Flying High With Fiber

With the onset of HDTV, meeting the heavy-duty requirements of the amazing flying camera requires a ruggedized fiber optic cable solution

When he first went into the motion control business, Alex MacDonald gave little or no thought to awards, let alone Academy Awards. At the time, in the late 1990s, he was in New York, a motion control engineer who was mainly interested in the possibilities of robotic control of video cameras for making television commercials. Yet, his passion for creating visually exciting scenes with computer-controlled equipment would lead not only to an Academy Award in 2006, but also innovations that today give us previously unimagined, almost surrealistic perspectives in movies and sports that makes it hard for most of to believe our own eyes. His tour de force is the Optical Cable Corporation fiber optic cable-based 3-D flying camera system.

Today, with many high-profile films among his flying camera credits – Troy, Catwoman and The Poseidon Adventure, to name a few – MacDonald traces the breakthrough in flying camera technology to a 2001 trade show in Los Angeles where he met James Rodnunsky, who would become his Cablecam International (Los Angeles) partner until 2006.

"Jim's first Cablecam, not much more than a clothesline down a ski slope, was invented to provide video for a ski instruction simulator and depended on pulleys and gravity for mobility. By the time I met him in 2001, his system had progressed to high speed hydraulic winches and a rudimentary rig to provide 3 Dimensional camera moves (moves in XYZ). At this point there were essentially three major limitations – the heavy, noisy hydraulic compressors and oil lines, the lack of computer control, and the inability to get a reliable signal back from a video camera. I brought my servo engineering background to the table and within a few months we found ourselves in Prague, Czech Republic operating the world's biggest electric servo, computer-controlled 3D gantry system suspended 120' high over a 600'x250' village shooting all the flying creature scenes for Van Helsing. Now we had the ability to repeat moves with precision that made multiple takes possible and directors and stunt coordinators very happy – a whole new ballgame."

That precision control and repeatability would soon lead to Cablecam's high-speed, high-flying equipment being used in films such as The Longest Yard, Lemony Snicket and sports events including the Super Bowl. The Academy Award was presented to Cablecam in 2006 was for "development of the Cablecam 3-D volumetric suspended cable camera technologies."

But still in 2001 MacDonald realized that these successes in the film world left a major hurdle to jump in the world of broadcast television – image transmission from a video camera to recording equipment was dependent on RF signals coming from a moving transmitter, signals too undependable to integrate with ground-based network coverage.

"HDTV was becoming the standard, and to meet the high-definition requirements, we needed lots of bandwidth for transmitting high-quality images to the control room for televised events," MacDonald says. "At the same time, in order to get the most exciting 3-D views and follow the actions over greater distances, the camera ‘runs' were getting longer. We needed fiber optic image transmission, but that also introduced a number of challenges, chief among which was asking the fiber attached to the rig to move through an extensive pulley system at the same high speeds as the camera. We had no idea if any fiber cable on the market could survive this treatment."

In search of a workable fiber optic solution, MacDonald visited Optical Cable Corporation (OCC) in Roanoke, VA. A manufacturer of a broad line of standard and custom fiber optic cables, OCC and MacDonald reviewed the requirements for a fiber optic cable suitable for a flying camera system, and recommended its "B" Series Tactical Breakout Cable. With a rugged design suitable for military applications, this hybrid copper-and-fiber OCC cable would meet MacDonald's high performance, durability and safety requirements as well as carrying both fiber optic signals and electric power through a single line.

"With venues ranging from the windy Chicago to the Frozen Tundra of Green Bay to the severe heat of the Southwest, it was important that the cable could withstand extreme environments," MacDonald explains. "Also, since the entire system is rigged and de-rigged in a new stadium every week, the cables had to survive rough handling. For example, the maintenance crews at football stadiums often don't know whether they are handling standard copper cable (Triax) or fiber optic, so we needed a tough jacket providing exceptional kink-resistance properties. Plus, cable runs between the camera and receiver station are often 1,300 feet or more and since this equipment moves at very high speeds, we needed to have a cable with excellent tensile strength for dependability and safety considerations. Of course, the fiber needed to carry a reliable HD signal at a bandwidth of 1.5 Gig. The rugged, weatherproof OCC military style cable met all of those requirements."

The new copper and fiber cable also solved other problems. Powering both the camera and the servo motors on board through the single cable eliminated a heavy payload of batteries and their unreliability and limited power life. MacDonald says the robust B Series cable handles all these demands – high tension at high speed with flawless simultaneous power and signal transmission coupled with an added margin of safety.

Properly rigged, today's flying camera systems give spectacular views of events ranging from concerts to political conventions and countless sports events. In fact, they have become so deft that the latest systems can give viewers the impossible perspectives that were previously only seen in digital video games like Madden NFL Football.

"The camera moves in high-quality video games have actually become the new standard for shooting films and live events," MacDonald says. "Today we can shoot scenes for an action film that are so exactingly repeatable that we can more easily and less expensively combine live action with special effects."

These days MacDonald continues pushing the image-recording envelope as a motion control consultant, engineer and programmer (visit RigMoves.org). Among his clients is ActionCam, LLC (Tulsa, OK) where he is helping to develop the next generation of flying cameras for television sports.

"We're making improvements in safety, ease of setup, portability, stability, reliability – across the board upgrades in performance," MacDonald says. "One of the key new elements will be a high-speed winch carrying B-Series tactical breakout cable with elements of copper for power and single mode optical fiber for HD video transmission. By using an active winch with a fiber optic joint, we will have the dual benefit of tracking the moving camera more responsively with the fiber link, and at the same time have the additional safety provided by the enormous tensile strength of the B Series cable to support the camera platform if necessary and to raise it twice as high over the playing field when required."

Some guys have all the fun.

Founded in 1983, Optical Cable Corporation manufactures a comprehensive line of tight-buffered fiber optic cable products that address nearly all communications applications including data communications, LANs, telecommunications, video transmission, cable TV, traffic signaling, and military tactical communications.

For information contact: Optical Cable Corporation, 5290 Concourse Drive, Roanoke, Virginia, 24019; Phone: (800) 622-7711, Canada (800) 443-5262; FAX: 540-265-0724; Email: marketinginfo@occfiber.com; Visit the web site www.occfiber.com.

SOURCE: Optical Cable Corporation