MOCO system

Yeah that what I was wondering if there was a way to use this with a job somehow? Looks very cool but the moves I would like to pull off would be jib driven I'm thinking...
 
f92mlu said:
I'm also new to the Motion Control world.
I would appreciate information about where to find more examples of where motion control has been used in good ways.
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Marcus.. here's a couple links from our competition... they have a great system but unfortunatley they are expensive and a little complicated... showreel and tutorial. A lot of the shots you see are from a jib arm MOCO system.

Rob Lohman said:
Looking very nice! For some reason when talking about motion control I'm always thinking about a motion controlled crane and not tripod head. Is this just me? :)
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You're not alone. I guess I would call ours a moco head rather than moco system. We have stuff on the drawing board for a full system but thats a little ways out.

LighthouseMedia said:
Yeah that what I was wondering if there was a way to use this with a job somehow? Looks very cool but the moves I would like to pull off would be jib driven I'm thinking...
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Yes.. a jib arm surely adds another dimension to the shot but we are taking baby steps here. We also wanted to make something that was affordable. I'd venture a guess that a full 3 axis head along with a jib arm (moco) would run upwards of $40K if we were to make one. I think thats a little steep for my tastes. To get something close you could certainly dolly a shot with the head... we could support an additional axis. Here's what a moco head with dolly looks like: dolly shots (scroll down to the bottom) Those guys have been around awhile but don't look like they really want to sell a product.
 
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Curt,

Very nice, I will be checking this out at NAB 2007. It would be cool if you could allow for a moco dolly to be added as a future item to work in conjunction with the head. Maybe even add a device for repeatable camera elevation. Even though it wouldn't be as flexible as a moco crane it just seems that it would be a bit cheaper to pull off. In any case I would like the idea of adding parts over time.
 
For dolly moves I wonder if you could use one of those electric wheelchair units as the base and just "drive" it electronically. Obviously it would take some engineering to build the interface but everything is electrically actuated anyway. Instead of the whole fiberglass cowling and seat just mount a hydraulic pedestal on the chassis. If you can control the height of the pedestal rig electronically as well then you're there. Sounds so easy...

Blair S. Paulsen
RedOne #19
 
alacritymedia said:
For dolly moves I wonder if you could use one of those electric wheelchair units as the base and just "drive" it electronically. Obviously it would take some engineering to build the interface but everything is electrically actuated anyway. Instead of the whole fiberglass cowling and seat just mount a hydraulic pedestal on the chassis. If you can control the height of the pedestal rig electronically as well then you're there. Sounds so easy...

Blair S. Paulsen
RedOne #19
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It's easy enough to do that...but I would suggest you hold off. We have some things down the line that will blow your socks off!
 
eg... you found us out :) If you act fast you get a free autographed photo of Peter Weller.
 
I was talking to the guys from Mark Roberts motion control at IBC. They do have some very nice kit, and seem to have the market for high end motion control cornered. I know people who use their stuff a lot for commercials and features. However, even their 'small' pan-tilt head is very large and unwieldy, and obviously expensive.

I shall be following the development of the Viewfactor Studios products with great interest. It looks like 'motion control for the rest of us' and something you could take out on a 'normal' shoot and make spur of the moment decisions to use.

Nick
 
Rob Lohman said:
Looking very nice! For some reason when talking about motion control I'm always thinking about a motion controlled crane and not tripod head. Is this just me? :)
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I was thinking the same thing....
 
Pretty innovative stuff there Curt. Would you be able to adjust the curves of the easing into motion via bezier curves to eachieve those easing into shots? like a divide by 2 algorithm till it achieves the target?
 
acehole111 said:
Pretty innovative stuff there Curt. Would you be able to adjust the curves of the easing into motion via bezier curves to eachieve those easing into shots? like a divide by 2 algorithm till it achieves the target?
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We are trying to get all the core features working first but we can certainly do that. The initial release will have record and repeat functionality, automatic curve generation based on keyframes and import/export. The graphical data editor would be in a later release but could be available within a month or two of the ship date. Its not necessarily hard to do but the graphical editor is a fairly complex task to complete in our web-based app and it will take time.

Do you guys have any favorite graphical editors that you like (3ds max, lightwave, maxon, maya, etc?) I was planning on modeling our interface after the camera graph editor in lightwave. We could have a number of fitting functions and spline-based curves that would make things easier in terms of getting the look you want.
 
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CVB said:
Do you guys have any favorite graphical editors that you like (3ds max, lightwave, maxon, maya, etc?) I was planning on modeling our interface after the camera graph editor in lightwave. We could have a number of fitting functions and spline-based curves that would make things easier in terms of getting the look you want.
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One vote for the Lightwave graph editor. :thumbup:
 
curt, it is looking really good and promising! we really can't wait for NAB '07! Count us in an interested costumer!

3 questions:

Will it be possible to add 'Z' rotation to the head?
Are you planning on offering an integrated solution comprising the head, dolly & crane? (if we were to invest in this system, we would like to know that we'll be able to expand it in the future)
Have you thought of making a remote control for the head?

txs for the info

luis
 
Will it be possible to add 'Z' rotation to the head?
Yes, it is possible - we will have additional motion axis ports on the top and bottom of the head. We probably wouldn't release a third axis right away though.

Are you planning on offering an integrated solution comprising the head, dolly & crane?
It's a possibility that we may do that at some time in the future. If we did make a full Jib+head system I would want to make it extremely portable and small and have a nodal 3 axis head at the end of the jib so It could have 6 degrees of freedom or more.

Have you thought of making a remote control for the head?
Yes. PDA's work well as do laptops. A control pendant is in the works.
 
Curt, thanks for your reply.

Regarding my third question, I meant a control for using the head in realtime from a distance. Something like this.

Regarding the crane/dolly system, do you have any idea how long we would have to wait (I know it's hard to answer, but a rough estimate will do, just to know where you're standing). By the way, I totally agree on making it compact & portable. I would add 'simple to setup and operate'

cheers
 
Luis, the control pendant that I was referring to would be similar in that you can control it in realtime from a distance, the difference would be that we are planning on making ours compact. There's nothing worse than having a control box thats twice the size of the thing you're controlling :)

The crane/dolly system would probably take at least 6-8 months of solid engineering effort. I would say it could take up to a year but we have a lot of technology that we developed on Mirus that can be applied to a jib system.

In regards to the 'simple to setup and operate', thats what we're all about - I've always said that if my parents cant figure it out then we've done something wrong.
 
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