Inside Look: F&F Production GTX15 HD truck

By Ken Kerschbaumer

F&F Productions newest truck, GTX15, is beginning its second month of duty after its debut during the U.S. Open tennis championships for CBS Sports. It’s current gig? Handing CBS Sports NFL and college football telecasts.

Connie Vizaro, F&F VP, production and sales, says the new truck is a double expando all the way down the side, giving it plenty of room for a Grass Valley Kalypso production switcher and a monitor wall with 103 LCD monitors.

“It’s one of the larger double-expando units,” says Vizaro. “And the consoles are movable to there can be either a center walkway or walkways on the left or right in the control room.” That flexibility makes it suitable for either entertainment or sports productions. It also has three tiers of positions.

The monitor wall includes 12-inch monitors for the camera monitors while the rest are 10.4-inch units. There are also two 22-inch and a 32-inch monitor.

The tape area has six channels of EVS, two four-channel EVS units, two Sony
SRW5500 decks and Digi Beta (it can be expanded up to 20 decks). “We can make it into whatever people want and it’s also wired for 24 cameras,” says Vizaro. Ikegami CMOS HD cameras are on board.

Other gear includes Vizrt graphics in the B-unit with Chyron Duet Hyper X and Deko in the A-unit. A Calrec Alpha audio console with Madi is available and an NVision 288×435 router, expandable up to 576×576, is also on board.

“This makes us the only company with a complete HD fleet,” says Vizaro. “And we have four A units that can all run without a B unit.” The B units really don’t kick in until basketball season starts. Vizaro says NFL, the World Series and MLB playoffs, a couple of entertainment shows and even a couple of presidential debates are all on the docket.