Remote Camera Technology provides custom features for Canadian House of Commons

As part of a massive multi-year project to renovate the Canadian Federal Government Parliamentary buildings and infrastructure, new committee rooms, some with broadcast capability, have been created in the West Block and Government Conference Center buildings to support the daily business of House of Commons and Senate.

Each committee room with broadcast capability has six Panasonic AW-HE130 PTZ cameras which are controlled both by a Broadcast Pix production switcher for automatic touch screen shot recall, along with an RCT CS-2 camera controller which allows fine control and shot adjustments during the production. Each committee room has a Bosch interpretation system, and the content produced is available in English and French, in addition to the ability to add an additional language as required. The committee rooms also have video conference capabilities, which allow up to four remote witnesses to participate while receiving interpretation in the language of their choice.

As each committee room has multiple layout configurations, the system can be used to recall different setups which correspond to the room configuration changes, such as the number of seats, which simplifies the daily operation. The productions are streamed live on the ParlVu internet service, in addition to being offered on the internal Parliamentary television network and being offered to the public via the Canadian Public Affairs Channel (CPAC).

RCT worked closely with the House of Commons broadcast engineers and designers from Engineering Harmonics to customize the CS-2 software in order to provide features that optimized their workflow. For example: the CS-2 controls the Broadcast Pix switcher auxiliary bus cross-points to perform source selection for monitoring at the camera operator's position. It also receives tally information from the switcher. Additional interfaces to routers will be implemented.

Peter Desjardins, CEO of Remote Camera Technology said: “We were honored to have our CS-2 Control Surface chosen for this project and working with the team at the House of Commons and Engineering Harmonics to provide enhanced functionality via software additions has given us the opportunity to learn more about parliamentary broadcast requirements.”