Video Lab Overview

Easy version

Almost all of the equipment in the video lab racks is software controllable through a big matrix routing switcher. Most common tasks can be accomplished through the Web imagemap interface. Click with the middle mouse button on a source, and then with the left mouse button on a destination. That's it. We have pictures for most the equipment, and text for everything. Both are clickable. Note that when you move the mouse over something, you can see its name.

Each piece of equipment has its own page. All these pages are linked into the equipment page, including some stuff like cameras that aren't routable. Most of the equipment pages have a thumbnail picture of the device on the page, along with its English name, model number, and the machine-readable (telect) name.

Many common tasks are explained on the tutorials page.

More detail

Most video equipment in the lab can act as some combination of source, sink, or bridge. For instance, a monitor is a sink. A camera is a source. A tape deck is both a source and a sink. An NTSC encoder is a bridge. There are six "levels" in the main matrix routing switcher. Each level carries a different kind of signal. Below are the levels, with official names first: There are many ways to convert from one level to another. The most general purpose bridges are the DPS timebase corrector/transcoders. For the common case, just use the imagemap interface to bridge through those transcoders.

The Web imagemap interface routes all levels. For more fine control, you can use the "telect" client directly. See the telect client page for details on the command-line syntax.

There is a seventh level which is not in the Telect matrix. The high-bandwidth RGBS signals are routed through a manual patch panel, which is not computer controllable. A high-bandwidth RGBS signal is usually the output of a computer - for instance, a 1280x1024 screen. Sources are usually computers, sinks are usually high-end monitors or projectors.

Yet another (eighth) level is the manual patch panel for deck control and keyboards/mice. See the Control Patch Panel (RS-422) page for more details.

Additional notes

You may wonder why both the CAV and RGBS are called "component". This has been a big source of confusion. In video land, what they call component is usually CAV. In the old rack, what we called component was really RGBS. A few pieces of equipment (like the Lyon Lamb) can handle both. Most decks take CAV in, but many monitors only take RGBS. Currently, RGBS is deprecated and new items are added as CAV if possible.

Troubleshooting

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sgl-videolab@graphics.stanford.edu
sgl-videoprod@graphics.stanford.edu
Last modified: Sun Apr 7 08:02:48 PST 2002