Tutorial: Live-Switched Production with the Roland VR-50HD Multi-Format AV Mixer

Compositing Multi-Layered Images

When compositing with the VR-50HD, you can use up to 4 video layers simultaneously. Figure 14 (below) shows a background video, a picture-in-picture (upper right), a picture-in-picture key (the keyable image shown at lower left), and a still key (the logo at lower-right). 

Figure 14. A 4-layer composited video. Click the image to see it at full size.

From the menu system you can change some of the parameters from the defaults shown in Figure 14. For example, say you wanted to get rid of the blue frame around the picture-in-picture clip in the lower-left corner. You'd click the Composition Setup button (Figure 15, below) and then, in the LCD menu, select Edit > PiP > Detail (Figure 16, below Figure 15), and then adjust the Border Width (Figure 17, below Figure 16) to 0 by turning the dial to the left to completely remove it, or I can turn the dial to the right to make it larger (although I'd never want to do that). I can adjust the color using the same set of controls--changing it, for example, to a more neutral gray. 

Figure 15. Click the Composition Setup button.

Figure 16. Choose Edit > PinP > Detail in the LCD menu.

Figure 17. Select and adjust the Border Width in the PinP Detail menu.

So those are some of the different options we have, as well as moving the inset images around, changing the size, and so forth. So we really have a lot of options with the VR-50HD as far as compositing goes.

Customizing Input Assignments

Hypothetically, you can connect 12 different devices to this video switcher and, using the menu system and different buttons, choose from up to 12 different inputs. For all intents and purposes, it's a 4-input switcher, but expandable up to 12 if you do the right kind of input-assigning and selecting.

If you go into the Input Assignment menu by clicking the Input Assign button (Figure 18, below), you can see that each of your inputs has a few different options (Figure 19, below Figure 18). You can choose between an SDI, an HDMI, a Composite, or an RGB/Component input. There are actually 4 different inputs that can go into that one input, so it's almost like Input 1 is the channel, and you can have 4 different inputs there. Input 2 is the same; Inputs 3 and 4 are restrictired to SDI and HDMI.

Figure 18. The Input Assign button.

Figure 19. The Input Assign menu.

Let's say I want to add a fourth video input to this project, an HDMI input from my laptop. I click the Input Assign button to go into the Input Assign menu, and change the input from SDI to HDMI. In the Input menu we can select the output resolution of the Program output (720p, in this case; other options include 1080p and 1080i, plus SD 4:3 and SD 16:9, and a bunch of computer resolutions). In addition, we can also adjust the USB Streaming output by toggling between 480p, 720p, and 1080p.

The reason why all of the USB Streaming resolutions are progressive is because that's the way we want to be streaming, and that's the way we want our consumers to be consuming our video. There's no interlacing anymore when it comes to web video. Internally, the switcher does its own deinterlacing and turns it all into progressive on the USB side. You can still have interlaced video on the Program side if you so choose and if there's a requirement for that.