Interactive Router Control

This article covers features which are only available in Livegrade Studio.

In addition to defining routing presets (see Controlling an External Video Router for more information) Livegrade Studio has a dedicated view for directly controlling a video router and monitor routings visually. 

The video router view displays all inputs and outputs of a connected video router, and lets you interactively change routings.

Show and Hide the Video Router View

You can show and hide the video router view with the “Router” button in the toolbar. You can also “undock” the video router view from the main window by clicking the window button on the right top of the header bar of the video router view.

Connecting to a Video Router

Choose an auto-detected router in the “Router” popup button, or choose the router model family you have (AJA Kumo or Blackmagic Design Smart VideoHub), enter the IP address or hostname of your router and click the connection button besides the field for the IP address. You can disconnect the video router at any time by clicking the connection button again.

Managing Connections 

The Video Router view displays all connections between input ports and output ports currently active in the connected video router.

Usually an input port can be connected to multiple output ports, but an output port can only be connected to one input port. Connections between ports are displayed as colored lines.

Input ports are displayed on the top of the view (on the left in vertical layout), output ports are displayed on the bottom of the view (on the right in vertical layout). The ports display the port number in the router (the circled number), and one or two rows of the name of the port.

Names of ports can be configured in the administration interface of your video router. Please refer to the manual of your router how to do that.

When connections change (either from within the application or from outside, e.g. by using a hardware control panel or the web UI), the changing connections flash in white to indicate the change.

Changing Connections via Selecting Ports

You can select a port by clicking on it. The port and it’s current connections get highlighted. You then can click on one of the ports of the other port type to change a connection:

For example when an input port is selected first and an output port is selected second, the output port changes its connection to the selected input port. You can achieve the same effect by selecting an output port first and selecting the input port second.

Changing video routing connections by clicking on ports

You can select ports also from the utility menu in the wedge button in the header bar of the Video Routing view, or from the main menu by choosing one of the entries in the “Interactive Video Routing” submenu of the “Video Routing” menu in the application menu.

You can assign keyboard shortcuts to the selection of ports with the Keyboard Shortcuts manager.

You can assign MIDI events to the selection of ports with the MIDI mapper.

You can also right-click on each port button to inspect and change the connected port(s).

Changing Connections via Drag-and-Drop

Each port has a small colored circle besides it. You can drag a line from this circle to the port that you want to make  connection with.

Video Routing Configurations

You can setup video routing configurations as shortcuts to changes of one or more connections. See Controlling an External Video Router for more information.

Configured video routing configurations show up as menu items in the in the wedge button in the header bar of the Video Routing view.

You can also use the current state of the video router with all its connections as a starting point for a new configuration. Choose “Save Current Connections…” in the menu of the wedge button in the header bar of the Video Routing view.

Configuring the Video Routing Interaction

You can view connections either in horizontal layout or vertical layout. Choose “View in Vertical Layout” or “View in Horizontal Layout” menu items in the in the wedge button in the header bar of the Video Routing view to change the layout.

You can set the color of the connection lines in the Preferences.  Choose a color scheme in the “Interactive Video Routing Appearance” section of the “Advanced” preferences tab.