loose cable applications I used Clark's CD7506 RG-6 type cable as it provides lower attenuation allowing longer cable runs. SDI and composite video, sync, and word clock runs within the truck were done with Clark's CD7523 miniature 23-gauge coax. The small diameter of this cable and the large number of jacket color options it's offered in make it ideal for wiring in high-density cable areas. Clark's DMT series of tactical fiber cable was the choice for external video-over-fiber runs.
AUDIO DEMANDS QUALITY CABLE
The audio systems in Aspiration! are just as important to the video and also required precision performance cables. I used Clark's SPA22GS single pair and RS22G2 dual pair cables for internal analog audio wiring and 801 AES/EBU single-pair cable for the digital audio interfacing.
Our cable of choice for mic runs was Clark's MINK4 quad microphone cable. It's one of the most flexible microphone cables on the market and also offers a high degree of both abrasion resistant and external RF/EMI noise rejection. And for our snake systems we specified Clark's rugged and easy-to-coil 700 series multi-pair audio cables.
In addition to supplying cabling for the new truck, Clark also provided a full turnkey solution for the customized interconnect panels that I needed. All of the truck I/O panels and user station panels were fabricated by Clark. We were able to select the connector format, quantity, and exact connector location that we desired and Clark did the rest.
A large-scale project such as the construction of a mobile truck always comes with challenges, but Clark helped us to overcome a lot of them.
Nic Dugger is owner and founder of Tennessee Digital Video, which was established in 2004. He has been involved in television broadcasting for more than two decades. He may be contacted at nic@tndv.com.
For additional information, contact for Clark at 800-222-5348 or visit www.clarkwire.com.
