OT - World Poker Tournament

A local promoter would like to do a poker tournament with 1 table (about six positions) with those lipstick/bullet cams to see each players cards. How would you capture something like this? Commentating would be done in post, so we just need to know how we would capture those cards.

Thanks is advance.

Shoot it all on tape, capture each tape after the show. Or have 6 computers capturing on the spot...rolling tape as backup.


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Most of those bullet cams have RCA or BNC out. Just run the cable to a DV (or HDV) camera. You'll also need to power the bullet cam, probably a ton of 9V batteries or 9V AC/DC adapters.

It would be very helpful if you could jam timecode into whatever does the recording, to save time in editing.

You're going to have to draw a spot on the table for the cards to be every time. Your shot will be tight, and 1" of card movement is the difference between K-Q-A and fuzzy hand movement and a shot of lights in the grid.

I suspect you will either have to build a table for this (not a big deal), or heavily modify an existing one.

It's a lot of logistics.

The table they use in the UK Channel 4s Late night poker has perspex/glass sections for player to place cards. World Poker Tour in the US is using htis technique now I believe.

When not being looked at in hand they lay face down and the cams under the table point upwards and can view the hands.

I think they use raised guides for each card in an "L' shape so they line up perfectly - of course it depends entire on what type of poker you are playing as to how many "slots" you need.

There is some beta software in development called capture magic to capture more than 1 FireWire stream at-a-once but it not available yet. [www.bigmugsoftware.com]



Ben



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Thanks for the replies so far....

Mike, the table will mosty likely be built so we're working to that hurdle. And yeah, we are trying to get those logistics thought through.

Ben, I saw that software that you linked in another thread, and yeah, perhaps that's the way we could capture it. The tournament is still in pre-planning and all, so we have time.

-Darren

Check out www.polecam.com. We've been using them on some projects that are similar and they work fabulously. Capture each to it's own deck or ingest system or with a live switcher for a cut feed. They are a bit on the pricy side but well worth the cost.

Steve