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[00:00:00] Pan, Tilt, Zoom. The ability to control your camera is paramount in many live environments. Events like concerts, live theaters, or anywhere where the subjects are, you know, moving but budgets often don’t allow for camera operators, especially small productions like my own live shows, small music venues or houses of worship.

[00:00:34] So, a popular camera type in those environments are known as PTZ cameras. A PTZ or Pan, Tilt, Zoom camera like the name implies is typically an all-in-one camera and motor-driven mount that can be remotely operated. The quality is certainly good but it’s not what many of us have come to expect from mirrorless Micro Four Thirds or even full frame cameras.

[00:00:56] The Datavideo PTR-10 head separates the two in a kind-of a “BYOC” or “Bring Your Own Camera” solution. You can put nearly any HDMI camcorder or camera on the head and just as importantly, any lens that you need. But hold on; by separating the camera and the head, the head can pan and tilt but it can’t zoom, and high quality power zoom lenses can be extremely expensive.

[00:01:19] So, to solve that problem, Datavideo teamed up with Tilta to include a powerful zoom motor to control any lens that you need. And this is the result: The PTR-10 head with the ZEK-2 Nucleus-M motor which combined with the Lumix BGH1, or BS1H if you want to go full frame, and Lumix Tether software, gives you complete camera control. Let’s break it down.

[00:01:43] This is the Datavideo PTR-10 Mark II; the pan, tilt robotic head. On this head, you’ll see that we have the ZEK-2 kit mounted. The  ZEK-2 kit is comprised of the Tilta Nucleus-M which is mounted onto a 15 millimeter rod which itself is bolted on to the PTZ head. Then on the head, we’ve got the Lumix BGH1 camera and mounted on that, the Panasonic 8-18 mm lens.

[00:02:06] You might notice that that lens has a custom focused geared ring on it. When you first buy the PTR-10, it’s actually going to come with a universal rubber adjustable focus gearing. However, I highly recommend that once you decide which lenses you’re going to use, you do purchase custom-made mounts for those lenses. Having that perfectly tight and snug fit makes the whole experience much better and makes your zooms even smoother.

[00:02:29] So, that’s the head. Over here, I’ve got the controller. This is the Datavideo RMC-180 Mark II PTZ camera controller. This can control up to four cameras at once. We just have one camera connected now and to control it, we’ll put it into a little bit faster mode, and move it to the left or right to pan, up or down to tilt, and then to zoom; simply rotate the knob.

[00:02:57] You may have noticed that the only thing connecting the pan, tilt, zoom head and the controller is an Ethernet cable. This is a CAT-6 cable that carries all the communication necessary between the two devices. Now let’s take a look at the back of the unit. I’ll use one of my preset positions to rotate the head so we can look at the back.

[00:03:13] First let’s talk about power. The BGH1 power is actually connected to the PTZ head itself. Then over here, the Nucleus-M is also getting its power from the PTZ head. So both the camera and the zoom controller are being powered by the head. The head itself is being powered by this AC adapter. So a single AC adapter will power the head, the camera, and the zoom controller.

[00:03:35] You also see over here a serial data controller. The serial data is connected into the LANC port which allows me to control iris and manual focus over the camera. Finally, you’ll see that the HDMI out of the BGH1 is actually plugged into the HDMI input on the PTZ head. This is simply a pass-through, and on the back of the base down here is the HDMI output.

[00:03:56] This allows me to have all of the cables on the moving part of the head separate from the base so there’s no risk of the cable getting twisted as the head turns around. Then from the HDMI out on the back of the base you can plug that into a projector for a one-camera local event or you could plug it into a dedicated streaming device for a one-camera stream, or you could feed into something like your ATEM Mini which will allow you to switch to other cameras and then of course live stream it as well.

[00:04:21] If you want to add more PTZ cameras, simply replicate all of this. You have the head, the camera, and the ZEK-2 controller powered over AC running HDMI over to your ATEM and then a single Ethernet cable running to the controller. Now, this all works great for a small venue but imagine a larger venue like a concert hall or a large house of worship. Imagine that you have cameras like this that are mounted up on the walls or up on the ceilings. Well, running an Ethernet cable from the camera to the controller is no problem but you are going to have to have AC power at each one of the camera’s locations, plus you’ll have to run a long HDMI cable from the camera to the switcher and your length might go beyond how far you can go with HDMI.

[00:05:00] Well, the solution to this problem is something called HDBaseT. What is HDBaseT? Let’s go talk about that. Alright, what is HDBaseT? HDBaseT is lossless video at near zero latency up to 4K (even though the name is HD). So, basically, it is HDMI… and it’s power… and it’s USB… and it’s serial data control… and it’s network data… and all of this happens over a network cable. But it doesn’t actually require a network, making it really easy to set up; no network switches or network configuration to deal with.

[00:05:46] HDBaseT has been around for over a decade and is really popular in the AV world but relatively unknown in the broadcast space, and Datavideo is the first and only broadcast company to bring HDBaseT to their products. So, what does this mean for our Pan, Tilt, Zoom solution? Well, let’s go back to the table to find out.

[00:06:04] Alright, now that you know what HDBaseT is, let’s see how it fits into this scenario. First of all, I’ve added a couple things. I have a second PTZ head setup here and I have this, the HBT-30, a three-channel HDBaseT receiver. This model can run up to three cameras using HDBaseT. However, Datavideo also makes a single HDBaseT receiver as well as one that does four cameras with a few additional features.

[00:06:30] So, what is this thing? Well, think of it like a hub that sits between your cameras and your PTZ controllers all based off of HDBaseT. First of all, it is rack mountable so you can put it into your rack as a convenient location, and if you look at the back of it, you’ll see that each camera has three ports that control it. There’s the HDBaseT port, the RS-422 port, and the HDMI port.

[00:06:51] With the hub in place, instead of running a network cable from the PTZ head directly to the controller, you run it instead from the PTZ head to the hub, and then another cable from the hub to the controller. Now, because it’s HDBaseT, that means that that single cable is going to carry power, video, and the command controls from your PTZ camera controller.

[00:07:11] I told you earlier that these are PTR-10 heads. They’re actually PTR-10T heads. This means that they are PTR-10 heads with HDBaseT built into them. That means when you’re running these heads with the HDBaseT hub in the middle, you no longer need the power supply and you no longer need that long HDMI cable running from the camera to your switcher. Instead, you simply run HDMI from the back of the hub into your video switcher.

[00:07:37] Next, let’s talk about camera selection. You can put pretty much any camera you want on these PTZ heads but for those of you who are fans of this channel and might have seen my “5x BGH1” video before, you already know why the BGH1 or the BS1H is the perfect camera for this solution. These cameras can be controlled completely over a network, over an Ethernet cable.

[00:07:57] This means that you can run another Ethernet cable from the camera into a network switch and then hook up your Mac or PC running Lumix Tether software to that same network and have complete control over those cameras. In fact, that’s how I’m running this studio here. All my cameras that are filming this show are actually being run over a network like that.

[00:08:15] So, choosing to use these cameras with these PTZ heads means that you can just run two network cables from the camera and the head back to your base and have complete control over absolutely everything on the setup. In fact, you can even go in and start and stop recording in the cameras if you wanted to, say, record internally 4K, while live streaming in HD.

[00:08:36] Of course, since this setup is completely capable of handling 4K video — with the right switcher, like an ATEM 2 M/E — you could actually do a live show in 4K from the cameras on this setup. Now, let’s get into what you can actually do with this PTZ camera controller and the PTR-10 heads, starting with switching cameras. Over here, you’ll see that you can switch between cameras A, B, C, and D. The controller has a single joystick so to choose which camera you’re controlling, you simply push the right button. I’ll switch over to Camera B and now I have control over Camera B. Back to A and now I’m controlling Camera A.

[00:09:10] You’ve already seen that we have Pan Tilt and Zoom control from this joystick, but to control the speed, we can choose between FAST, MIDDLE or SLOW. I’ll switch to Camera B and put it in FAST mode and you can see just how fast that control is. And this speed selector is for pan, tilt, and for zoom. So it can go quite fast… but how slow can it go?

[00:09:30] A really good slow pan is the hallmark of a great PTZ camera and these cameras do an incredible, smooth, slow pan. Now, it’s going to be kind of hard to appreciate here, so in a little bit, we’re going to see some footage that I shot out at an actual event, but for now, let’s just see what the hardware looks like.

[00:09:45] I’ll switch over to Camera A, make sure it’s in slow mode and start panning that. Nice, smooth, slow motion. Now, of course, you don’t necessarily want to be holding this joystick down for a really long, slow, smooth pan. So, instead, you might want to lock that. Let’s go ahead and do that. I’ll start panning it, press the lock button and now, hands-off, this is still panning. I can actually switch over to the other camera now. Let’s go to Camera B and start controlling this camera here.

[00:10:12] In fact, I’ll go ahead and start panning this one, lock it as well and now both cameras are moving. I can then switch back to Camera A and take control of that again. So, you really have an incredible amount of control over these cameras. Over here you have iris and focus control. So, if you want to adjust the iris, (the aperture), of your camera or focus it manually, you can do that from these two knobs here.

[00:10:34] Finally, we have presets, and the presets that are on this PTZ setup are awesome. The presets actually include pan, tilt, and zoom which is utterly unique for a setup at this price point. So, let’s see how that works. I’ll switch over to Camera B, move this nice and fast and this get this into position. I’ll tilt the camera down, and zoom it way out.

[00:10:55] To save this preset, all I have to do is press the STORE button, and then you’ll see these start flashing red. Just press the button of where I want to lock that preset in. Now, the speed at which it goes to that preset is defined by where the speed button was set when I saved the preset. That was set to FAST so this preset means that it’s going to load that position in the fast mode.

[00:11:14] Now, let’s give it a second position. I’ll go ahead and move it around somewhere else. Change the pan, tilt, and zoom of that… and now, let’s load that in as a second preset. Again, I’ll leave it FAST, press STORE, and hit the second preset button. Now, to switch between all I have to do is push the button to load that preset. In fact, while one camera is moving, I can load the preset for another camera without even having to switch camera control.

[00:11:40] So, let’s set this one going back again to its position B and then I’ll load Camera A into its position A. So, you have complete control over the cameras just by using the presets if you want to without ever having to take manual control over it at all.

[00:11:54] Alright, that’s enough of seeing it in the studio. Now, let’s take a look at this in the real world. I was fortunate enough to be able to take this gear to my buddy’s bar where a really cool rockabilly band called “Step it Up and Go” was playing. Let’s have a look at some of that footage and listen to some great music.

[00:13:08] There you have it. Combining the versatility of a PTZ head with the quality and performance of a BGH1 or even a BS1H gives you the absolute ultimate in a live studio camera. Complete control over the camera position and the camera settings through the camera controller and the Lumix Tether software means that a single operator can run everything all by themselves, and using things like presets makes it really easy to run that live show.

[00:13:34] Features like those slow, smooth pans will allow you to add motion even the most static of live events. For more information about these cameras, click the links in the description below or simply visit datavideo.com. Thanks again to Datavideo for sponsoring this video… about the data.

[00:13:55] I’m done.