I bought the 30X NDI April 2021 after hearing about it on a Facebook group discussion. Liked the camera so much I bought a second this year. Tech support is excellent, never had trouble with either camera but did have pre-purchase questions. Also general operating questions and assistance with firmware upgrade. Tech support is quick to respond and very helpful. Considering purchasing one of the 4k ptz too.

Great camera with good remote features. I had a little trouble connecting to my computer. I got a call from the company Tech support, and they resolved the issue quickly. Thanks to Jenny!

What a fantastic little camera for streaming video! Setup is easy and intuitive, and it has all of the features and options youll need. We use it as the main streaming camera for our church worship services, and the 30x optical zoom is awesome for framing the stage without losing any video quality! Our customer service agent was Jenny, and she was fantastic at helping us get exactly what we needed and making sure that it functioned properly. Even when our first camera had a firmware error, the replacement process was quick and easy. Great customer service! Thanks Jenny!

This is the second AVIKANS camera purchase. They seem to be the same high quality as other top brands with the same firmware features. Easy to program through the IR handheld remote and through the web interface. We are using these with the OBS software and NDI plugin, which work great. We use the AViPAS joystick controller using VISCA over IP to control camera movement. We are also feeding audio through the camera line-in input. No sync issues and good quality results. Tech support has been very quick and helpful in answering questions. Very pleased with the purchase.

We purchased both the 20x and 30x cameras for use in our church. Their performance have been rock solid for several months. Picture clarity and color have been a big step up for our livestream services. There are plenty of features via the remote control, including image flip, zoom speeds and up to 10 preset frames. You can control up to 4 separate cameras with the same remote control. We had been planning on purchasing a separate PTZ controller, but the remote works so well that we see no reason to expend the time and money for another device and cabling. Remember to use the remote control from the front quadrant to get clear reception. We may purchase another camera to fill out our coverage. Overall a great value for a great camera!

Was having issues after a firmware upgrade and it said zoom focus error they was able to fix it and also helped me set ip NDI couldn’t ask for better help from them great choice to go with Avkans!

Great items

I bought this camera to use for various outdoor and indoor video shoots for a musical performing group. I was able to (barely) get by with it for the first event, but there were enough video quality problems using it outdoors that Im going to return it. For use in indoor environments, this camera certainly seems usable to me, so I would have no trouble recommending it for someone who wants a basic PTZ camera for a conference room or whatever. In the process of testing this thing out, Ive written large amounts of custom software to throw commands at the device, enabling me to see exactly what does and doesnt work. Im providing this detailed review for anyone who cares about using this for semi-pro live streaming purposes, which tends to have much steeper requirements than, for example, a conference room camera. I hope this detailed review is helpful for folks when deciding whether the cameras limitations are something you can work with, and I hope the manufacturer addresses the firmware limitations Ive encountered in the near future. Indoor video quality: Video quality seems comparable to other cameras on the market, and having a 30x zoom is, of course, great. Its the difference between being able to put a camera at the back of a church and having to put it smack in the middle (though I do wish that the NDI camera manufacturers would include screw threads so you could put teleconverters on them for reach applications). Outdoor video quality: This camera seems to get the exposure badly wrong outdoors when you have a wide contrast ratio (e.g. brightly lit people in the foreground, but shadowed trees in the background), resulting in massively blown highlights. I did not experience this with other NDI cameras (NewTek, Marshall) in the same position, so this should be considered a bug in and of itself. (For that shoot, I was able to swap it with a different camera and put it in a spot where the lighting wasnt so challenging.) Unfortunately, unlike most other cameras on the market, this camera does not provide any web-based control over exposure. This firmware limitation really needs to be fixed ASAP, because unless youre using the camera in a conference room, youll probably eventually run into a situation where you really need exposure compensation. That said, in most indoor environments, it shouldnt be a problem, because the camera *does* have backlight compensation (brightening the highlights further), which is available from the remote and the web UI, IIRC. It is possible to partially work around this limitation with the right external hardware or software. Specifically, this camera supports full manual control over the shutter speed, iris, and gain. You can control that with VISCA-over-IP with the right software. I have not tested the NDI exposure adjustment APIs to see if they work. Its worth noting, however, that neither NewTeks video monitor app nor Siennas similar app supports any exposure control whatsoever, so the answer to that question is mostly academic. The biggest disappointment here was that the camera does *not* appear to support exposure compensation, even over VISCA — only full manual control. (Nothing happens when I send the exposure compensation set command; Ive tested the same code on Marshalls 4K cameras, and it works, so Im reasonably certain that this is an actual firmware limitation.) Unfortunately, the lack of exposure compensation makes it challenging to deal with this camera for what I was planning to use the camera for. Position recall: Like all NDI PTZ cameras, it fully supports storing pan/tilt/zoom locations for near-instant recall. If you have multiple cameras, you may find yourself using this frequently. The motion is fast, so youd never want to have it move on its own while the camera is live, but the feature makes it easy to point the camera at a known location while youre streaming video from a different camera (or other source). PTZ control: Over NDI, pan and tilt work as expected, but zoom control is a single speed (fast). Again, this is a common bug in a lot of these cameras; the same bug exists on cameras by NewTek and Marshall. The workaround is to control the cameras using VISCA-over-IP. VISCA-over-IP behavior: This camera supports two different VISCA-over-IP modes: TCP-based control on port 5678 and UDP-based control on port 52381. That last one was hard to discover; its not the port that PTZOptics uses (1259), and the protocol for UDP on that port requires somewhat different data than the TCP port does, or else weird stuff happens. I ended up finding out about the protocol differences by reading a document from Marshall about their IP cameras (very different hardware, but apparently similar firmware). With this mode, the camera supports... probably eight zoom speeds, though my limited testing so far couldnt confirm that all of the speeds are actually different; there are at least four distinct speeds, and probably eight. In other words, always use VISCA-over-UDP with this camera, at least in the current version of the firmware. Note that this problem is not unique to this camera. Ive seen the same bug with 4K30 cameras from Marshall and 4K60 cameras from NewTek. In other words, Im pretty sure the problems Im having are probably in the NDI SDK itself (or perhaps in their sample code). Besides the zoom speed bugs, theres one other bug I ran into. When a client disconnects suddenly and tries to reconnect, this camera can freeze, requiring you to power-cycle the camera. This bug also exists on older firmware revisions from NewTek (I have not seen this in v.105), and on current firmware from Marshall; this seems to be a really common firmware bug. As long as your network is robust, youre probably okay, but you should be aware of this bug. If the camera stops providing video, power-cycle it. (This is where PoE can come in handy.) The manufacturer has assured me that theyll take a look and try to figure out whats going on, as has the NDI SDK team. I could fairly reliably (accidentally) reproduce the failure as follows: 1. Open an NDI connection to the camera. 2. Disconnect the network for a while (no idea how long — maybe a minute or two). 3. Reconnect the network. 4. Try to reestablish the connection. Or instead of waiting, reboot the computer. That has the same effect. While in the crashed state, the camera responds to low-level network traffic (DNS service discovery), so NDI apps can see the camera, but you cant get video or audio packets from the camera. PTZ control is also nonfunctional, whether over the NDI protocol or VISCA-over-TCP (didnt try VISCA-over-UDP). In short, some critical process in the camera likely crashed or froze and never came back or got restarted. One other thing to be aware of is that the SDI connection sticks out a long way. Ive seen this on some other SDI gear as well, so this isnt unusual for SDI hardware, but it is baffling. Im not sure why they didnt use a standard BNC connector and went with one that sticks so much farther than normal, but it is what it is. Be aware of the snag risk. Also, be aware that the green block thats sticking out of your camera when you get it is a removable terminal block. It isnt obvious that it is unpluggable at a glance; I realized this when I bought a camera from another manufacturer, and they shipped a similar block, but in a plastic bag. Its probably worth unplugging that immediately unless you plan to use it, because having extra plugs sticking out the back of the camera is an accident waiting to happen, IMO.

I was in the market for at least 2 PTZ, NDI cameras that we could use with vMix to stream our Sunday church service. I did quite a but of research to see what was available and at what price, since my budget was quite low. Naturally I looked at the PTZ Optics and similar brands but they were out of my reach. I stumbled upon this camera and after reading what was available, I decided to buy 1 camera to tryout before buying a second one. Now Im not one to give a quick review either for or against a product before I have actually tested it properly. Nor am I one to give 5 stars unless Im completely satisfied and can find no fault in the product, for what I was expecting it to do. Furthermore, I have had my colleagues at the church operate the camera and listened to their feedback. After running the camera for 5 services lasting more than 2 hours each time, I can say that the camera performed flawlessly. The default picture quality of 1920x1080 @60fps is crisp and sharp, so we have been using that. There is no sound from the camera motors when it moves. We are connected via NDI to the vMix laptop and this works well. Point to note is that we are not using the built-in vMix PTZ controls nor are we using the controls from the cameras web interface. Surprisingly, PTZ Optics has a free utility on their website for controlling PTZ cameras and this is more powerful and flexible than either vMix or the native camera controls. This utility can control up to 8 PTZ cameras simultaneously and this is working well. After seeing how well the utility worked I decided to have a deeper look at the PTZ Optics camera interface. Lo and behold, it is exactly the same as this AVKANS camera. Im almost tempted to say its a PTZ Optics camera in disguise. So I have tested and used the NDI link and the direct HDMI link and they both work well. I have tested the PoE link and it works fine, however we dont use it since there is a power source near to where the camera is located. I have not tested the RS232 functionality. My final thought is that I would certainly recommend this camera and will definitely move ahead with buying 2 more. For the price and camera functionality, its certainly worth it.

Like other reviews, Ive been shopping for a PTZ camera to use with OBS to livestream our Churchs Worship services. Weve been using three static USB cameras purchased last spring when lockdowns first went into effect. One of the key features ive been looking for is NDI so we can use existing ethernet wiring and not have to invest in SDI cabling and computer inputs to get signals into OBS. I found that PTZ Optics NDI PTZ cameras seemed to be the gold standard, but couldnt justify the price in our small church. While watching many YouTube videos on PTZ cameras and OBS, i stumbled upon a review for this camera, and after a bit more research decided to pull the trigger on it. As other reviewers have noted, i believe this is a PTZ Optics camera in disguise... probably production overrun thats rebadged, but same camera, and thats a good thing! Image quality is excellent, and the camera operates silently while moving and changing views. Ive only used it connected via POE and NDI, and its great to only have one cable to route and connect for everything. Ive been using the open-source PTZ Optics control plug-in for OBS for controlling the camera from within OBS and it works great! Overall, i am considering this a great find! The only area for improvement for this camera would be that the included manual is lacking in detail and clarity, but since this is effectivley a PTZ Optics camera, there are lots of resources on YouTube and OBS forums for guidance and tutorials. In addition, ive received great support from Jenny at the [email protected] support email. Jenny has responded to my questions quickly each time, including sending me a document with all the HTTPS/CGI-BIN commands that this camera is capable of using for scripting control commands. This command capability gives a whole other level of control possibilities and im excited to learn to use them. If youre on the fence about this camera, just go ahead and order it and you will not be disappointed.