Efficient production: Datavideo and PresetMaster posted: 21/08/2019
Everybody knows the game of Darts. An enthusiastic mass of spectators in the widest range of costumes in a huge hall and two players on a stage throwing small arrows at a small dartboard. In production the director focuses on the players and the scores they throw. That means that you need skilled camera men that know the game, a spotter that knows each and every players style and lightning fast communication. Keytown Productions from Leiden, The Netherlands, is a solid partner for darts production and has revolutionized the way professional darts is produced. They did this together with the Taiwanese hardware manufacturer Datavideo.
Producing darts games on the highest level like the world championships will still be produced on the old fashioned way, with camera men, huge zoom lenses and a professional multi camera setup. Explains Robbert van Loon, owner of Keytown Productions. These are the large final tournaments that are being broadcasted regularly on international TV. But there's also a large amount of smaller European tournaments at the PDC, the Professional Darts Federation. These events are called the European Tour Events. Next to these Eurotours there's also the DartShows for the German television for which we do the production. All these tournaments are visited by a large crowd, and big names like Michael van Gerwen compete over there.
Robbert explains that the European Tour Events are played by 48 qualified players and the first prize is 30.000 Euro. The European Tour Events are not broadcast on TV but are being watched on a live stream on bookmakers' websites. These online bookmakers are wildly popular with gamblers. A single European Tour Event match is watched online by 150.000 people on average. The German DartShow events are being broadcasted on TV in the program PromiDarts and has a crowd of millions via television.
The players on stage are being followed by multiple cameras during a match. They zoom in on every single square on the darts board. The spotter, who is the key person during production, has to know where the player is going to throw his next dart. This is not an easy task, knows Robbert: Our spotter knows each and every players' characteristics and knows, for instance, when a player moves to triple 19 instead of triple 20. A director has to move fast in that case. The final darts of each leg are thrown in the double squares, the outer rim of the board. The small square is often zoomed in so that it completely fills the screen for maximum excitement. Quick adaption and a huge zoom lens are key components of a successful production.
The setup of Keytown Productions had to be as simple and efficient as possible, without losing image quality. Initially, they chose to work with PTZ cameras instead of larger cameras with camera men. PTZ cameras gave us an easy way of working with just a single operator. The current generation of PTZ cameras are so precise that they could recall the exact same position, time and time again. To control the cameras we have developed our own software. This software recalled the square presets and therefore we called it PresetMaster. With this software we could automate a large portion of our production so we basically only need a spotter that taps the right square on a tablet interface.
The biggest flaw in this setup eventually was the speed of the cameras. When recalling a preset you had to wait until the camera was done with moving and focussing. The installation of the mobile setup was also something that proved to be a very cumbersome job on each event. Keytown Productions had to calibrate the complete setup every time and that took a lot of time. Robbert tells us that it was time to check for a new solution. 4K as a broadcasting solution was not very interesting for us because our productions are streamed on the web. However, I saw a clear advantage of that larger resolution, since you could zoom in on it without losing detail. This way you could zoom in on a portion of the screen with a regular camera without camera men or a zoom motor! For this solution, Robbert had to find an image processor that could make these zooms or cutouts and output these to his existing setup.
A few years back, I stumbled upon Datavideo on IBC. I knew Datavideo from their cost effective switchers and mobile production sets. On this exhibition they showed their latest invention, the KMU-100. An image processor that is capable of creating cutouts out of two 4K signals and output them in 1080P resolution. After some discussion with the guys from Datavideo about the protocols of controlling the KMU-100 I decided to go for it and bought 2 units.
The current setup of Keytown Productions at the various darts events has become a lot less complicated with the KMU-100. We've moved from a couple PTZ cameras to a setup with just two 4K cameras. Explains Robbert, this ways we have to install and calibrate a lot less each event. In our PresetMaster configuration we've recreated the complete darts board on a touch screen. This way we can switch the shot with a single click on the screen. This works direct and seamless. We can also create a small zoom animation, which makes the shot very dynamic and realistic. A viewer won't see the difference with a regular camera.
KMU-100 has been developed with these applications in mind. Explains Johan Lieffers, managing director of Datavideo Technologies Europe BV. 4K is a beautiful format, but not widely used in transmission and distribution. Especially online streams do not benefit from 4K as a final format and for stage events 4K is also not a must-have. Downsizing the operation and production costs is a topic at hand for a lot of production companies. By using a single 4K camera to create a to
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
20/11/2025
LONDON The winners of the Rise Awards 2025, which recognize women and companies whose achievements have stood out in the media technology industry, have been an...
20/11/2025
SANTA MONICA & NEW YORK Lionsgate's Worldwide Television Distribution Group and Debmar-Mercury have launched MovieSphere Gold in more than 30 million homes....
20/11/2025
ALAMEDA, Calif. Clear-Com has introduced its four-channel HelixNet beltpack, a next-generation advancement of its widely used two-channel model, and anticipates...
20/11/2025
NEW PROVIDENCE, N.J. Streaming technology and services provider Kiswe has launched Kiswe Core, a next-generation cloud-based platform designed to simplify the s...
20/11/2025
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. Dolby Laboratories has signed on as an official signature partner of the Bay Area Host Committee (BAHC) for the 2026 Super Bowl and the we...
20/11/2025
STUTTGART, Germany 3 Screen Solutions (3SS) has announced that the Canadian multiservice operator Telus has launched its Telus TV+ entertainment platform on Sam...
20/11/2025
Major League Baseball has announced deals with ESPN, NBCUniversal and Netflix covering 2026-2028 that make ESPN the exclusive rightsholder of MLB.TV, see regula...
20/11/2025
Berklee Presents Holiday Extravaganza: Duke Ellingtons The Nutcracker Suite and ...
20/11/2025
The How To Gael pocast gals, comedian Chris Kent and quizzer Darragh Ennis drop by for the fifth episode of The 2 Johnnies Late Night Lock In
In the penultimat...
20/11/2025
Tonight on RT Prime Time, Marie Crowe on how a Reading School changed her son&#...
20/11/2025
The NVIDIA Blackwell RTX upgrade is nearing the finish line, letting GeForce NOW Ultimate members across the globe experience true next-generation cloud gaming ...
20/11/2025
Tanya Berger-Wolf's first computational biology project started as a bet wit...
19/11/2025
Sphere Sound Kicks Up Its Heels at Radio City Music HallUltra-immersive system from the singular Las Vegas venue is also ready for sportsBy Dan Daley, Audio Edi...
19/11/2025
The Future of Stadium and Arena Video Control Rooms: Tech Leaders Talk 4K, IP, a...
19/11/2025
One Year at Intuit Dome: Walking Through the Stunning Arena's Advanced Video...
19/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: IMG's Francois Westcombe Goes Inside IMG's Annual Digital ...
19/11/2025
Inside Brighton & Hove Albion's fan-first media machine By George Bevir
Tuesday, November 18, 2025 - 10:10
Print This Story
Brighton & Hove Albion'...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 1: Kansas Athletics Brings New Production Power to Rebu...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 2: A Pro's Guide to Kansas Athletics' New Video...
19/11/2025
MLB Media Rights Shakeup: NBC Inks Three-Year Deal for Sunday Night Baseball, Pe...
19/11/2025
Rohan Parashuram Kanawade attends the premiere of Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Egyptian Theatre on January 26, 2025, in Pa...
19/11/2025
Awards season is heating up, and the International Documentary Association just ...
19/11/2025
Aerojet Rocketdyne President Ken Bedingfield and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders were joined by state and local officials to celebrate the groundbreaking o...
19/11/2025
L3Harris and PentenAmio formalise their teaming agreement at MilCIS 2025, streng...
19/11/2025
Calrec gives Phoenix Broadcast Solutions its full support in strategic multi-year enterprise partnership New Singapore OB company invests in Calrec technology f...
19/11/2025
October brings a larger audience in front of TV screens. The cooler autumn weather and the continuation of new programming schedules brought increases in both t...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Vitec has acquired Datapath, a developer of real-time video processing for large-scale video walls, AVoIP content distribution and KVM control in mission-critic...
19/11/2025
NEVADA CITY, Calif. Telestream has introduced ARGUS Version 2.3, which introduces Live Look, a feature that lets operators inspect live and on-demand streams vi...
19/11/2025
STAMFORD, Conn. and NEW YORK Charter Communications, Inc. has announced a major deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) that establishes AWS as one of Charters stra...
19/11/2025
TOKYO Atomos has announced a major firmware update that brings integrated camera control to the Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX its new CFexpress-based monitor-recor...
19/11/2025
Berklee's Signature Series Reimagines the Musical and Visual Artistry of Col...
19/11/2025
PlayBox Neo departed the NAB Show New York 2025 on a high note. The company's all-new PlayBox Neo Suite made a splash on the show floor, drawing strong inte...
19/11/2025
AAVBR (American Audio Visual Baton Rouge), a leading full-service event production company serving Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region, has enhanced its product...
19/11/2025
In its mission to deliver live event services combining advanced engineering with a creative approach to captivating live sports and entertainment experiences, ...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK Short-form vertical video has exploded across platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, but a new survey commissioned by Media.net, a provider of c...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK YES Network, the regional sports network home of the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Nets, and CAMB.AI have struck a partnership they said will leverage ...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has issued detailed guidance on filings that were disrupted by the government shutdown. While many of those fil...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK The popularity of NFL games is largely responsible for continued seasonal momentum in TV viewership into October (measured Sept. 29-Oct. 26), according...
19/11/2025
DirecTV has announced that its MyFree DirecTV streaming service has added seven new channels. Those include four sports services, NBA FAST, Red Bull TV, DAZN Ri...
19/11/2025
SURREY, U.K. Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) has launched Flair Bridge, a compact device that transforms how operators control the company's motion-contr...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission, which is continuing to rapidly ramp up its operations after the end of the federal government shutdown, has se...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Martin Freeman, Jessie Buckley, Wu-Tang Clan's Raekwon, Eddie the Eagle and ...
19/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz collaborates with Broadcom to enable testing and validation of n...
19/11/2025
Back to All News
Innato, starring Imanol Arias and Elena Anaya, arrives on Netf...
19/11/2025
Back to All News
Guillermo del Toro Sits Down With Troll 2 Director Roar Uthaug...
19/11/2025
Some projects feel monumental from the moment the first phone call comes in. When BCE, the host broadcaster appointed to coordinate the national coverage, asked...
Efficient production: Datavideo and PresetMaster posted: 21/08/2019 
