As the government access broadcaster for the City of Keizer, Oregon, K23 TV (Keizer City Television) plays an important role in connecting city officials with the community’s citizens. Broadcasting and streaming from council chambers in the Keizer City Hall, the channel – operated by Ambition Pictures – provides live coverage of city council and other municipal activities, including planning commission, transportation, and parks advisory board sessions.
“Our existing NDI PTZ cameras were starting to have issues such as focus drift,” says Phillip Wade, Producer at KeizerTV, and he wanted to improve overall quality to meet the high standards KeizerTV has set for the community experience.
“The resolution of our existing cameras was 1920×1080 HD, but we wanted better color reproduction, exposure, and sharpness,” he explains. “Being able to get better color and exposure in our council chambers improves the overall production quality.”
Other key quality goals for the upgrade included increasing the number of cameras for more comprehensive coverage and greater optical zoom range to allow better close-ups across the council chamber space.
On the recommendation of reseller Mid-Valley Media, Phillip evaluated Telycam’s Vision+ N3 cameras with 30x optical zoom and found that they delivered everything the station wanted.
The city council chambers feature a forward-facing curved dais at the front of the room, seating seven participants, with smaller offshoots at each side seating additional participants. Two Telycam cameras at the back of the room capture close-up and wide shots of people on the main dais, while the other two Telycam cameras are positioned at the sides of the room to capture people seated on the offshoot wings. The side cameras also cover the area where members of the public present or speak during city meetings.
The cameras are connected to a Vizrt TriCaster TC1 Pro production switcher in an IP-based workflow using the NDI HX3 connectivity standard. In addition to being broadcast on television via Comcast, the output of the TriCaster is also streamed live on the city’s Facebook and YouTube channels in both English and Spanish. The Spanish streams are created by sending the NDI feed of the TriCaster’s program output to another room where it is translated by interpreters, with the Spanish audio translation mixed in with a TriCaster Mini.
KeizerTV initially controlled the pan, tilt, and zoom of the Telycam cameras through the TriCaster TC1 but found it cumbersome to do so through the same control surface they were using for switching. “The TriCaster control surface has an integrated joystick, but it’s not positioned ergonomically for camera control,” Phillip explained. “You have to reach across all the other buttons on the panel to get to the joystick and press two buttons on the other side of the panel to activate which camera you want. It was awkward, which delayed getting the subject into frame.”
Preferring to instead use a separate, dedicated controller just for camera selection and movement, Phillip added a Telycam V-Joy+ AT controller to their installation. “It’s important for us to be able to quickly select a camera and move it, and the Telycam controller lets us do that efficiently.
“The cameras adjust very quickly,” he explained. “When I move the camera position, it’s already in focus by the time I’m ready to cut to that camera.”
