Hi all,
We need to replace our closed
circuit TV
system. The camera in the back of the
house and the monitors backstage are all toast. Has anyone had to spec this kind of equipment lately? Most interested in knowing about what camera you chose and if you could use your existing
network of cables or had to install new cables everywhere. Looking for a camera that can deal with the crazy light shifts on
stage without washing out. Looking for High Def if possible.
Thanks !
Doug
So, a couple years back I did a video
system upgrade for the
theatre I was working for. We did a mostly HD
system but kept some SD equipment as the digital processing added unacceptable
latency to the video streams of
conductor cam. This would have lead to sync issues between actors and the
orchestra, so
conductor cam remained analog SD. The rest of our
house feeds became digital HD.
The HD cameras we installed were Sony EVI-HD1s, which are controllable, broadcast quality
PTZ cameras. There are newer models out now. We also wrote control interface software so that we could control the cameras like moving lights from our lighting
desk. This allows for full
PTZ control plus
iris and
gain control. It means that the camera con be adjusted to the varying lighting conditions on
stage either live or as part of the
cue stack. The
sACN to Sony VISCA software runs on a Raspberry Pi and we are happy to share it. It works with any VISCA compatible camera and even has camera definitions built in.
All of our digital HD cameras are wired back to distribution using 3G-SDI runs. Encoding and distribution is done with ZeeVee HDBridge hardware. OUr video distribution is over standard
coax as that was existing in the building.
Your post made it sound like you were interested in doing some kind of IP distribution. There are HD encoders that will
send IP streams, but you probably really want to
send that over it's own
network (depending on number of channels and the rest of your
network infrastructure). I also have no idea what the
latency of an IP based
system is. An IP based
system would also require STBs at every TV, whereas doing QAM distribution over
coax only requires that your TVs have a QAM tuner (most modern TVs do).
The
system we installed supported up to 4 digital HD sources (cameras or other sources like computers) plus a few analog sources. We typically used one HD camera on the
balcony rail, one "high angle" camera outside the booth window (primarily so that choreographers could see dance figures from above), and sometimes a top-down view of the
stage. Then we ran analog
conductor cam. The output of the analog and digital modulators is them combined and
fed into the building cable
system. Hook up your TV, let it scan for channels, and bob's your uncle!