Limits, a stop that holds, and cameras that come to rest.

Soft limits keep every head inside the part of the room it is allowed to look at. Set them once — past the edge of the stage, short of the ceiling, away from the window that ruins the picture — and neither a prepared move nor a hand on a stick can take that camera past them.

Stop means stop. One command brings every camera to a controlled rest and holds them there until somebody decides otherwise. It is the command a volunteer can use without understanding what went wrong, which is the test a safety control has to pass.

If the software is closed, or loses the controller that was driving it, it brings every camera to a controlled stop before it lets go. What a camera does if its own network cable is pulled mid-move depends on that camera's firmware, and we tell you which case applies to yours when we measure it.

None of this asks the operator to be quick. The protections hold whether or not somebody is watching the screen, which is what makes an unattended room — a council chamber, a lecture hall, a meeting room on a timetable — a reasonable thing to ask for.

Limits belong to the camera and the room, not to one production. Set them once, and every move, cue and hand on a stick afterwards works inside them. A new production inherits the limits without anybody needing to remember they exist.

Safety also means knowing who is in charge. The switcher operator keeps the cut, tally awareness with a Blackmagic ATEM keeps a live camera still, and a stop from the desk holds every camera until somebody decides otherwise.