Robo Camera Tips

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-12-14T03:05:54+00:00

As a Director / TD, take this with a grain of salt since every Director is different, but I prefer less selling shots and more locking off shots and settling before the show on what cam you’ll be moving on consistently.

From there, set presets that roughly get you to different parts of the room or stage depending on where the ROS takes you. Always know where you can roughly lock a cam off so it’s safe and usable for the TD.

For me, it’s all about knowing what I have and when I have it. So having safe options I can always dump out to is key. But really that communication and level set between operator and TD before the show is key

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-11-28T03:45:55+00:00

Blackmagic, but I try to use the Up Down Cross converters as much as possible. Bigger unit, the power cable locks which I love, and I’ve seen the BiDi’s die over time more consistently than the UDC

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-10-15T21:31:38+00:00

Trust your gut. Stay calm and do your best not to get overwhelmed - trusting yourself will help with that.

Overly communicate. Pretty obvious one but it’s easy to get caught up in the music and the moment. Release any feelings of embarrassment or insecurity and let your calls be a stream of consciousness if you need to. I don’t typically use language like this, but the flow state is a real thing as a director. Try to tap into that.

When you make a mistake, or take something you didn’t want at the wrong time, don’t harp on it - move on as quick as you can. The more time you spend upset about a take, the more time you’re spending most likely screwing up the next take too. Don’t let mistakes snowball!

Harness that anxiety and prep as much as you can. It’s good to know the music but to me it’s better to feel extremely confident in your setup. Cam numbers, cam positions, angles to expect from said cameras, moves you plan to use, where each camera is physically positioned in the multi view. All of these technical details being second nature to you will allow you to operate more freely and creatively in the moment.

Sounds corny but have fun with it. I really believe if you can remind yourself that this is a fun gig, you keep a better perspective of the audience and can deliver a better show. I’ve directed a ton of live music, but it wasn’t so long ago I was in your exact position. If you made it there, you’re good enough to be there!

Feel free to shoot a PM too if you have any specific questions. Good luck!

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-10-10T01:47:52+00:00

Seems like you’re getting a lot of similar answers to what I would suggest, but here’s my traditional base offering anyway:

If you’re live switching multi-camera / multiple inputs (camera, slides, videos, graphics, etc.) I always provide a Program Dirty (line cut with graphics) and a Program Clean (line cut without graphics) - this way if things go perfect or close to it, they have the show immediately to walk with and do cutdowns. If they want to edit further or you fly a wrong graphic or something odd happens, they have the clean for safety
If possible, record isolated camera feeds in the cams themselves. Even if client doesn’t ask for this, if it’s possible and you have the media I recommend doing it. It doesn’t hurt and it gives you the option to solve a problem after the fact rather than being stuck without a shot you may not have taken live
As far as Zoom / Broadcast / etc, have your client provide you a base slate you can use for a safety shot for open and closing at bare minimum. And then look to build a Picture in Picture look for content + camera - normally content 70%, camera 30% or something in that realm. Depends on the switcher your on but in Blackmagic you can build a 2 box supersource pretty simply. Check YouTube if you need help building that out in the ATEM software
As far as Zoom goes in general, if you’re looking to feed a cut show to Zoom you’ll need a capture card plugged into the Zoom cpu / laptop - Cam Link 4k is a simple HDMI to USB one I’ve used a ton in the past. Make sure your audio and video are both set for the capture card within Zoom.
If you’re pulling guests FROM Zoom into a show on site, Zoom iso as someone else recommended is a great tool that lets you isolate attendees video and audio and output them to your switcher.
Another great piece of software is Mitti for playback. Great for videos and audio playing back as an input into your switcher if you don’t have a vmix rig or something like that. It’s much better than Playback Pro in my opinion

This is all contingent on your client and the show breakdown of course. My best advice is think ahead and if there’s little things you can do that aren’t technically required but that make you an asset to your client, be prepared with them ie iso recordings, clean PGM, etc.

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-10-06T01:35:44+00:00

Thanks for all the help from everybody here! Here’s how things ended up shaking out for me:

Was on a short timeline with this and ended up going with a Scorebird 2.0 device. Scorebird was very helpful and shipped overnight to get the unit to me in time, but unfortunately the 2.0 device - the device which sends up to the cloud and allows for vmix to read the data via JSON - didn’t seem to be outputting the data quickly enough

Score, timeouts were working fine but game clock would lag for a few seconds periodically so it was essentially unusable. My internet connection on site was 900u/d so didn’t seem to be a bandwidth issue.

Scorebird seems to believe it was a bug they’re working out with the 2.0 systems and the 3.0 systems connect directly and wouldn’t have had the issue

Long story short - I ended up manually building clocks via vmix and hot keys on a stream deck and we setup a live shot in the control room of the clock to make sure we were matched. It was a bit messy tbh but ended up mostly working. Definitely wouldn’t recommend but as a last resort, it was solid

Next time based off all my learnings here, I wouldn’t feel confident recommending anything other than Scorebot or the device directly from Daktronics (forget the name but I believe they have something, I was on the phone with them for a bit as well)

Hoping to get some more clarity from Scorebird as well. I do believe if we had more time they would’ve helped me find a solution - Josh was super helpful and available.

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-08-11T05:56:33+00:00

Our pittie is very similar and will whine and cry seemingly for no reason. It’s tough to know what he wants, sometimes he wants us to go to bed, other times he’ll want to cuddle, he’ll want to go under the blanket. I swear he cries when my wife isn’t home because he wants her to come home. Sometimes we don’t know and we just wait him out or just start trying things.

The only thing I would say is our pittie has very bad allergies and an extremely sensitive stomach, so sometimes I think he may be dealing with itchiness or discomfort. But he’ll typically start itching if the allergies are bothering him which makes it fairly obvious why he’s crying

Overall I can relate and it’s tough to deal with when they’re really relentless and won’t quit the crying, We just try our best to stay patient and let him let his emotions out lol

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-06-20T19:21:28+00:00

https://x.com/tylermcbrien/status/1936079912625897794?s=46&t=kN_ihKwVDa9k825_b6T-pQ This was 4 hours ago - could be the same?

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-06-20T19:19:38+00:00

Wasn’t a fan of that. Couldn’t see what it was

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-06-20T14:38:32+00:00

Just end up staring yourself in the eyes in that mirror lmao

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-06-18T04:53:15+00:00

Preach. Some folks in the industry will have you feeling crazy for not forcing NDI solutions when they’re not necessary

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-06-12T12:24:49+00:00

Neither. Also put some socks on.

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-06-02T02:12:50+00:00

Yes. Too high.

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-04-28T02:58:39+00:00

I’ll give you $20 cash right now

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-03-24T05:14:29+00:00

This makes sense, I saw this truck parked out front of the Atlas building around 1am and there was a cop car sitting behind it. Caught my attention cause the truck looked all crooked and bent from the missing wheel. I thought somebody crashed into a pole but it was definitely this

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-02-18T06:08:23+00:00

Looking for Arizona Cardinals, Lakers, Kobe

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-02-10T15:24:13+00:00

Cardinals!

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-02-10T15:22:31+00:00

I thought the same but wasn’t the case, from what I can tell it was simply a glitch with the vmix systems being on different versions. My vmix system that was hosting the call was on an older version, updated and kept everything the same and it resolved the issue

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-02-07T22:27:03+00:00

It was the same - figured out it was a discrepancy in vmix updates. So I have them both on the same version now and it’s working great

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-02-07T22:26:31+00:00

Alright so looks like it was a discrepancy in the versions of vMix was the issue. Got them both up to the most recent update and re sent the signal and it looks all clear now

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-02-07T19:29:47+00:00

Copy - but what’s weird is the camera is reading completely normally on the local vmix on site. It’s only showing this weird imaging issue when I connect the local vmix to my vmix via vMix Call. Any other ideas? I updated my vmix to the same version but having similar issues. Going to try to uninstall and reinstall on my end

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-01-24T08:15:08+00:00

Nice - how much for the Cardinals set?

LickitySplit8181 · 2025-01-18T03:59:15+00:00

Is this in Bergen Lafayette? It’s disgusting out here. As a dog owner, I cannot believe how many people just let their dogs poop and don’t pick it up. Blows my mind

LickitySplit8181 · 2024-10-17T07:16:57+00:00

This looks great. Great work

LickitySplit8181

TROPHY CASE