The EZtrack Hub aggregates and merges tracking positional data from many different kind of sensors and protocols, such as mechanical cranes, dollies, camera sliders, infrared lasers, or specific rotary encoders: EZtrack always knows exactly all movements of your camera at precise Timecode.

Discover in the following scenarios how our Hub is your perfect companion to ensure that all your metadata are properly interpreted for any creative use!

Several models of Pan & Tilt heads use magnetic high precision sensors.

Depending on the P/T heads models, EZtrack can directly gather the positional data from the encoders and stream the Freed data to the appropriate render engine: for this scenario, the EZtrack Hub adds the advanced management of the FIZ lens data, thanks to its embedded electronics.

For specific P/T heads models outputting proprietary protocols, thanks to custom-developed hardware and software modules, it is possible to convert raw sensors data to the Freed data compatible with most render engines.

For this scenario, one transform node is sent to the EZtrack Hub, before and after the kinematic chain, to setup the proper offset from the ground and according to the position of the sensor.

For this rig, it has been set-up x1 Miller encoded P/T Head and x2 rotary encoders for both base tracks and Dolly’s height elevation.
Alongside the EZtrack Hub, one custom microcontroller has been programed to gather raw quadrature signals from the encoders and transform these into a Kuper protocol data stream with 2 channels:
– The first channel records the pulses of the tracks sensors that can be remapped to effective translation distance into EZtrack.
– The second channel records the Dolly’s height elevation in mm since the effective height is not linear with the rotary encoders.

The raw encoder values were sampled with effective laser measurement of the height’s elevation, whereas it has been configured into EZtrack x1 Freed node for the Pan & Tilt and x2 Kuper channels for tracks’ displacements and Dolly’s elevation.
The kinematic chain of the Dolly has been built using all these nodes, while adding static offset according to real size of the Dolly.

A typical Technocrane is mechanically encoded and outputs the position of its head relative to the ground in using the Freed UDP protocol. Complementary to the Hub, we do provide a Freed input plugin to transmit the tracking data through the local network.

For specific shooting scenarios, the Technocrane may need to be shifted on dedicated tracks: to achieve proper travelling moves, the operator needs to add supplementary rotary encoder(s) on these tracks. In this case, it is possible to pre-process the raw encoders data and transform it into a network-compatible data thanks to one microcontroller being used to convert raw quadrature pulses into useful positional data that will be streamed as Freed UDP packets.

Tracks’ sensors of the Technocrane are connected to the local network switch, as the data is sampled and transmitted to the EZtrack Hub at high frequency: this workflow ensures the sampling error remains negligible since the Hub collects the positional data at the genlock pulse.