Shade a camera that skates backwards on the ice
The operator skates backwards in front of the athletes, holding zoom and focus in their hands. The vision engineer shades the picture from the control room. Nothing between them but 4G.
- Link
- 4G, no cabling
- On the rig
- RIO +WAN
- Lens
- BM handles, USB
- Control
- Split, two operators
A camera position that moves faster than the crew
The camera follows the skaters on the ice, carried by an operator moving backwards on skates. No cable can follow that. Every part of the control chain has to be on the rig or on the air.
Meanwhile the light is doing the worst thing it can do: dropping from arena floods to a single follow spot and back, several times inside one programme. That picture needs shading while it happens, not after.
And the operator has one job. Framing an athlete at speed, while skating backwards, is not compatible with reaching for an iris wheel.
“THE SKATING CAMERA GUY AT THE OLYMPICS GETS EMOTIONAL TOO”
COURTESY OF NBC NEW YORK
Everything that needs a cable rides on the rig. Only intent crosses the link.
The RIO holds the protocol conversation with the camera and the lens locally, on the rig. The BM handles arrive on the same unit over USB and register as two user controllers, BMZoom and BMFocus.
A shading adjustment is a few bytes. That is less than reloading a single web page, which is why control holds on a network the crowd is already saturating with video.
The skating camera sits on the same panel as the rest of the cameras in the rink. The vision engineer matches it to the hard cameras without leaving the surface they are already working.
Two people control the same camera, and never collide
Lens and paint are separated at the source. The operator owns the framing, the vision engineer owns the picture, and neither has to ask the other for the handover.
The operator, at hand
- Zoom and focus on the Blackmagic demand handles, exactly as if they were bolted to a broadcast lens.
- Monitor feedback switched from the handle buttons, so the operator can check their own feed or the live cut without dropping the shot.
- No network dependency. The handles talk to the RIO over USB on the rig. If the 4G drops, lens control stays exactly where it was.
The vision engineer, remote
- Iris, gain and white balance on the RCP, ridden live through the lighting changes the operator cannot react to.
- Matched to the hard cameras on the same panel, with the same encoders and the same scales.
- Held under control continuously. Selecting the skating camera is instant, not a reconnection.
What this actually buys you
A position that had no control path
Nothing can be cabled to a moving skater. Either the whole chain is wireless or the shot is set and hoped for.
Two hands, two jobs
Lens at the rig, paint in the control room, simultaneously. Neither operator waits on the other.
Cheap on the link
Control crosses as intent, not as timing-critical chatter. A saturated arena cell is still enough.
The ice survives the link
If 4G goes, the operator keeps zoom and focus. The failure costs you shading, not the shot.
The operator is on the ice for the whole programme, moving with the athletes. The control room never sees the rig again until it comes off.
The kit for this job
| RIO +WAN | 1 — camera and lens control on the rig, cloud gateway |
| BM handles | 1 set — zoom and focus demands, USB to the RIO |
| 4G USB dongle | 1 — cellular uplink from the RIO |
| RCP | 1 — shading panel in the control room |
| Cabling | USB-C to USB-C between the demands, USB-C to USB-A to the RIO |
Wiring options, controller pairing and button mapping are documented in Blackmagic Zoom and Focus demand.
Before you rig it- The WAN licence sits on the RIO, not the RCP.All RCPs support cloud natively; the RCP licence governs camera count only.
- 4G is infrastructure you do not own.Control needs very little of it, but quality of service is the venue's, not ours. Test in the building, at crowd hour.
- USB dongles are getting scarce.A 4G or 5G modem router is the more reliable rig where there is room to mount and power one.
- The handles are not tied to one lens type.They drive whatever the RIO drives — camera-native lens control, B4, PL or motors — including primes that accept no handles at all.
Cyanview devices in this rig
The Blackmagic zoom and focus demands are third-party hardware. Cameras on wireless and cellular links covers the wider case; the compatibility matrix lists what is driven, by model.
Does your show look like this?
Send the rig, the link and where the operator will be standing. You will get an answer from an engineer, including the parts we cannot do.