Of course that doesn’t mean we haven’t been out there gigging or that we won’t be doing it next year. Expect some updates of updating events soon.
Simon

New Office time. Located on the beautiful Karangahape Rd district, it offers walking distance to the Strongest (Brazil) and also the worst (Starbucks) Coffee in the area. But heck – we’re getting a new coffee machine to celebrate anyway!
So, as of this weekend (Dec 2) you’ll find us at 49 Pitt St, just round the corner from our old (*sniff*) office @ Disrupt Gallery. The phones will be moving with us, but might be a few weeks behind. For now if you need to contact James or Simon please use our cellphones – the numbers are on the contact page.

UPDATE Phones are on! Our old number will get us again on 09 369-1540.

As far as SD mixer controls it has PinP (ala LVS or V4) and has 5 preset locales – 4 Corners & middle – and dials/joystick for PinP size & positions. Also there’s keying – no switch between Black Luma, White Luma & Chroma unfortunately – just and ON and a dial with a display to show its setting (0-255). You can mess with the keying more so in the OSD – and change the luma/chroma effect.
There’s 6 preset Wipes with hard buttons to them, along with Cut & Mix and an ‘Auto’ mix button (along with a dial for mix time).
The cross fader is the same as LVS & V4 but is always locked up and down, although the layout is more like a MX50 so it makes sense.
That pretty much sums up the SD side. Fader is responsive; it pretty much feels like a LVS-400 for its mixing.

High Def
And now we come to the real meat of the mixer – the HD side.
There’s basically 5 channels – 4 HD inputs and a 5th from the SD mixer. Layout is almost an exact copy to the SD side with some more buttons for each part.
Each input has its own Component (G,B,R,H,V or Y,Pb,Pr) & RGB (VGA) input, there’s a terminator switch so if you were to run in though component you can then pass them back out the RGB to a preview monitor. If you do need to run RGB to the mixer and have preview out you can get a RGB cable with BNC breakouts – they are essentially the same cable but with different ends.
Outputs are numerous – 2 Component outs (Y,Pb,Pr), 1 Component Preview and 3x RGB out.
Finally to cover all the back connections – there’s Tally lamp output 1 for SD and another for HD – this is awesome for those of use using this at concerts – even just to rough mix before post. Midi In/Out/Thru (x2) and an RS-232 port. No DVI. Period. This is a shame as its more and more common and may eventually completely replace RGB ins on consumer end plasmas/projectors. I would doubt though that Professional & rental gear would loose RGB/Component as its easier to amplify and distribute than DVI/Digital.
PinP has same buttons but also adds a PinP or Pan/Zoom setting. With the HD mixers high resolution you can also move & resize the feed anywhere on the screen.
Pan/Zoom allows you to, once you’ve placed the PinP on the screen and locked its location, switch to Pan/Zoom and then do exactly that – Pan or Zoom the feed on the B bus. With it on an SD camera feed this isn’t much use but if you were running a camera in on one of the other HD channels you could theoretically lock it off on the whole stage but then as you need to zoom the HD field to someone’s face or body shot – without moving the camera. This is only one application but I’m sure there would be others.
I know PinP isn’t exactly a VJ feature but interesting none the less.
Keying in HD is interesting, it sure does work and over pretty well. I have found the source footage that you’re keying through does seem to start looking a bit posterised especially just before the layer disappears. To be honest though this looks kinda cool and as the mixer doesn’t even have the most basic FX its good to have something to do live. Strangely though the dial for keying is an infinite dial and it takes like 15 turns to go from 0 to 255. I hope (and will look into if its adjustable to be faster to crank around).
I originally felt the actual fader and mixing was a little laggy (use fader, wait a sec, fade happens) but that seems to have been just me – or as this maybe based on a BEOS computer on the inside (anyone?) it could be just catching up and once its been on for a few mins runs fine….. maybe (I could be completely wrong on that).

THE DEEP END
Now for the truly great aspects of this mixer – the settings – as much as settings are exciting.
Each input (both SD & HD) can be controlled – from colour, brightness/contrast to size & location on the space it can all be controlled.
As with the V4 there’s memory presets so the more you use the mixer the better the mixer gets at doing what you want – there’s 15 presets.
On top of this you can build a 3×2 wall using up to 6 mixers all daisy chained and really get some next level shit going on – but you might want to save that for the VMA’s or such and not your 200 person club nights.

OUTPUT
Output quality (of the HD) seems good maybe a little high in contrast (blacks too black and there then being a gap between them and the nearest grey). There’s a switch on the top for switching between the 3 main resolutions (1080i, 720p & RGB).
I’m previewing this on a Dell 24″ LCD which for us Budget minded VJs is the cheapest HD preview monitor on the market (as well as a damn good screen for the price). It has inputs for SD (Composite & S-Video), HD/RGB (VGA & Component) & Digital (DVI). To be honest though as good/cheap as it is, it just doesn’t have the high quality imaging chips as professional monitors, so what I see could be directly connected to the Dell screen.

VJing
OK so you’ve robbed a bank, sold your mother or done various other things you’re just not proud of and have one of these mixers – now what. If you were at AVITUK last year you hopefully got to see Gerald Herlbauer talk and perform in HD, and I think his issues still remain – we have long since got over the SD hurdle of have computers playback multiple layers but HD is soooooo much bigger and even one layer is starting to push where we’re at right now. Some software deals with it well, such as Modul8, and deals with the canvas in a 3D realm and allows video cards to be used at 100% same as games. Modul8 allows you to run SD clips (as all of ours currently are) and upscale them WITH anti-aliasing – so all our low res (640×480) clips still look relatively good and don’t show blockiness.
I think the ideal usage of our current software and clips is more in the composition and performance end – instead of thinking in the sense of a 4:3/16:9 box how about projecting on to the whole stage, with squares/shapes placed in less obvious positions and then playback SD clips @ 100% in to just those parts. I’ve seen things like this happen before – I hate to say it – but kinda like an Idol stage. You want to place a video over in that left corner of the stage – no problem – click video, move it to location – fun.
Add to this current playback mediums that aren’t computer based is limited – everyone’s got an HDV camera but no one has an HDV deck – use the camera as a feed and then screw one of your playback devices. Hmmm, I’m yet to see anything serious from the HDDVD or Bluray areas and I doubt any of your are getting much time playing them.
Of course next is actually performing in HD live – 1080 native projectors are few and expensive. Damn it – in fact, although there’s home theatre projectors that are doing 720p native I think you’ll have problem finding them in rental or installed in clubs. So that means we come back to 1024×728 which I think we’ll be running with for a few more years. So when it comes down to it – is it worth a 40% increase in image size for a $10000+ mixer? I don’t think so.

So HD live cameras – check, HD source material – nearly, HD output – nope. Not quite there.

Also penciled in for November was AVIT Australia, although its currently unconfirmed.

So we smashed up the case a little bit more and now have about half of a job done. I got impatient so got on to testing we hadn’t fucked it and to make sure windows would still run – and it did. So now its booting to XP, and starts a screensaver after 1min – currently the best screensaver for this is Motionpicture which is a blatant copy of the original OSX screensaver, its freeware and pretty feature complete.
I also installed Picasa to organize the photos on the frame and allow simple dumping of more pics from cards and USB keys.
Might also add a wireless mouse for easy operation.

But for now heres a pic of a Digital Photo Frame I’m building at the moment.

Take one pretty dead laptop (Compaq Amada – no keyboard, HD or Battery) but good enough to run 2000/XP (P3-1ghz, 14.1″ Screen), add Frame ($15 warehouse) and coffee. Not finished yet though, maybe next weekend.