RTS MagCam And Newton Camera Head Combo Debut At The Grammy Awards
![A remote camera dolly on wheels that follows a magnetic tape line instead of tracks.](/cache/uploads/content_images/Newton-grammy-hero_789_592_70_s.jpg)
A remote camera dolly on wheels that follows a magnetic tape line instead of tracks.
RailCam Robotic Systems premiered the new RTS MagCam paired with a NEWTON stabilized camera head for the TV broadcast of the Grammy Awards.
The RTS MagCam is a wireless remote-controlled wheeled dolly with telescopic tower, that follows a thin magnetic tape line adhered to the floor. This tape can be attached or adjusted in seconds which allows for quick and safe installs of repeatable moves along a determined path that can be made in curves, straights, circles and forks. If conditions change, it is also possible to switch to free-running mode and steer away from the magnetic path.
The MagCam proved very practical on the Grammy set. Brian Sheid at RailCam explains: “There were a lot of cameras in a small room that needed to keep up with very quick stage changes. A dolly on rail tracks would have been too cumbersome and would have required many timely rebuilds, but with the MagCam, we just needed to tape a new strip on the floor in the path the director wanted.“
The MagCam system was operated by Dave Eastwood, who drove the dolly with foot pedals and controlled a Sony HCD-P50 camera and Canon HJ14x4.3 lens with a NEWTON stabilized camera system. Dave Eastwood also supplied 2 telescopic camera towers with NEWTON stabilized heads through his service company Fluid Pictures Inc and a 4th NEWTON system was provided by RailCam on a Chapman dolly. "The 4 NEWTON’s used on the show all preformed wonderful and it’s always a pleasure to operate ours. This was my 25th year as camera operator on the Grammys and I wish the NEWTON had been around back in the day as well", says Dave Eastwood.
You might also like...
An Introduction To Network Observability
The more complex and intricate IP networks and cloud infrastructures become, the greater the potential for unwelcome dynamics in the system, and the greater the need for rich, reliable, real-time data about performance and error rates.
2024 BEITC Update: ATSC 3.0 Broadcast Positioning Systems
Move over, WWV and GPS. New information about Broadcast Positioning Systems presented at BEITC 2024 provides insight into work on a crucial, common view OTA, highly precision, public time reference that ATSC 3.0 broadcasters can easily provide.
Next-Gen 5G Contribution: Part 2 - MEC & The Disruptive Potential Of 5G
The migration of the core network functionality of 5G to virtualized or cloud-native infrastructure opens up new capabilities like MEC which have the potential to disrupt current approaches to remote production contribution networks.
Designing IP Broadcast Systems: Addressing & Packet Delivery
How layer-3 and layer-2 addresses work together to deliver data link layer packets and frames across networks to improve efficiency and reduce congestion.
Next-Gen 5G Contribution: Part 1 - The Technology Of 5G
5G is a collection of standards that encompass a wide array of different use cases, across the entire spectrum of consumer and commercial users. Here we discuss the aspects of it that apply to live video contribution in broadcast production.