KNOXVILLE, TENN.—Harb Production Services is based here in Knoxville and supplies the eastern half of the United States with mobile production trucks and equipment for the broadcast television and entertainment industry. Some 80 percent of our productions are sports-related and the remainder involves other network entertainment and corporate clients, so the use of high performance equipment is a must for us.
We began working with Grass Valley products about 12 years ago when we installed one of their Zodiak SD switchers in our first video production truck. It didn’t take long for the Zodiak to prove itself, with our clients learning about what its power could add to their productions. We’ve since added Grass Valley Kayenne HD switchers to all of our trucks and about five years ago implemented Grass Valley cameras to take our productions to the next level.
TRIAX CONNECTIVITY AN IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION
Harb Production Services relies heavily on its complement of Grass Valley cameras. Selection of the Grass Valley cameras was not a difficult decision, as we knew that the company’s camera products offered the kind of high performance, flexibility and reliability that we were looking for and at a price that wouldn’t break our budget. The use of triax cable for interconnectivity was also a very important consideration for us. We knew that Grass Valley cameras offered the best end-to-end solution for working with triax while maintaining full functionality and features needed for our sports broadcast productions.
We also like the Grass Valley XCU camera base stations. The current XCU units are equipped with interchangeable control unit packages. You simply flip two lever releases and the entire unit slides right out of the rackmount. This makes it extremely easy to add additional XCUs to the truck if the client needs more cameras for certain jobs. It’s just a matter of installing extra cradles in the truck and then sliding in extra XCU units when they’re needed—a real cost and time saver.
A CAMERA FOR EVERY APPLICATION
We employ numerous Grass Valley products in our work, including Grass Valley LDX WorldCams, LDX Première and LDK 8000 Elite cameras, as well as Grass Valley routers and multiviewers.
Two of our 40-foot expandos, “Sadie” and “Sophie,” are used mainly for ESPN college sports broadcasts and are equipped with top-of-the line LDX WorldCam cameras which we find work extremely well in challenging lighting situations.
We purchased eight LDX Première cameras for our “Wilbur” 40-foot combo production and Ku-band satellite uplink truck. The LDX Premieres are switchable between 1080i and 720p high-definition standards, making them the perfect choice for “Wilbur,” as it’s used mainly for sports, but is also very popular for client productions at smaller venues.
“Bert” is our 50-foot expando and is equipped with Grass Valley LDK 8000 Elite cameras. These cameras really work great with “Bert’s” demanding sports production schedule, as well as when the vehicle is involved in large entertainment and corporate shows.
Grass Valley cameras made sense for all of our productions and quickly became a hit with our operators. Our cameramen love the lighter weight and balance, shaders love the color and engineers love the feature sets and reliability.
Dan Harb is the manager at Harb Production Services LLC and has worked in the video industry for more than 35 years. He may be contacted atdanharb@comcast.net
For additional information, contact Grass Valley a 530-265-1000 or visit www.grassvalley.com.
