News

New IP-based truck relies on Hitomi MatchBox for precision 4K delay management

Timeline Television’s latest outside broadcast truck, UHD2, is now on the road with the MatchBox 4K from Hitomi Broadcast. This provides extremely accurate measurement of audio and video alignment, ensuring that sound and pictures stay in perfect synchronisation throughout the SDI and IP connectivity.

Timeline’s triple expanding, 32-camera IP 4K HDR outside broadcast truck is one of the most advanced in the world. With an Arista 100G switch at its heart and SAM IP infrastructure UHD2 delivers large scale complex OBs simultaneously in uncompressed 4K UHD HDR and 4K UHD SDR.

Internally, much of the technical infrastructure uses IP connectivity, ensuring the maximum capabilities can be built into the truck.

Timeline UHD 2 Outside Broadcast Truck Featuring Hitomi 4K MatchBox Technology

Lip-sync errors are instantly visible by all viewers, who find them extremely distracting. Across a complex, multi-layered IP and SDI infrastructure the potential for audio and video to creep out of sync is very real, and the Hitomi MatchBox 4K is designed to provide the precise measurement and monitoring required to ensure delays are precisely matched.

Timeline putting MatchBox into action on board their UHD2 Outside Broadcast Truck

Lee Wright – Senior Broadcast Engineer onboard Truck RF1

“With 4K transmissions, there is a relatively high processing delay for video compared with the audio,” said Lee Wright, Senior Broadcast Engineer at Timeline. “The only way to measure the discrepancy out of the HEVC encoder is by using a Hitomi MatchBox. It gives an actual measurement of delay in milliseconds, allowing the engineer to adjust the audio quickly and with absolute mathematical accuracy.”

Dan McDonnell, Managing Director of Timeline was asked how the product was performing onboard UHD2 “Our MatchBoxes are an absolutely essential piece of equipment which enables us to quickly analyse where any delays are in the chain”

The Hitomi MatchBox is a 1U device which provides test signal generation as well as comparing video and audio delays. It incorporates speech generation for idents and other messages, making it an ideal device to identify lines during set-up, too.

“We were invited to the launch of Timeline Television’s UHD2 at MediaCityUK, Salford,” said Anna Cox Executive Assistant at Hitomi Broadcast. “It was great to see MatchBox 4K doing such a vital job in such a prestigious installation, and to hear the impact our technology has made with the people at Timeline.”