Hotcam Makes X Factor Studio Rig Widely Available

Broadcast equipment hire company HotCam is making the custom studio rig that it devised for Talkback Thames and the X Factor available to other television producers.
The Mobile Broadcast System (MBS) has been designed for multi-camera location and venue-based factual, reality, comedy and music programming shoots and is being offered as a cost-effective alternative to an outside broadcast truck.
HotCam's MBS uses temporary vision and lighting galleries and rack-mounted fibre connectivity with either tape-based or tapeless PSC camcorders to offer several advantages over a truck including fast rig and de-rig times, the ability to quickly switch between PSC and fixed studio camera rigs and easy access to otherwise difficult-to-film venues and locations.
It is also hugely versatile, allowing both ISO recording and gallery vision mixing at the same time and making long, high-quality cable runs possible.
The MBS inventory includes the latest fibre and camera systems in a choice of SD and HD recording formats.
HotCam supplies the entire production set-up in a handful of secure flight cases.
HotCam Managing Director Trevor Hotz said: "Rather than shooting with a conventional OB truck HotCam has raised the bar by using camcorders that can easily be used in a PSC style or hooked into our custom studio rig. This gives a production the flexibility of a classic multi-camera rig but with the benefits of ISO recording on each machine. This can also aid editorially with the cut of the show as it provides complete flexibility in terms of which camera or angle to use in the edit."
HotCam Technical Manager Dan Studley added: "The fibre optic distribution and data return helps to maintain quality across the production, giving the producers and director the benefit of beautiful broadcast HD pictures to all galleries with the added advantage of camera tweaks from vision control at the speed of light."
Studley continued: "Another beautiful thing about this system is the lack of day-to-day maintenance needed to run it. Once it is built to specification in-house, it is simply rolled into the location, plugged in and off it goes. It takes longer to build the cameras than it does to build the Mobile Broadcast System."
The MBS took three months to design and develop. It was first used on the auditions, boot-camp and judges houses stages of The X Factor series 7, which is currently airing on ITV.
(KMcA)