Edirol Breaks Price Barrier with Feature Packed Small Sized Super Affordable Live Videomixer

The mixer has four inputs for mixing between for different video sources. The video mixer is designed for live performances, weddings, church video feeds, Video Jockeys at clubs - but it still is perfect for the hobbyist videographer or the wedding and event videographer. The new price range even brings live video mixing and multi camera shoots to consumers - for an affordable price - less than some professional video editing software.

As the press release states the V-4 has many "effects including Chroma-key, Luminance-key, Colorize, Strobe, Picture-in-picture, Mirror, Multi-screen, Negative, Still (Field or Frame freeze), Solarize, Color filter. The V-4 also has over 200 different transition effects, from simple dissolves & fades, to complex wipe patterns." In my opinion, with out reviewing it, just based on the information that is give here, this sounds like a revolutionary product. The chromaky feature could be used to do live titling and the included effects are great.

The mixer has two video Buses (A and B), which effectively means that you can display only two video sources on the screen at the same time (although you have four sources to choose from, two busses is most common in under $10,000 video mixers). You basically put one source in one bus and the other source that you want to transition to into the other bus. You are live on one bus and the other bus is the bus you will be transitioning to or your next source. When you execute a transition you switch from one bus to the other. Each bus allows you to pick one of the four video inputs. The video buses have one button for each video source and each button has a light to indicate if it is pressed or not. As you mix you select a source from the bus that is not currently live, and switch from one bus to the other to bring that source live. You do this over and over to do live mixing. The mixer includes many transitions for switching between sources.

This mixer packs great tools into a tiny package to what appears to be something that will allow you to mix live video with ease. The mixer has a preview out monitor so you can preview all four of your sources. The V-4 also includes a fader bar for doing transitions, including cross fades between sources. It seems the buttons are hard plastic for selecting sources and transitions (unlike the hated soft buttons of the closest $2500 competitor the Videonics MXDVPro).

The mixer also includes a preview out feature which we don't know about exactly what the preview monitor functions as but we assume it shows you what effects you have selected and allows you to preview a source. There are LED's on the front of the mixer which display which source is being previewed.

Other features are that there are hard controls for selecting effects and selecting which types of effects with dials both on the left and the right. The mixer also gives you four types of transitions (not including the many options of each type of transitions). Straight cross fade, cut (called mix), wipe and a VJ friendly (Beat-Per-Minute) transitions which I'm totally confused about at this time). I think it works by measuring the beat per second of music that is being played and fades in sync with that beat. You can select the type of effect you use by pressing round lit buttons. One last feature we noticed was a nice fade to black dial.

Live multi-cam mixing is a great way to shoot video, in fact it's my favorite way. The problem is that for a long time the entry point for a live video mixer was $1,000 - $2,000 so the consumer hobbyist could not get involved. Live multi camera mixing is what all the professionals do. You run multiple camcorders, operated by one or multiple people. You hook them into your mixer and then you have once camcorder line up a shot ''take it'' or go to that shot, tell the other camcorder to get the next shot and then ''take it'' some productions use up to 10 camcorders and I think I heard that the Super Bowl uses 30 some cameras. The director picks which shots to take.

If your just shooting a play for your family. You can take two camcorders place them next to each other and operate them both and the mixer at the same time. It takes a little practice but I've done it before. It means you don't have to have fast pans and zooms to cover all the action and you can edit your production live with multiple camcorders - giving it a very professional look.

With for inputs you can have up to four camcorders. You can also use one input for a VCR for playback (say for pre recorded segments or for opening credits or for instant replay). You could also do live titling with the chromaky feature. The mixer includes according to the press release "V-Link, an exciting new feature from Edirol and Roland that provides for real-time performance control over digital video, for the ultimate in creative expression. V-Link allows the user to trigger clips, perform video effects and transitions in real-time when connected with the Edirol DV-7PR (sold separately). The V-4 video mixer also has MIDI in/out/through, for real-time or sequenced control of video sources with effects and transitions."

The DV-7PR is effectively a music and digital video playback system. The system is also a stand alone video editor. We couldn't find a price on this system but I believe it is in the $10,000 range - so it does not seem like a feasible add on for the V-4.

The Edirol V-4 will be available in January 2003 the company said. I'm very excited because live video mixing is my favorite part of video - the adrenaline rush from doing a live show is like nothing you've ever experienced before. No one has come out with a serious and such low cost video mixer for a while and I really hope this product turns out to be quality. Hopefully they will have a model available at CES and we can provide a review then.