Controlling an External Video Router

Video routers often sit at the core of a flexible video setup in a DIT cart. Video routers have multiple input and output ports and allow to easily switch the connections between these ports. Livegrade comes with the ability to control a video router and to apply pre-defined configurations of connections – either manually or on certain events such as switching slots in the application’s user interface.

The various HD-SDI setup options with Livegrade are described in the article HD-SDI Setup Options.

Video routing with cameras, monitors, LUT boxes, capture devices and video output devices

 

Livegrade Studio has an additional, dedicated view for directly controlling a video router and monitor routings visually. See Interactive Router Control for detailed information.

You need to have a working network connection between the computer running Livegrade and the video router. For setting up the network, please refer to the manual of your video router.

Managing Video Routing Configurations

From the main menu, you open the Video Routing Configurations window by choosing “Video Routings -> Manage Configurations…”  from the application menu.

Video Routing Configurations panel

The Video Routing Configurations window shows a list of your configured configurations, and options to edit, duplicate, and delete a selected configuration. You can also test the selected configuration by clicking the “Apply Configuration…” button.

You can rename a configuration by double-clicking the entry in the list.

The configurations have an automatically assigned index number for easier referencing (e.g. when using Stream Deck devices for remotely applying configurations).

You can change the order of the configurations by dragging and dropping a configuration entry in the “Manage Configurations” window.

Creating a new video routing configuration

By clicking the “New Configuration…” or choosing  “Video Routings -> New Configuration…”  from the application menu, you open the dialog for creating a new video routing configuration.

In order to be able to create connections between in and out ports of your router, you need to connect to the router first. This is needed, so that the application can fetch a list of ports and their names from the 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) and enter the IP address or hostname of your router. Click the “Fetch IN/OUT Information” button. If the router’s information has been fetched successfully, the controls below the connection table get enabled and you can start create new connections.

Editing a video routing configuration

Click the “+” button to create a new connection and “-“ to remove the selected connection.

When clicking the “+” button below the connection table, you can choose which input (IN) port should be connected to which output (OUT) port. Choose the ports according to your setup and click “Add”. You can edit the connection at any time by double-clicking the connection.

Only connections of shown OUTs will be changed when the routing configuration is applied. All other output ports of your router will remain unchanged when applying this configuration.

You can test your current configuration by clicking the “Apply Configuration” button. The configuration will become active in the connected video router.

You can sort the connection table by IN our OUT ports, and you can choose if the selected column is sorted by name or port number with the “Sort Criteria” controls below the table.

When clicking “Load All Connections…” you can fill the connection table with the current, complete routing configuration of your video router. This can be useful as a starting point for complex routing configurations with lots of connections.

When clicking “Save…”, you will be prompted a name for the video routing configuration, and the configuration appears in the list of configurations in the Video Routing Configurations window.

Applying video routing configurations via the menu and keyboard shortcuts

Once a video routing configuration is saved, it will also appear in the “Video Routings” submenu of the application menu. When choosing one of the stored configurations in the menu, the configuration gets applied to the connected router.

You can assign keyboard shortcuts to the menu entries for individual video routing configurations with the Keyboard Shortcuts Manager. This allows you to easily switch between video routing configurations with keyboard shortcuts.

See the article about the Keyboard Shortcuts Manager for more information.

Applying video routing configurations from Stream Deck

You can also apply up to 20 video routing configurations from Stream Deck devices using the Stream Deck plugin.

Additionally you can edit your video routing remotely using Stream Deck, by selecting up to 20 video inputs and video outputs on your active video router.

Automating video routing configurations

You can automate video routing configurations by using them as actions in the Automation Manager. This allows you to for example change the routing configuration when switching slots.

With the automation actions, you can also move a configured capture device from one slot to another. When the routing automation routes the right signal into the capture device, you can use one capture device for multiple cameras – e.g. for monitoring live image and camera metadata in the current slot.

See the article about the Automation Manager for more information.