Click a seat.
Every camera goes there.
A little production magic
A municipal council, fifty elected members, five PTZ cameras, one operator who is also cutting the show. BW Coven makes the room the primary object: click a seat, the cameras converge on it with different shot sizes, and the lower third for whoever sits there is already on the rail.
- VISCA over IP, Panasonic AW, ONVIF
- A camera on air never moves
- One-time licence, no subscription
Why
Five cameras, fifty seats,
250 framings.
A normal PTZ controller
- Pick a camera, press a preset number. Fine with one camera and eight presets.
- Most cameras hold 100 presets, some hold 10, and the numbering is per camera.
- "Madame la première adjointe" is preset 34 on cam 1, 12 on cam 2, and does not exist on cam 3.
- Framing one speaker on three cameras is three selections and three presses, while they are already talking.
- The lower third lives in another application, with its own list, maintained by hand.
BW Coven
- The room is the primary object. Positions belong to the room; cameras are just what looks at it.
- Up to a hundred positions per room, as absolute coordinates in the venue file rather than in the cameras.
- One click gives a cuttable set: geometry decides which camera takes the wide and which the close-up.
- Import the seating CSV and every seat has its lower third. A new mandate is one reimport.
- The rental kit can change. The room stays.
Try it
Click a seat on the plan.
Four cameras, a room plan, a multiview. Pick an elected member: the close-up comes from the camera across the room, because that is the one looking at a face rather than at an ear, a second takes the medium, a third the reaction, and the fourth keeps the whole room. The camera on air does not move; its move waits until it leaves air.
Click a seat, or pick a name below.
A reconstruction of how the application behaves, not a capture of its interface: the camera views are drawn rather than filmed, and the chamber and everyone in it are invented. This room is cross shot, the way an operator sets one up: CAM 2 holds the close-ups on the right of the horseshoe and CAM 3 the left, each looking across at faces turned towards the rostrum. Those are stored per seat. Everything else is worked out each time, including the mayor's close-up, which no camera at the rostrum end can take at all.
Convergence
A cuttable set,
not the same shot five times.
-
1
Geometry decides
Distance, angle onto the face, tilt, zoom headroom. The camera nominally hung as the wide takes the close-up when it happens to have the best angle on that seat. The operator can reassign and store: geometry proposes, it does not impose.
-
2
The 180 degree line holds
The speaker's eyeline cuts the room in two. The tight shots are taken from the same side of it, so a cut never flips which way they are looking. The camera left on the far side takes the reaction instead, on whoever is being addressed, which is the shot it is well placed for.
-
3
One camera always holds the room
Whatever else is happening, one camera stays on the whole room, and it is not always the same one: it is whichever sees least of the speaker's face, so the job moves as the floor moves. There is always a shot to cut to.
-
4
Three ways to define a position
Taught by hand, interpolated between anchors, or computed by trigonometry from a calibrated camera. All three coexist, resolved by confidence, and the rank stays visible: a guess is never dressed up as a stored shot.
-
5
The tally lock queues
A camera on air does not move. Its move fires the instant it leaves air, so the operator never has to come back to it.
What it drives
- VISCA over IP: Sony, PTZOptics, Avonic, Lumens, Aida, BirdDog
- Panasonic AW (AW-UE, AW-HE)
- ONVIF Profile S
- Graphics: vMix, CasparCG, OBS
- Generic HTTP and OSC, so Companion and anything behind it
Not there yet: NDI PTZ control and the ATEM graphics output are not written. If either is the one you need, tell us before you buy.
No PTZ hardware to hand? The simulator opens five virtual VISCA cameras on real UDP sockets, so the adapter you test is the one that will meet a camera.
With the rest of the suite
It knows who was on screen, and when.
BW Coven knows which position was framed at every moment of the sitting, and a position resolves to a named person. That log is a speaker attribution track.
Exported alongside the session, it gives BW Minutes a list of who was on screen when, which is exactly what its speaker indexing cannot otherwise get without diarisation. A council filmed with BW Coven and processed with BW Minutes produces an attributed, chaptered record with no manual naming pass.
With BW Logger as well, that list becomes certain rather than assumed. BW Coven knows which camera was framing whom; only the switcher knows which camera was on air, and BW Logger's log also gives the first recorded frame to count from, which is never the instant the operator started the log. Without it the export says who the cameras were following, and marks it as assumed.
Pricing
One licence, once.
A hardware PTZ panel costs between 2,000 and 4,000€ and knows nothing about your elected members. This one costs 190€. Prices exclude VAT, per station, activated online once and then offline for life.
- Unlimited rooms, positions and cameras
- Every camera protocol and graphics output in the list
- Tablet surface on your own network
- Attribution export for BW Minutes
- Move it to another machine
- Everything in Single station
- 5 activations on one key
- Reassign seats yourself
- Invoicing and purchase orders
- We calibrate the cameras with you, remotely
- Seating plan and lower thirds imported
- The venue file is delivered and it is yours
- A calibrated room survives a change of kit
- Maintenance and upgrades, optional: new camera protocols, new graphics outputs, new versions. The version you bought keeps working if you do not renew. 49€ / an
- With BW Logger, the pair for a council captation: Coven frames it, Logger logs the cut. Take both and Logger is half price. 45€
Why one-time and not a subscription. Nothing here runs on our servers, so there is almost nothing recurring on our side to pass on to you. We are on the receiving end of subscription creep too, at work and at home, and we would rather not add to it. These are tools we built for our own productions, priced so that a two-person company, a commune or a club can start without being a multinational. And a council chamber has to work on the evening the network is down, which a licence that phones home cannot promise.
Download
It runs on the laptop you already carry.
One application, with nothing to install around it. It talks to the cameras and the switcher on the room's own network, and it serves the tablet surface itself: no server, no service, no account.
Apple Silicon Mac, macOS 14 or later. A 93 MB disk image. The tablet surface needs the tablet and the laptop to be on the same network, and nothing else.
The first launch asks for the licence key and a network, once. After that the station works offline for life. With no key it still opens in rehearsal: every camera simulated and nothing leaving the machine, which is enough to lay out a whole room on a train.
Why an email link and not a button. The build is finished, but it is not signed by Apple yet, and an unsigned file downloaded from a web page no longer opens at all on a current macOS: it is refused before the first screen. Asking somebody who has just paid to type a Terminal command is not an answer. The download button arrives with the signature.
FAQ
What people ask
Do we have to store 250 presets in the cameras?
No, and that is the whole point. Positions are absolute coordinates held in the venue file, not in camera memory. The count is not capped by the camera, and changing rental kit does not destroy the work.
How long does it take to prepare a room?
It depends on the method. Teaching every seat by hand is the longest and the most certain. Calibrated mode asks you to aim at a few known landmarks, after which every seat is trigonometry with almost nothing to measure. In practice you mix the two, and the confidence rank stays visible on every position.
What if a camera is on air when I click?
It does not move. The move is queued and fires the instant it leaves air. The camera tile shows it, and you never have to come back to it. Try it in the demonstration above: click a seat while a camera is on program.
Our elected members change. Do we start again?
No. People and seats are separate: the seat keeps its position, the person carries their lower third. A council sends its seating plan as a spreadsheet, and a new mandate is one reimport of that file.
What does it run on?
macOS and Linux. The production machine gets the keyboard: type a name, arrow through the matches, arrow keys as a stand-in joystick. An iPad on the desk acts as the control surface, served by the app over your local network, with targets sized for a finger.
Does it work offline?
Yes. Activation needs the internet once, exactly once. After that the machine runs offline indefinitely: no expiry, no periodic check, nothing that could strand a sitting.
A little production magic
The room knows where everyone sits.
See the pricing190€ one-time, per station. Offline for life.