Zachary Shearer
WOODBRIDGE, VA.—The mission of Prince William County’s government television channel is to create and disseminate information that promotes the county’s identity and foster a sense of community. We’re working to achieve these goals through development of a wide variety of programs and information on current events and happenings throughout the county. This programming is sent to county residents through local cable outlets, and is also available on the county government’s website.
I’m responsible for ensuring that our programming is created according to professional standards using broadcast-grade equipment. Recently, one element in our operation—an older camera control system— began to be problematic. It was too old to be upgraded so we started shopping for a replacement.
In order to maintain our high production standards, we needed a camera control system that was more versatile than the one we were replacing and we also wanted one that could be integrated with our production switcher.
Based on our requirements, as well as recommendations from others and the company’s reputation in this sector of the industry, we selected a Telemetrics camera control system. This included an RCCP-1 robotic camera control panel, PT-CP-S4 precision pan/tilt heads and Telemetrics’ CLIU-S2 serial input camera and lens control converter that relays serial control commands to and from the camera and to provide positioning information for the lens servo.
We installed the new system in the county administration building, with the cameras and robotic heads situated in the county supervisors’ chambers and the control room located about 100 feet away in the same building.
COUPLED TO GRANITE SWITCHER
The Telemetrics control panel was integrated with our Broadcast Pix Granite production switcher, allowing us to control cameras from two different panels. This integration makes one- or two-person productions much easier. We also found the discrete camera shading control capability very helpful. This wasn’t available on our earlier system, requiring operators to make adjustments from menus contained within the camera CCUs. Telemetrics’ RCCP-1 now provides us with shading capability without having to drill down through menus.
The Telemetrics control panel provides a very natural and intuitive control over the cameras and their lens functions. Camera control is smooth and responsive, making nice-looking on-air moves easy to achieve. We’re also making good use of the preset camera positions. We’ve found the RCCP-1 control interface to be very user friendly, allowing our operators to update stored camera shots without having to refer to a manual.
System performance has been consistent and customer support and training provided by Telemetrics has been equally outstanding. Overall, the Telemetrics camera control system is now a very welcome and now integral part of our operation.
Zachary Shearer is an A/V broadcast engineer with the Prince William County, Va. government television operation. He may be contacted atzshearer@pwcgov.org.
For additional information, contact Telemetrics at 201-848-9818 or visitwww.telemetricsinc.com.
