RossTalk is a plain text based protocol that allows control of the switcher from an external device.

The audio mixer interface allows you to tie audio channels, or pairs, to video sources on the switcher. As sources are taken on-air or off, the switcher sends commands to the audio mixer to bring the corresponding audio channels up or down.

Audio servers play and record audio clips in much the same way as a video server.

Auxiliary control panels allow you to control some switcher functions from a small remote panel. Depending on the type of panel you are using you can make source selections on different buses, run custom controls, or perform simple transitions.

Character generators (CG) are advanced graphics processing engines that can add complex graphical elements into the picture. Typically, a CG will output two video streams, a video stream and an alpha stream. The switcher can then add this graphical element as a key source to the final video output.

Port expanders serve two important functions for the switcher. First, they allow you to expand the number of devices you can control from the switcher by increasing the number of ports. Even with an ethernet connection the switcher must assign a port to that control interface. Secondly, some port expanders can convert between serial and ethernet communications, allowing a serial device to be controlled over ethernet from the switcher.

Editors allow you to use the switcher to perform basic video transitions and keying from an external device. Typically, an editor is used to cut a series of pre-recorded shots together to produce a finished show. The switcher is used to transition from one shot to the other and add any keys that are needed for the final show.

A lighting board is typically found in a studio environment and allows you to bring lights up and down as you transition from one camera to another in a different part of the studio. The switcher allows you to tie light levels to video sources in much the same way you would tie audio levels so that as you transition from one source to the other the light levels go up and down as required.

A monitor wall is typically a multi-panel display that can show multiple video source in different regions at the same time. The switcher can trigger events on the monitor wall and route video sources to different regions of the display.

The Peripheral Bus II (PBus II) is a basic ASCII string protocol use for limited device control.

Robotic Cameras are cameras, or camera controllers, that the switcher can control directly. This includes directional controls such as pan, tilt, and zoom, as well as functional controls such as iris, focus, and shot store/recall.

Routers allow you to manage the many video feeds coming in and out of our facility. A basic router can take any source and put it on any output. This allows you to save inputs on your switcher by having a single set of sources routed from the router to the switcher and then in the router select which sources are routed to those inputs on the switcher. From the switcher, you can control what sources and routed to the destinations connected to the switcher, fire salvos, get sources names, and send tally information back to the switcher.

Scoreboards are large multi-panel displays that are used to display scores and advertisements. The makeup of a scoreboard can be anything between a simple multi-segmented displays showing numbers for points and other statistics to a large multi-panel display capable of showing animations and graphics. The switcher interfaces to the scoreboard through the scoreboard control system to trigger events.

The contribution serial tally protocol allows you to wrap standard parallel tally signals in a serial transmission standard. The switcher encodes the tally information and sends it out a serial port to be decoded by an external serial tally box.

Use RossTalk commands to control another Acuity® switcher.

Under monitor displays (UMD) are typically used to show tally and source name information on a multi-screen display. The switcher can both send and receive this information using the UMD protocol.

A video processor is graphics engine that can also perform basic switcher functions, allowing you to create composite shots and transition between them or bring elements on or off-air.

A video server is a digital video recorder/player. You can have one or multiple channels of playout from the same video server at the same time. Each of these channels can be controlled from the switcher to cue, play, pause, rewind/fast-forward, or eject a clip.

A video tape recorder (VTR) is an older version of a video server that uses cassettes or tapes. In some more modern instances, it is only the Sony® Betacam™ protocol that is being used.