Almost Live with Streaming Media: Roland Systems VR-50HD All-in-One A/V Mixer

Video Mixing

In my video mixing section, I have quite a few different aspects to the screen here. I can use my MultiView. I can also switch the input. I can look at my still and I can do my program view. You notice from my MultiView I can actually tap on the function that I want to go to. For example, maybe I have a wipe going on, but if I switch over to a mix, and hin my output, you can see when I switch from one source to another, so it does a nice fade between sources half the time that I specified here on this knob. Same goes with if I touch on a source. If I touch on that source you notice that I had that nice fade between sources and that goes off my time knob here. So I have a few wipes I can set up there as well.

Setting up the unit is very simple. You hit your Input Assign button. That brings up all your choices for each one of your one through four sources. For 1 and 2, you have the option of going SDI, HDMI, composite, or RGB component. And then on input 3 and 4, you have options of SDI or HDMI. It’s really simple to get going and set up. You actually have four layers of composition.

Let’s say I have a picture-in-picture. I have a keynote that's set up like a PowerPoint presentation. If I hit picture-in-picture, that'll go live on my program feed. Another thing I've set up is on a keynote, I've actually keyed out a black background with an overlay for a lower-third that's announcing somebody. When I want to take that live, I hit my picture-in-picture key button and then that shows up on my programs.

And finally, I have one last type of key that I can do and it's called a still key. So if I hit that still key, that's actually going to take my still that I have loaded onto my USB and put that over all the other layers I have going on there. So there are lots of layers of compositing that I can do to make a really professional output.

Shawn: So this truly is an all-in-one video and audio mixer and AD mixer.

Doug: Absolutely. It's all in one package and the VR line is a very, very popular line. We've been waiting for the high-definition version and we think we really got everything on this one.