ytsejamr

Hi there, I'm writing on behalf of my local curling club. For those that need a little refresher, curling is an Olympic sport played on ice. See here for lots of info . . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curling So in our club we currently have 4 very old analog CCTV cameras that are mounted to the ceiling looking straight down on to the far set of circles. We have four sheets of ice with a "warm room" on one end with glass windows overlooking the sheets. The camera signals are sent back to the warm room where they're connected to old 13" TV monitors via an RCA connection. The quality of both the cameras and monitors is pretty bad. For reference, this is a picture from inside the club out on the ice (not mine, just grabbed it off of Google images) We're looking to upgrade this system, but we also have some specific goals in mind with regards to broadcasting these camera feeds over the internet as well as recording locally(or remotely) each match or game. I would love some help/suggestions for our setup. We're looking for the following: - 4 cameras per sheet (16 total). 2 cameras looking straight down at the circles (houses they're called), and one camera at each end of the sheet looking down the ice. - 2 monitors in the warm room per sheet displaying the 2 cameras looking down at the circles. These monitors help the audience follow along and see what's happening in the "house". That's the easy part. What we want to be able to do, is at any one time broadcast/record any or all of the 4 games that would be occurring on each sheet. I have been working all year on a simple broadcasting solution for our current setup. I've taken a laptop and a webcam and I've tied into our existing camera feed via an rca splitter. I've brought that signal into my computer using a cheap usb capture device. I then take those two feeds and combine them with some screen captures (of some custom software I've written), input those into broadcasting software (XSplit Broadcaster) and broadcast out to Justin.TV . . . see here: http://www.justin.tv/rochestercurling (check the previous videos) Take note of the poor quality of the far house camera. So that's where I am. I've been researching and can't figure out if we should stick with analog cameras or go to IP cameras. My first thought was that we could put a PC at each sheet and bring the 4 camera signals in using a PCI card, but we still need to show the 2 cameras on the monitors. Bandwidth will of course be an issue, but we can most likely get that upgraded to handle the 4 simultaneous uploads (streams) I'm rambling here . . . how about some specific questions: 1) Would you stick with analog or go with IP Cameras? 2) Can IP Cameras be displayed full screen on monitors? 3) Power would probably be an issue, so these cameras would need to be powered remotely? PoE? 4) Like most people unfamiliar with cctv . . . higher quality, high definition? is desired, but I'm not sure is necessary. I doubt we'll be able to broadcast at full HD, so the only thing that might benefit from HD would be the monitors. 5) Right now we have a "rotation issue" The far house cameras are rotated 90 degrees to cover more of the sheet. Therefore the TV monitors are also rotated 90 degrees. This caused me all sorts of problems when I brought that signal into my computer to broadcast. I eventually found software (ManyCam) that lets you rotate a source 90 degrees. Would this still be an issue? As far as software, I think we'll end up with a very specific requirement. I may end up writing it myself. The goal is to be able to broadcast as I mentioned before, but also for the club members to be able to access a "library" of past games to be able to view and analyze. We'd like to use these videos for training purposes as well. So the software would probably end up being custom. It'll have to be very user friendly . . i.e. one big Record button that anyone can press and a stop button. Then a site where they can go search/view their broadcasts. But I digress . . And of course the (million?) dollar question . . . budget. I heard a very non-firm figure of $10k (usd) thrown around. I'm not sure how much play there is in that. We're a very member driven club. The club itself is not for profit and relies on the members to work on and install improvements. Thoughts? Questions? Answers? Can it be done? I'm just looking for some ideas/guidance. All would be much appreciated. Thanks, -Brian

Thanks for the reply. I think to begin with the broadcasting will be handled by a 3rd party piece of software (XSplit, VidBlaster). That shouldn't be much of an issue. They have the option of recording locally so we could probably work with that. I'm still more caught up in the specifics of what type of cameras, cabling and monitors we would need. I guess we could even forget about the broadcasting/computer end and just make sure we have video out on all 4 cameras (per sheet) available to be input into a computer at some point (i.e. with a 4 channel pci board . . . Osprey). I guess at that point it becomes a simple closed system. I didn't mention audio, but we may want to have 1 or 2 microphones per sheet (above the houses?) Maybe use a camera with a mic? As far as monitors. We really only need to see the two house cameras. I suppose we could show all 4, though it's not really necessary. The purpose of those monitors is to be able to see the stones in the house. So maybe two big monitors per sheet would work, do a split screen with one house and one behind the sheet camera per monitor? So what kind of monitors are out there that can do split screen? Thanks again . . . -Brian