When you first receive your PTZOptics
SDI Camera, the first thing you should do
is read the included manual.
Inside your box you will find your camera, the manual,
the power supply, a remote control,
two AAA batteries and a serial connection
cable used for joystick controllers. Once you have read the
manual, it is helpful to select the video resolution
and frame rate you would like to use with your camera.
The camera's resolution is set by a yellow dial
on the back Interface board of the camera.
You can reference the available frame rates in your manual
or on a table printed on the bottom of your camera.
NOTE: The default dial setting is “0”
which is 1080p60fps.
This is ideal for sports but you may want to consider
setting “6” for
1080p30fps for the classic natural video look
depending your application.
Once you have set your resolution dial, can turn on your PTZOptics camera.
If your network switch provides PoE
(Power over Ethernet),
you will not need to use the included power supply.
NOTE: Only PTZOptics
SDI and NDI cameras
support PoE power. These cameras support
PoE 802.3af.
The camera via PoE can consume
between 12 - 13 Watts; but at longer cable runs
can require up to 15 Watts to accommodate
voltage drop.
When you are first getting setup it is helpful to connect your camera to an HDMI
monitor, but you can also use the
SDI output to view video from your camera as well.
Once your camera is powered on and connected to
the network you should determine whether you will use a dynamic
r static IP address. Each camera can have an
IP address on your network which is used to control the camera
with your computer, smartphone or IP
connected joystick controller. This IP address is also
used to stream video over your network and much more.
We highly suggest assigning your camera a static
IP address for long term use. A dynamic
IP address can change periodically making it difficult
to manage in the longer term. We suggest setting up static
ip addresses with sequential IP addresses
for tidy management of multiple cameras.
NOTE: For most networks in order to connect to the camera
you must be in the same subnet of the LAN
(example – 192.168.1.123 & 192.168.1.111
belong to the same subnet;
192.168.1.123 & 192.168.0.125
do not).
Let’s put the included AAA batteries inside our
remote control and take a look at the features. You can
pan, tilt and zoom your camera using the up/down
/left/right arrow keys on your remote. You can also
set a specific PTZ camera preset
by clicking the “preset” button and than entering the number you want to set.
You can try moving the camera and calling a preset
quickly to test out the cameras movement operations.
If you find the default camera preset movements too fast,
you can always change the speed settings
in the camera menu. You can access the OSD Menu
which stands for (On Screen Display) for this camera
by pressing the “menu” button. This is where you can navigate into
the advanced features such as iris, shutter speed,
gain, color balance, contrast,
luminance and much more with the arrow keys.
Tip: You can access the OSD menu
remotely using the cameras IP address in any
web browser or with the IP joystick.
Tip: You can control up to 4 cameras with a single IR remote control.
Use the shortcut *# and the corresponding
Function key to set up unique camera IDs
on your IR remote. Example *#F2
would set a camera to ID 2
on your IR remote. You can use DHCP
to dynamically assign an IP address for your camera.
This is a great way to temporarily assign an IP
address to your camera. You can setup your camera
with DHCP by using the
IR Remote and entering “# > * > 4”.
Once the camera reboots, you can use
the IR remote to locate the dynamic IP
address by pressing “* > # > 4”.
You can assign a static IP address to your camera using our Windows Only IP
address settings tool, or with any Mac or PC
computers web browser. Let’s use a web browser.
Enter the IP address of your camera into your
web-browser and press enter. when prompted enter the default
username and password which is “admin / admin”.
You may want to consider changing this default password
in the admin area. Navigate to the “Network” tab and choose
“Fixed IP Address” from the very first drop down menu.
You can now enter the static IP address you wish the
camera to use and press “Apply.” You can now reboot
your camera by clicking the “System” tab and clicking the “Reboot” button.
Now that your camera is all setup on the network consider
downloading the free PTZ camera applications
available at http://PTZOptics.com/apps.
You can quickly tweak your camera's settings and color match multiple cameras
with advanced settings. The new apps available for
both Mac and PC. When you first open the PTZOptics
Control App you should click the “Settings Tab”
to enter your camera's name and IP Address.
Once you have done this you can click the camera name to select
this camera. This application features multiple views
available in the view dropdown menu. Click the
“advanced tab” to access controls such as Shutter Speed, Iris,
Brightness, luminance and much more. Finally,
you can view your camera by clicking the Window dropdown
menu and clicking the “Preview Window” selection.
You can make this preview window full screen or snap
the preview window to the controls. Now you can view the
cameras video from anywhere on your local area network. You can choose from
Stream 1 or Stream 2 (Stream 1 being
HD and Stream 2 being
SD and which is used for low bandwidth environments).
Let’s snap the video stream to the rest of our video controls.
Before we leave this tool, let’s setup a couple
PTZ presets. This can be done by clicking
the “Preset” radio button and entering
in the name you would like to give your preset. Once you have done this you can click
any of the 9 buttons available and your preset will be
saved. You will notice that the program automatically enters
“recall” mode. When you are in recall mode,
clicking these preset buttons will recall your saved
pan, tilt and zoom presets.
Let’s connect to the RTSP video stream from our camera with
Open Broadcaster Software also known as OBS.
The follow steps will be very similar in
video production software such as vMix, Wirecast
or xSplit. Open OBS and add a Scene. In this scene
we can add a source with the plus button in the area right next to
scenes. Select “Media Source” and name the
input. In the Properties of this media source we will uncheck
the first two boxes: Local File and Restart
Playback when source becomes active. Now we simply need to
enter our RTSP information into the input text
field which is the following
“RTSP://YOUR-CAMERA-IP-ADDRESS/1”.
The last “Slash 1 or Slash 2” represents the two available RTSP
streams you can pull from each camera. Stream 1 is
your High Definition Stream and Stream 2 is
your standard definition stream.
To add audio into our RTSP stream we will use a Rode
Microphone with a line level output and
plug it into the 3.5mm audio input on the back
of our camera. The 3.5mm audio input
will provide audio embedded into our IP stream
and HDMI output.
You can configure your cameras RTSP Settings
in the Video Tab of the network interface. You have the
ability to tweak your cameras
RTSP settings to deliver reliable
high quality video over IP. Let’s quickly review
our recommended settings
used for streaming RTSP
video over your network.
(reading chart)
NOTE: PTZOptics cameras also support MJPEG and H.265 HEVC
If you would like to customize your RTSP
Settings we highly recommend reviewing our
“PTZOptics Streaming Settings Guide”
available at ptzoptics.com/downloads.
You camera is now setup and your have learned how to access
the cameras video over IP. Your cameras can also output
high definition video through SDI
and HDMI simultaneously to fulfill even
more advanced video production workflows.
Consider joining our PTZOptics User Group at facebook.com/groups/ptzopticspals
and if you have any follow up questions do not hesitate to reach out.
If you encounter any issues during
setup process feel free to submit a support ticket
at help.ptzoptics.com or simply
call the phone number listed on our website. Enjoy!