Daryl PeckSEATTLE—The Seattle Channel is the City of Seattle’s award-winning government access channel. Our mission is to deliver a wide range of programming, including series and special features that highlight the diverse local, civic and cultural landscape of this area. Along with coverage of city council meetings, our productions include panel discussions, interviews with elected officials, as well as local arts programming and similar offerings.
Part of our success is based on our use of Telemetrics robotic camera control products.
We have been a Telemetrics customer since the late 1990s when we installed their robotic camera gear to cover city council meetings. We’ve been very impressed with the long service life of Telemetrics products and the fact that parts and support are still available long after the equipment was purchased.
Our operational staff has long been sold on Telemetrics robotic camera products too, due to their reliability, feature sets and operational capabilities. The Telemetrics control system and robotic pan/tilt head provides the accuracy, smoothness and responsiveness that we need to produce music videos as part of our local arts programming.
TELEMETRICS CONTROL UNITS SAVE MONEY AND SPACE
During the past few years, we’ve been steadily upgrading our operation to HD and just recently replaced our standard-definition box-type cameras used in our studio with HD models. During this upgrade we did run into one difficulty: the camera control units from the original cameras were not compatible with the new HD cameras. However, this was not really an issue, as we were able to transfer CCU functions of the new cameras to our recently installed Telemetrics RCCP-1 studio control system. This Telemetrics functionality saved us from having to purchase new CCUs and also saved space in the control room. In addition, it simplified the control room/studio cabling job.
To cover the council meetings, we now rely on the Telemetrics CPS-ST-S studio camera control system to operate six Panasonic box cameras on Telemetrics PT-CPS4 pan/tilt devices. The CP-D-3A desktop control panel gives us full control of pan, tilt, zoom and focus functions, just as if we had a live operator for each camera.
The system also lets our operators create up to 50 preset positions with visual presentation of the sequential shots timed simultaneously for on-air pan/tilt/zoom/focus converging moves. This ensures that our coverage of council meetings has a professional look.
The Telemetrics RCCP-1 robotic camera control panel supports RS-232 and Ethernet transmission from multiple control locations. Control of the box cameras and the Telemetrics PT-HP-S4 robotic heads and other auxiliary devices is provided through the panel’s integrated touchscreen interface. The control panel also includes a joystick for trim controls (pan, tilt, zoom), as well as a special assignable knob control that adds to the precision and level of remote control operations.
We value our relationship with Telemetrics because of the quality of their products and the level of support the company has provided us.
Daryl Peck is a video engineer at the Seattle Channel. He may be contacted atdaryl.peck@seattle.gov.
For additional information, contact Telemetrics at 201-848-9818 or visitwww.telemetricsinc.com.
