A New World Of Networking With NIA-1!

Hi, I'm Sean and this is the new ZMU4 Zoom Controller. The ZMU4 is the fourth generation Zoom Controller from ARRI, now offering LBUS connectivity, camera control for both ARRI and third-party cameras, and a robust wireless connection. The priority when designing the ZMU4 was really to offer an ergonomic and precise Zoom Controller for use both on and off the camera. Custom curves and sensitivity adjustments will allow you to dial in exactly the kind of feel that you need from your Zoom Controller, and those of you who are familiar with the ZMU3 or other professional level Zoom Controllers will be familiar with this type of joystick which offers very precise control with minimal input. The second priority for the ZMU4 was to really make sure that the experience was completely seamless when moving from a wired to a wireless configuration, and there are no compromises when choosing to operate in either of these modes. Part of that seamless ability with the wireless aspect was to include the same battery we introduced with the Hi5, which should offer you more than 15 hours of continuous operation in a single day. Alright, let's go for a walk around. Alright, let's start with the front. So up here you'll see we have a little display which will show your lens data values such as your focal length, and the three buttons on the side, well they're the buttons you use to get into the menu, which is of course shown on this display. Here we have a little tally status LED, the record start stop button, and the power button. Below that is the Zoom Joystick. Now this is centered inside the ZMU4, so it's actually a symmetrical device and will work just as well if you're a lefty or a right-handed user. On the right hand side you'll see we have a radio module dock and a rosette. Well the radio module dock has a little cover in it, which I can pull out now. Now if you're using the ZMU4 as a wired device you should leave the cover in as it's part of the weather sealing, but if you want to go wireless you obviously pull it out and then you can use any one of the three radio modules that we have for the ARRI ECS system. So the RF-EMIP is probably the most ubiquitous radio module, and it's the same type of radio module that's in a whole bunch of our cameras and inside the C-Force Mini RF and a WCU4 or SXU1 for example. The next radio module along is the RF-2400, which is a longer range version of a module in the 2.4 gigahertz spectrum, but it can only do point-to-point. So you can only use this radio module between one client, such as a ZMU4 with an operator, and one host, such as a rear one on a camera. The third radio module is the upcoming RF-900 module which will be available just in the USA and Canada, and it's basically a very long range module which works in that 900 megahertz band which isn't available in other parts of the world, but it's a very cool module, it's really long range and it also supports network. But I'm going to take the RF-EMIP module for now, and you can see that it just slots in here like so, and then that is now weather sealed again. The rosettes, well there's a rosette on the right side of this unit and there's one on the left side of the unit. If you buy a ZMU4 which is just the body only ZMU4, then you will just have one on the left, but of course you can purchase a second if you like, and if you buy the ZMU4 basic set which includes the body, an RF-EMIP module, both rosettes, one for each side, and two of the rosette adapter brackets I'll get to in a second, that's kind of the way we would recommend you going. Now on the back of the unit you can see here we have a USB-C port here which you can use with a USB-C thumb drive for doing firmware updates, or an adapter to SD for example with an SD card and your firmware, and below that we have five buttons. So we have three user buttons which can be set to ZMU4 functions such as zoom limits and marks, or they can be set to camera user button functions as well, and below that we have two buttons which are dedicated to adjusting the speed or the maximum speed of the zoom motor, and they have little dimples in them so that you can find them when you're of course not looking at the back of the display while you're using it, so they're underneath the ZMU4 with little tactile interfaces there. On top of the ZMU4 we have a CAM connector and an LBUS connector. With the LBUS connector you could just connect directly to a motor and then go from the motor to a power source like a V-Lock battery with a DTAP port, and then run this in a completely standalone system if you like, or you can go into a daisy chain with a bunch of other motors and into an Alexa 35. If you want to use an Alexa Mini or Mini LF for example, you will need to use the CAM port with a 7-pin CAM to EXT cable, which is exactly the same cable that we have for the Seaforce Mini RF and the RIA1, and in fact any of those 7-pin CAM cables will also work with the ZMU4, which opens the door to this being a radio receiver and offering camera control possibilities with third-party cameras, as well as supporting run-stop on heaps and heaps of different digital cinema cameras that are on the market. At the bottom we have the battery slot which of course takes that same Hi-Fi battery that I mentioned before, more than 15 hours of runtime, you'll stick one of these in the beginning of the day and be totally fine. The whole unit is made from aluminium, it has this lovely little soft rubber grip here and it's nicely balanced basically right on my index finger there, so it's quite comfortable to hold and to use. The whole unit is weather sealed, we just don't recommend that you hold it upside down as there's no cover on the battery slot, but in normal orientations you will not have a problem using this in some light rain for example. We're also introducing two new brackets with the ZMU4, they're both rosette adapters. So we have the RA7 which is a double male rosette adapter to interface between the ZMU4 here and maybe a hand grip extension if you'd like to use the ZMU4 as a controller in handheld mode, so you would run it like this, and you can also use it with two of our Panbar adapters. Now we have a 20mm Panbar adapter and an 18mm Panbar adapter. The Panbar adapters would go onto the little rosette adapter like this and then slide over the Panbar of your tripod. 18mm is typically Ocona and Sackler and 20mm is Miller and a bunch of other brands as well. The RA8 adapter is the second adapter that we're introducing and that's designed specifically for the OCU-1, but really it will work with anything that would have a female 3.8 inch threaded hole on it. So it goes from rosette on one side to that 3.8 inch hole and you need a tool for that, so this would go onto the side of the ZMU4 and it's an ARRI multi-hex which means you can use a 3, a 4, a 5mm or a 532nd allen key, all will work, it's pretty cool, and the same thing on the other side. So let's look at the OCU-1 now. Alright let's talk about wireless expansion, which is a nice thing you can do with the ZMU4 where you can take an LBUS controller such as the OCU-1 or Master Grips and get them to piggyback off the radio module that we have sitting in the side of the ZMU4 here, which means that it's very simple to create a lovely little two-axis control unit here that might be used by a DIT or a DP, perhaps at a monitor station or in a tent. So all I have here is the RA8 bracket which will connect the 3.8 inch threaded hole on the OCU-1 into the rosette on the side of the ZMU4. If you had Master Grips, well they will screw directly into the rosette that's here. And then you just need an LBUS cable, so I have a 20cm right angle to right angle LBUS cable between the ZMU and the OCU, which is just a nice way to keep cables out of the way. And then basically you just have to set up the OCU-1 to be controlling IRIS and turn off the IRIS control that might be on your Hi-5 if you have a focus puller operating in the same network. And the benefit of network mode is that all of the lens data will be shared between the devices, so I get my focal length display on the ZMU, I get my IRIS display on the OCU-1, and then the focus puller still gets all of the depth of field indication and they can see exactly what I'm changing over here. The other nice thing is that the user buttons that are on the OCU-1 will also work in addition to the user buttons that are already on the ZMU4, so there are a lot of custom functions that you can control from this single two-axis hand unit. As I mentioned at the top, designing a high quality, precise and intuitive zoom controller was the priority for the ZMU4. And the little joystick here is pretty simple. The harder you push, the faster the motor will move, but there are a number of ways to change the feel of the knob to suit your preference. For example, you can set it up so that you have a really fast crash zoom, or you might like to have something that's a bit more slower and smoother, which will of course help you tell a different kind of story. So I'm going to show you how to set that all up now. In the menu, you scroll down to control, you'll get a bunch of different options that change the behavior of the joystick here. Now, if I go down to curve, this is probably going to make the biggest impact. There are four curves to choose from, and they will basically adjust how quickly the motor accelerates into the position that you've set the joystick into. So it's basically ramping into the speed that you have set, and then ramping out. We have hyperbolic, logarithmic, parabolic, and linear. And hyperbolic is the default, and that will nicely ramp into and out of the speed changes that you're making with this joystick. And at the other end of the scale, linear will be a very twitchy, responsive type of zoom, which might be better for those crash zooms, where it's going to accelerate the motor speed as fast as possible to hit the type of speed that you're inputting with the joystick. So I'm going to leave that on hyperbolic. The other thing to bear in mind is that this sensitivity adjustment gives you three options, from min, mid, and max. And that's kind of like setting a dead band on a joystick, where you have three different options for how far you have to press the joystick before it starts to move the lens motor. So maximum sensitivity will be really twitchy. As soon as you put light pressure onto the joystick, it will start moving the motor, and minimum will require a bigger input to start moving the lens motor itself. So I'm going to keep that on mid. The other couple of things you can change from this menu are the direction. So by default, pushing forwards will zoom the lens in. And you can also change the axis that the ZMU4 controls. So it doesn't have to just be zoom. And if I go into here, you'll see that there are now five options. So focus, iris, and zoom can all be controlled by default with ZMU4. If you're using a C-Force Mini RF, well, that supports a fourth auxiliary axis, which you might use for a remote polarizer, for example. And then at the bottom, we have a new option, and that's filter. So this is designed to work with the Cinefade license, which is upcoming for the Hi5. And that would mean that you can use the ZMU4 as a dedicated Cinefade or remote polar controller when you have that license on your Hi5. So for things like car commercials, when you're in an armed car, this can be really easy to hand off, really useful to hand off to someone to use as a remote polar controller, for example. And of course, you can still attach an OCU1 to make this a two-axis device. The other thing to mention with zooming is that we do have those dedicated zoom speed buttons on the back, and they will change the maximum speed that the zoom motor will move at. Zoom limits and zoom marks can help you achieve a repeatable shot. And they default to user button two and three, which are on the back of the ZMU4. So user button three would be for marks. And you can see here, I'm at 190 millimeters. If I press that, I now get a green indication on my focal length display. And as I move away from that, the indicator will change in like a traffic light system. So red means I'm far away, and yellow means that I'm getting closer. And if I get exactly back to within one millimeter of my mark, it will turn green. I remove the mark by holding down the on the back. User button two is for setting zoom limits. So say I knew I wanted to come back to exactly 110 millimeters. Well, I can set that as one limit, and then I can move the zoom controller somewhere else and set a far limit for the zoom range. And then now the ZMU4 will only go between those two points, which can be really handy when you need to repeat a shot exactly. Right, let's talk about connectivity and configuration. Because there are many ways that you can configure a ZMU4 within an ARRI ECS system, we've printed a handy sticker, which is on the side of the ZMU4 and will ship with every ZMU4 that we ship. And that will link directly to the configuration guide that we have on the website, where you can find a bunch of diagrams that show how to connect your ZMU4, whether wired or wireless, to an ARRI ECS system like we have here. So go and check that out. But at the most basic format, we would have a ZMU4 on a tripod pan bar, which of course is using my 18mm pan bar adapter and the RA7 Rosette adapter, connected via LBUS into a motor. And then we need to power the motor. So we could just use an LBUS to DTAP cable to connect that motor to a battery. And then we have a very simple kind of standalone setup for running a zoom controller in a way that you might be used to with some other zoom controllers on the market. But we've gone one step further here, and I've incorporated that zoom motor inside a three-axis ARRI ECS system. So I have an Iris, a zoom and a focus motor that are all daisy-chained with LBUS, and then we are going to LBUS on the ZMU4. That last little LBUS connector is going into the camera here, and that is something specific to the Alexa 35 that I'll get to in a second. But basically, I immediately have zoom control here, and on my Hi-5, I have focus and Iris control. Now in order to get this working properly, especially when we move to a wireless system, you just want to make sure that the zoom axis is turned off in the Hi-5 so that the ZMU4 can control it. So you do that by going into the menu by pressing page twice, and then if you go to control setup, just make sure that the force pad is set to off instead of being set to zoom, which would be the default. Now if I unplug my ZMU4, you will automatically see that the zoom axis doesn't have a controller attached to it, and so I can plug in my EMIT module here, pop off the cover, put in the EMIT module, and then you'll see within a matter of moments, it will be detected as a wireless controller on the same network. So I have zoom control on my ZMU4 and focus and Iris here from the Hi-5. All right, let's look at a second sample setup, this time using an Alexa Mini LF. So the cabling has to be slightly different. As I mentioned, it's only the Alexa 35 that you can have a complete LBUS daisy chain because only the Alexa 35 carries camera control commands in LBUS, at least at the moment. So for the Alexa Mini LF, I need to use that CAM port on the ZMU4 in order to have camera control and user buttons available from that device. So if you look over here, I have two cables coming out of the ZMU4. The LBUS connection here, well that's the part of the LBUS daisy chain that's coming from the camera, so I'm getting power through here into the ZMU4 and lens data is and the zoom commands from the joystick here, well they're being sent from that LBUS connector as well. And then I have the CAM port connected in addition, so that's CAM back here to the 7-pin EXT connector in the back of the Mini or Mini LF and that's going to send the camera control commands. So that is necessary if you wanted to have user buttons or anything like that. But the cool thing I can actually do in this situation is actually still make use of the radio module dock. So I have an RF2400 module here and I have an RF2400 module also in the back of this Hi-5. So I can use the ZMU4 as basically a radio receiver instead of a transmitter and the ARRI terminology for that is a host because that is what is basically hosting all of the network information and the LBUS information and lens data to work with the motors. So that is a receiver now, I just change between client and host in the settings and then the Hi-5 operates as normal. Make sure both radio modules are on the same radio channel and you can see here that this is already all connected and I have focus and iris information with all the LDS shared and everything. So I'm not using the internal radio module that's built into this Mini LF, I'm instead using the longer range RF2400 module and exactly the same would apply with the RF900 radio module which is of course that USA and Canada one. Now in this situation I could use a rear one to do the same thing but that would basically just mean me adding another box and not really getting any more features. The only difference is that you don't require an L-Cube if you have a rear one for the Focusbug or UDM1 whereas I would need one in this situation because there's currently nowhere for me to plug in one of those distance measuring devices. So the rear one is still very useful but in some situations it's nice to be able to choose between using the rear one or the ZMU4 to act as your radio module host and then extend the wireless range of your camera when you're on set. So you know it's maybe not the most common kind of setup but if it means I can take something else off the camera, particularly when I'm trying to keep the weight down for a handheld setup, I mean I think it's only a good thing and I'm excited to see what people do with different kind of setups and rigs. It's a very flexible system. All right, thank you so much for watching. If you have any questions please chuck them in the comment section down below and we'll see you in the next one. Bye!