The FINA Championships gave television audiences the chance to see some of the best swimming in the world. Kirsty Coventry won the women's trophy, Ryan Lochte the men's, and USA the team trophy. British swimmers finished fifth in the medals table, behind America, Australia, The Netherlands and Zimbabwe, with three gold, ten silver and eleven bronze medals.
"We have provided Poolside Trackcam for most major swimming events during the past eight years," comments Camera Corps Managing Director Laurie Frost. "For this year's Short Course Championships we deployed our latest dynamic camera tracking system along the full length of the 25 metre pool. We have completely updated the electrical track control to introduce higher controllability and more features. Based on our standard 300 mm gauge track, Poolside Trackcam has very gentle acceleration and can advance the camera to a maximum speed of 3.8 metres per second. The entire tracking system can be operational within 4 hours of delivery and packed away within 3 hours."
"The new Poolside Trackcam system allows up to eight preset camera positions to be preset," adds Camera Corps' Design Engineer Mitchel Randall. "It incorporates the latest low-noise synchronous motor and drive technology with a 12 kHz pulse-width modulation feed for precise speed control. Maximum velocity is dependent on the timing pulley size and gearbox ratio to suit load and inertia requirements. Fully programmable S-Curve acceleration and deceleration profiling permits snatch-free take-off, stop and speed synchronisation. Live velocity adjustment allows the camera to track at the same speed as the live action. S-Curve velocity profiling is used as standard between each of eight programmable positions. Full TCP/IP connectivity allows programming, live diagnostics and monitoring of single or multiple systems using standard Ethernet technology. Additional new features include digital synchronisation of two or more tracks and easy system expansion including the potential for addition software-based facilities. The control rack is a compact 3 U control compared with the 4 U volume of the previous controller."
As well as the tracking system, Camera Corps fielded a Panasonic AWE800 16:9 SD-SDI underwater camera at each end of the pool to capture the swimmers' flip turns. Each underwater camera was equipped with remote pan and tilt.