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Installation Camera


Pete McCrea

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I'm in the process of spec'ing an av system for a live Music club that will be opening soon. The system will relay through a scaler switcher to 6 x 50" plasma screens. The owner wants a camera in the room to relay the action on stage to the screens (two behind the bar at 90 degrees to the stage, and 4 up on the balcony, so punters having a drink can see the stage from their seats).

 

The system is spec'd and looking sweet. The camera is the issue. I can find the Sony BRC-300P broadcast unit. Costs about £3K excluding controller. A bit too much I fear. I want to keep the 50" plasma's so need an alternative camera, either really high spec CCTV or lower spec 'Broadcast'. Ideally outputting video as a SVideo signal, or composite. I'm not too keen on the idea of a camcorder, so no suggestions of those.

 

So, does any one have any recommendations? Budget of up to £750 all in (Cam, PSU, Control). Video Out, remote control would be ideal, best possible quality.

 

I await your thoughts! And I'll keep Googling!

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I use two of these. When plugged directly into my projectors via S-video, the image quality is superb. I use them to VJ, though, so they go into a Mac via video capture cards. This degrades the image somewhat.

 

The included infrared remote lets you pan, tilt, zoom, and store and recall six PTZ presets. I use VISCA software controlled by Ableton Live instead, which lets you access exposure, panning & tilting speeds, white balance, infrared mode, and tons of other features that I don't use.

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Personally have used these for a few years now and they have stood up to life on the road and physical interferance from clients. You get control and pictures via IP and composite out as well. May be a little over your budget praps but might suit the requirement.
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Don't discount the CCTV market. I know that the CCTV cameras we use at work can resolve a car reg number at about 200m. But they're pretty high-end.

 

I've used various CCTV "dome cameras" for videoconferencing applications, using a composite output, and it's been perfectly acceptable quality.

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The venue I used to work at had a cheeper camera to relay the stage to the screens in the bars.

 

The contrast / Iris response was realy bad.

 

Theatrical lighting, particularly in the live music scene is more than a little bit contrasty and many cameras can't cope.

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I would probably look at some of the ex-broadcast gear available off ebay. For example, this item: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SONY-CCD-PAL-CAMERA-...1QQcmdZViewItem

 

Admittedly, you'll need to get hold of a lens, psu and camera adaptor for it, but there is quite a lot of these being got rid at the moment as they're not digital. Also, the picture quality on these is going to be better than anything you can get in the CCTV market.

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as said above look at the cctv market , we use and tour somthing like this

 

22x optical zoom, the one we uses has a 3chip sony head, works fine in low light , also has an "night" mode that will work in 0 lux.

 

your probley looking at £800 including controler

 

ian

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Thanks for all the suggestions.

 

I was over at ISE in Brussels last week, and had a good nose round the samsung offerings on the Comm-Tech stand, as well as the Sony IP-CCTV cameras. One or two have video out on Composite BNC, plus full pan and tilt. So I think that might be the way I go.

 

I hadn't considered the second hand market. I'm not too sure how the client would feel about that though.

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