SVG@NAB Perspectives: Ross Video's David Ross Showcases Acid Cam, XPression Tessera, New Acuity and Carbonite Black Switchers

Ross Video made a big splash at its 2016 NAB Show press conference on Sunday, unveiling the company’s first-ever camera, the Acid Cam, while offering new versions of Carbonite Black and Acuity production switchers and XPression graphics engines.

In a unique move, Ross has unveiled the Acid Cam, a camera system and stand-alone chroma key system, as a way to address the creative control of the production look, with emphasis on virtual environments.

ACID cameras feature a new signal format developed by Ross to overcome the difficulties of creating good chroma keys. ACID outputs standard SMPTE 4:2:2 video signals for use in any production, but in addition output a special 0:4:4 full bandwidth color signal that is combined with the primary output within the new Carbonite UltrachromeHR system to generate a full resolution 4:4:4 signal.

On the production switcher side, all Acuity systems are being shown with version 4.0 software, which offers new operational features like Split M/E, DVE Warps, Lighting Engine, and support for the new MultiProcessing Input card option.

Also being shown are the new Acuity DoubleDown panels, designed for live environments with large I/O systems – like sports. DoubleDown bus models are a premium option that doubles the number of key/aux bus-assignment buttons for every M/E row. This greatly reduces or eliminates the need for shifts entirely.

In addition, Ross is also bringing major new offerings in its only-year-old offering of Carbonite Black production switchers. Carbonite Black Solo is a compact switcher jammed with 9 inputs and 6 outputs. On the input side Solo has 6 SD/HD-SDI connections and 3 HDMI inputs, and there are 6 floating frame synchronizers with format converters that can be assigned to any input, so connecting those unreferenced sources is simple. For outputs there are 5 SDI and one HDMI, all completely assignable.

On the higher end of the spectrum is Carbonite Black Plus. In this newest version all 36 inputs come equipped with Frame Synchronizers, Format converters, Color Correction and Proc amps. In addition to this, Carbonite Black Plus provides Proc amps, Color Correction and Format Conversion on 12 of its 25 outputs.

On the graphics end, the XPression engine continues to boom for the company. As a result, Ross is showing its new XPression Tessera, a multi-display real-time graphics designer and controller that enables users to link together multiple XPression engines to create a scalable matrix of channels for seamless output of scenes across large or irregularly assembled display panels. The system is designed for today’s massive videoboards in sports venues.

The Tessera Region Manager permits operators to divide scenes into regions and assign those regions to specific nodes. It allocates the XPression engines and channels to be used as render nodes. The XPression Project Server handles automatic one-click publishing of scene updates and resources to all nodes for ultimate efficiency.