Audiovisual Equipment

An audiovisual system is organised as a chain. At capture sit the cameras, the microphones and the content sources; at processing, the video mixers, the scalers, the screen processors and the matrices that decide which signal goes to each destination. Distribution handles the transport — SDI, HDMI, fibre or AV over IP with NDI, Dante and SMPTE ST 2110 — and fixes the latencies and formats everything else will work with.

In projection, the kit does not end at the projector: the projection surface decides as much as the lens. A projection screen is a surface — white, grey or high-gain — calculated to return the light with a given contrast and viewing angle, and it is chosen by format before brand: fixed tensioned frame in rooms and permanent installations, roll-up and motorised where the space has other uses, portable and tripod for events and touring presentations, and rear projection where the beam cannot cross in front of the audience. Gain, contrast ratio and useful angle are the parameters that pair screen and projector; getting them wrong wastes lumens you have already paid for.

The last link is reproduction: projectors, professional displays, video walls and sound systems that return to the audience what went in at the other end. To that chain are added the layers that make it operable — control and automation, monitoring, redundancy and storage — and those that hold it up physically, from rigging to cabling. Getting it right depends less on the catalogue than on how the pieces fit together — resolution, refresh rate, colour space, sync and control protocol — because that is where an excellent piece of kit can be rendered useless next to the wrong one. That fit is decided in audiovisual production and realised in audiovisual installations.