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Cinebot Mini/Max — Self Mimic Setup

CONFIRMED CINEBOT MINI/MAX FLAIR 7

What This Is

Self Mimic records the motion of the robot's own axes while you drive them in free drive or Push Moco, then plays that recorded motion back as a move — without needing external mimic hardware (pan bars, handwheels). It's the same underlying recording mechanism as external mimic, just pointed at the robot's own encoders and applied one axis (or a few) at a time.

This is different from a normal Push Moco move, which only stores keyframes at the points you press store. Self Mimic captures the continuous motion between those points too, so a hand-driven camera move can be recorded and replayed exactly as performed — not interpolated between sparse keyframes.

Recording a Self Mimic Move

  1. If you don't already have a move, go to View > Mimic to open the mimic dialog. This shows a list of axes with a recording-source setting per axis.
  2. For each axis you want to record, set its source to Encode Position (recording the robot's own motor position). Other input sources — e.g. handwheels with their own encoders — can also feed a mimic recording, but for pure self-mimic you're recording the robot against itself.
  3. You don't need to record every axis. Pick only the ones you're actually moving (e.g. rotate, lift, arm, tilt, pan).
  4. Turn on Push Moco (or free drive) and press Start — this begins recording.
  5. Move the camera through the shot.
  6. Press Stop, then Use Recording. This creates a move containing the full recorded motion (not just start/end keyframes) — you can see it as a continuous curve in the graph view.

Playing It Back

Once recording finishes, the axes you recorded automatically switch from Learn to Playback. Turn off Push Moco, then Forward Run > Go to Beginning > Shoot to play the move back.

Adding Another Axis to an Existing Recording

A common workflow is to record one axis (e.g. the arm) first, then add another (e.g. focus) as a second pass over the same move:

  1. Leave the axes you already recorded set to Playback — don't touch them.
  2. Set only the new axis you want to add to Learn, with its source set to Encode Position (or the relevant input).
  3. Close the mimic dialog. The system state changes to Mimic Learn.
  4. If the new axis is driven by an external control (e.g. a wireless hand controller on a Tilta motor) rather than the robot's own drive, turn off Flair's control of that axis first so the external controller has authority — Flair and a hand controller can't both drive the same motor at once.
  5. Press Forward Run. You'll be prompted that "existing mimic data will be overwritten — run the move anyway" — this only affects the axis set to Learn; axes set to Playback are unaffected. Confirm.
  6. The move plays back the already-recorded axes while recording your new input on the Learn axis live.

Acceleration warnings on Learn axes

A hand-driven Learn axis can produce faster motion than that axis's configured acceleration/velocity limits allow, especially if the axis setup hasn't been tuned for that motor. Flair will warn about this — either increase the axis's acceleration limit in its axis setup, or accept the warning and continue (it's advisory, not a hard stop).

YouTube 39 - Self Mimic on Cinebot Flair 7

▶ Full recording, playback, and multi-pass axis workflow demonstrated live

Source: MRMC video tutorial "39 - Self Mimic on Cinebot" (Cinebot Mini/Max & Flair 7 Training playlist)