I was at FOH mix position the other day and had a look at the mixing desk and on the back was a DMX interface. What? Why on earth would anyone want to use DMX out of a sound console? Surely they don’t expect the sound guy to control lights too? What’s next — the video guy controlling sound? But then I thought, what if I were all alone in a ballroom at a corporate gig? What if I operated the switcher at my church? What if I operated a webcast in a studio that had to change equipment all the time?

The world of video switching gets thicker and more competitive by the month, it seems. For example, the small-to-medium multi-format market is booming right now — and for good reason. Lots of different devices offer lots of different I/O options. Designers “in the biz” realize that they need to provide a lot of bang for the buck, and it usually falls upon the technical crew to come up with the solution.