PTZ ComposerCompose shots by drawing on a picture of your own stage.
Each camera maps your room once, and from then on you compose by drawing on the room itself.
Press scan and each camera sweeps your room on its own, stitching what it sees into one wide picture of the actual space: the seats, the steps, the stage marks, the lectern and the doors, as that camera sees them.
From then on you compose shots by drawing on that picture. Put a framing box where the shot should start, another where it should land, and more wherever the move should pass through. You are working on your own stage, at a desk, with time to think.
This is what ends the hunt for a framing you found once and cannot find again. A shot drawn on the room is the same shot next week and the week after, and the rest of the team can see what a shot is before the camera moves.
Each camera keeps its own picture, because each one sees the room from where it is mounted. Scan again whenever the room changes — a new set, a moved lectern, a different seating plan — and the shots you draw follow the room as it stands now.
A scan is also a shared reference. A director, a stage manager and a volunteer can look at the same picture of the room and agree on what the choir wide or the lectern single means before anybody moves a camera. The shot list stops living in one person's head.
Scanning belongs to the empty room. Do it when nothing is live, and do it again when the room changes rather than before every production. The shots you drew last month are still there next month, on the same picture of the same stage.
Questions
Do we need to scan before every production?
No. Scan once, and scan again when the room changes: a new set, a moved lectern, a different seating plan. Shots drawn on the current picture follow the room as it stands now.
Can people in the room see a scan happen?
Yes, because each camera sweeps the room on its own. Treat a scan like any other camera setup and run it when the room is empty and nothing is live, before doors open rather than during a production.
Why does each camera have its own picture?
Because each camera sees the room from where it is mounted. A framing box drawn on one camera's picture describes what that camera sees. Two cameras on the same lectern get two different pictures and two different shots, which is what a multi-camera production wants.
Do I need camera experience to draw a shot?
No. If you can point at where the shot should start and where it should land, you can draw it. The software checks the move against the camera before anybody depends on it, and a move the camera cannot perform is refused with a reason.
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