PTZ ComposerWhy does my PTZ jump between presets?
Updated
Why does my PTZ camera jump or lurch when someone recalls a preset?
A preset stores a destination, not a move. When it is recalled, the camera leaves the shot it was holding and heads for the stored position at a pace its own firmware chooses, so the route and the framing in between belong to nobody. The two shots at each end were composed by a person; the travel between them was not.
What a preset actually stores
A preset remembers where the camera was pointing and how far it was zoomed. That is the whole record. There is no note of how the body should get there, how long the trip should take, or what the picture should look like halfway across the room.
So the camera fills the gap in for you. It turns toward the stored position as directly as it can and stops when it arrives. That behavior is sensible for a camera that is being repositioned off air. It is the wrong behavior for a shot the people at home are watching.
Why it reads worse on the stream than in the room
Nobody in the room looks up when a camera turns. On the stream that turn is the entire picture. A move that starts at full pace and stops dead reads as machinery, and the people watching from home stop following the service or the show and start watching the camera.
That is why most teams hide it. The switcher cuts away, the preset fires off air, and the camera is parked again before anyone sees it. The trick works, and it costs you every moving shot you might have had. Rooms that cut this way end up with a production made of static angles, however good those angles are.
What an authored move stores instead
A flight is an authored camera move, with a planned route, framing and pace from departure through landing. Where a preset holds a single destination, a flight holds the whole trip: where the shot starts, what it passes through, where it comes to rest, and how quickly it gets there.
Because the route and the pace are decided in advance, they can be looked at, changed and agreed on before the production. The gentle departure, the settled landing and the framing along the way are choices somebody made, not a side effect of how a motor behaves.
The shot can then be recalled the way your team already recalls a preset. A familiar button on the controller starts the prepared move, so the person running the production learns nothing new to use it.
What to check in your own room
Start with the move you would use every week if it looked good. Write down where it starts and where it lands, and note which camera would carry it. Then check what that camera can be driven with: the control path it speaks and the controller your team already presses.
Check your setup and we will tell you which of the two compatibility answers applies to your camera, in plain words, before anything starts. If an integrator installed your room, bring them the same two notes, because they will know the control path already.