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Camera and Monitor recommendations


Prodman22

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Im after a recommended Camera ,large screen monitor and small screens for our theatre. We need to use the camera in a static position on the balcony to pick up the stage which will be relayed back to DSM, Audio desk and Conductor.

The Large screen will be hung at the balcony (Similar to West end musicals). The distance from the monitor to Actors on stage is 15m. Im thinking 55 inch flat screen. Ideally id like to keep latency to a minimum. The FOH camera needs to be good in low light (I have an infra red light)

fixed focus. Im looking for good quality HD if possible.

Camera 2 (Conductor Camera) needs to be able to be fixed close to conductor and wide enough lens to pick them up.

 

Whats the most common systems used in West end shows ? Do they use BNC to keep latency low ?

 

Any recommendations would be useful

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I do this a fair bit, we just installed a relay screen system like this for

a concert hall in Northampton with 1 camera, 3 lcd screens

and 1 projector across 3 rooms.

 

Transmission is via HDsdi (for low latency, quality and long distance)

with hdsdi to hdmi adapters for each screen.

The camera is a cheap outdoor hdsdi security camera for about £100

 

Camera cost would be from £100 to over £50,000 it's entirely up to budget.

Given your brief, I think you need at least full HD and spend a fair bit more than £100.

 

The quality of the camera will have a great deal of effect on screen image quality.

 

The most important question is what's your budget 100's or 1000's? (pm if you want)

Edited by jason5d
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Whats the most common systems used in West end shows ? Do they use BNC to keep latency low ?

BNC, like XLR, is just a connector - it can carry an array of different signals. Back in the good old days of analogue, composite video was king (via BNC) and there was zero latency. Life was simple.

 

Anything digital in the signal chain will add latency, particularly if scaling is involved. Domestic HD TVs are notorious for this and can add quite a few frames if scaling and any other unnecessary processing is involved.

 

 

Given your brief, I think you need at least full HD and spend a fair bit more than £100.

 

Given that virtually every tour that I've ever encountered has managed just fine with standard def cameras, often with black & white pictures (even for the non-IR camera) I'd find it hard to justify "at least full HD". Low latency & low light performance is far more important than the number of pixels.

 

55" sounds excessive for the circle front monitor - I'd say 37" would be more than enough. At only 15m, even 26" would be OK to see the conductor's arms waving!

 

Last time I did this, I used security cameras outputting AHD - it's an analogue HD format - but they can also output composite if needed. A cheap converter box turns that in to VGA so you can use either TVs or computer monitors. End to end latency is about 3 frames. I'd generally steer clear of HDMI as latency sometimes seems to creep up more with conversions to/from that.

 

After some tweaking of camera settings, the quality is remarkably good - we're planning to eventually feed it around the building as a show relay and I don't think anyone will be disappointed with the picture.

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£100 minimum for a camera?? We've got a Hikvision CCTV camera on our balcony which cost around £30 and could do HD if we plugged it into a CCTV recorder. As it is, it also has a composite video output mode which we feed straight into an old LCD TV in prompt corner. Works well, has a built-in infra red lamp, and seems to have fairly low latency. As other have said, resolution isn't really important. We just need to be able to see the stage in a complete blackout.
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We use a HikVision too - not sure of the model - but we have it set up so that it will flip into IR B&W mode immediately on receiving a 12V signal, which is supplied via a DMX relay, thus we can force it to IR during a blackout, which is much quicker than letting the camera do it automatically, and avoids the real estate (and expense) of having two cameras and two monitors side by side. Works for us.
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<br />We use a HikVision too - not sure of the model - but we have it set up so that it will flip into IR B&W mode immediately on receiving a 12V signal, which is supplied via a DMX relay, thus we can force it to IR during a blackout, which is much quicker than letting the camera do it automatically, and avoids the real estate (and expense) of having two cameras and two monitors side by side. Works for us.

 

Any chance of looking to see which model, that's what I'm trying to do. So far I've been using 2 cameras and switching between them.

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So the camera we use is DS-2CD4A26FWD-IZHS which is a low light 2MP bullet camera with both analogue and IP outputs, zoomable, and with manual switchover between colour and mono/IR

 

Cost about 300 quid when it was new, apparently. It's been superseded already AFAIK

Edited by alistermorton
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Yes, we currently have a show in the theatre (opens Thursday) with a camera on the conductor relayed to monitors facing the stage and the stage monitor camera relayed to the conductor, because the band are in the wings on a mezz. Analogue both ways and the conductor is happy and the cast are happy.
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<br />So the camera we use is <font size="2">DS-2CD4A26FWD-IZHS which is a low light 2MP bullet camera with both analogue and IP outputs, zoomable, and  with manual switchover between colour and mono/IR<br /><br /></font><br /><font size="3">Cost about 300 quid when it was new, </font><font face="Arial"><font size="2">apparently</font></font><font size="3">. It's been </font><font face="Arial"><font size="2">superseded</font></font><font size="3"> <font face="Times New Roman, serif">already AFAIK</font></font><br />
<br /><br /><br />

 

Brilliant, thank you for looking.

I find things like this go obsolete the day after they go on sale, or is this me getting old? :(

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