Grass Valley Shows Off New Functionality for Kayenne Switcher

Grass Valley’s Kayenne continues to heat up the video-production-switcher marketplace, exhibiting new functionality at NAB that Grass Valley executives believe will keep the switcher top of mind with remote-production professionals.

“Kayenne is doing very well, and the adoption rate is strong,” says Scott Murray, GM, Live Production Solutions, for Grass Valley.

Among the new features that he says will continue Kayenne momentum is Suites Mode, which provides two panels on one switcher and allows them to operate like two control rooms. At the Spevco booth at NAB, Suites Mode is on display in Mobile TV Group’s new 26HDX mobile unit in the form of two production areas that can handle 3D and 2D productions from one truck.

“Our next version of Kayenne software will also address 3D by taking advantage of floating assignable keyers,” says Murray. “That way, users don’t need to burn two M/Es, and the equivalent of a 4M/E switcher can sit on one M/E. You don’t need to cut the switcher resources in half.”

Another new feature is an optional ClipStore based on Grass Valley’s K2 Summit and K2 Solo video servers. Working in tandem with Kayenne’s current internal ImageStore, it enables operators to store and recall still images and video clips.

The four-channel 2RU integrated server system allows Kayenne users to access a library of SD or HD video for animations, replays, or any other type of video from the switcher’s ImageStore menu panel and E-MEM/Cue systems. The existing six optional ImageStore Channels (for stills) are not tied up when using the new K2-based ClipStore system for video. The ability to create folders and clip names has also been incorporated into the ImageStore menu to make it easier to manage the large amount of content now available.

With the new ClipStore for Kayenne, clips are loaded immediately. With no need for a cache, stored images are unaffected by power hits (there is no cache to reload). The ClipStore menus are fully integrated into the main menu system, with full access from the panel and E-MEM system, and the ClipStore can provide up to 10-plus hours of HD clip storage (versus about 60 seconds in other RAM-based solutions).

“The new ClipStore option is ideal for producing more-complex on-screen effects, such as animated transitions and replay wipes. And no other production switcher offers 10 hours of clip storage at such a cost-effective price,” says Grass Valley SVP Jeff Rosica. “In addition, we think Kayenne-switcher operators will embrace this new integrated-server capability because now they won’t lose their cache contents if a reset or power failure occurs.”

The Kayenne ClipStore option with either the K2 Summit (four-channel) or K2 Solo (two-channel) server provides up to four video/key pairs (two with K2 Solo) and more than 10 hours of non-volatile video/key/audio clip content. To streamline workflows, the K2/ClipStore has been tightly integrated into the native ImageStore, so both can be transparently controlled from the Kayenne touchscreen GUI and main control panel. Because they are full-bandwidth channels, when not in video/key mode, the same device can record/play left-eye/right-eye video sources for stereoscopic 3D.