Video Transcript
Designer Basics
8m 8s
0:08
Welcome back. Now that we know the basics of video, let’s take a look at wiring the NV-32-H in
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the Q-SYS Designer software.
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As always, we recommend you follow along as you watch, even if you don’t have any
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hardware. So, come with me if you want to live.
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We’ll start by going to the Inventory panel and selecting the Video tab. You’ll find the NV-32-H
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near the top, and let’s click twice to add two of them to our design. We’re going to simulate a basic
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setup in which we have three HDMI sources in one room, and we’ll deliver those to a single HDMI
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display in another room. These sources and displays are represented by these items: “Generic HDMI
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Display” and “Generic HDMI Source” in the software, so let’s add those to our design too. We don’t care
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what manufacturer or model these devices are, we just need something in the Schematic to represent
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those devices.
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However, a nice benefit to having these devices in your inventory is that their statuses can be
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delivered to the Q-SYS Reflect Enterprise Manager, so you can get all the information on these sources and
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displays from your cloud-based monitoring system. Pretty neat, right?
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Like any Q-SYS networked peripheral, you’d want to make sure you give this inventory item the
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same name as an actual device that’s connected to your network. If you’re emulating this without
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hardware then obviously you can’t do this right now, but I’ll use the Q-SYS Configurator to find my
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devices on the network and name them appropriately in my inventory properties. And don’t forget to do
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your good housekeeping and give all your items a Location name, and particularly for your HDMI
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components you may want to label them so you know what they represent. Mine will represent a
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Rackmount PC, a Laptop, and a BluRay Player for the sources, and a Projector for the display.
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Once everything is named and organized, you have a very important task for your NV-32-Hs. By default
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they start as encoders, so be sure to look at the properties and change the “Device Type” to “Decoder”
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for any devices you’re using in this manner. For me, I have one encoder and one decoder. Now, let’s
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drag the most pertinent components of each item into our design so we can wire them together. Your
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Generic HDMI devices only have a single Status/Control block, so we’ll grab each of these. The NV-32-Hs
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have an “HDMI I/O Encoder” or “HDMI I/O Decoder” component, so drag these into your schematic as well.
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You’ll notice some new pin types you might not have seen before. The HDMI pin obviously represents a
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local HDMI port, while this other pin represents the encoded stream that goes across the network
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between two endpoints. We’ll call this an AV port, since it contains both the audio and video in the
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stream, and because the icon kind of looks like an A and a V that got fused together at their corners.
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However, rest assured that the HDMI pins also carry both video and audio. You’ll notice that the
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Decoders have an HDMI pin as well as audio pins, but these audio pins can be sent to the Core for
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routing and processing, especially if you’re using local reinforcement. These audio pins automatically
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follow the selected video, so there’s no need to write any extra control logic for that. But if you’re not
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reinforcing this audio with other loudspeakers, you don’t need to wire these pins to your display
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component at all. We’ll talk more about breaking audio away from the HDMI streams in a later video.
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Before you wire anything together, I want to point out that if you open these components’
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control panels right now, there is very little inside. In fact, the Decoder will even tell you that it’s useless
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because no display is wired to it.
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So, let’s wire them up! Wire your three HDMI sources to your encoder’s local HDMI inputs…
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Don’t forget that these generic objects in the designer are just “dummy” blocks. If you
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physically wire the BluRay Player into Port 1 but you label it a PC here in the software, you could get
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very confused later when you try to troubleshoot.
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To make the connection between the encoder and the decoder, you could wire these AV pins to
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each other, but I’m going to recommend that you use signal tags for this.
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It’s important to note as you do this, that on the Encoder side there is a direct one-to-one correlation of
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the HDMI inputs to the AV streams. HDMI Input 1 will always go to AV output stream 1, HDMI input 2
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will always go to AV output stream 2, and HDMI Input 3 will always go to AV output stream 3. However,
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once they’re encoded on the network, you can deliver them to a decoder in any order you like.
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Also, note that the Decoder has a default of three AV inputs, which in my small example is perfect. But if
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you have lots of video streams on the network, don’t worry—you’re not limited to only three options.
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Simply select the decoder and look at its properties, and adjust the “AV Input Count” field. This lets you
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add a lot more options for your encoded AV sources to select from for your Decoder’s outputs.
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Finally, wire your Decoder's HDMI outputs to your HDMI Display.
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Once this is wired up, the last and most important controls you’ll want to know about are here inside
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the Decoder’s control panel. These are the routing options for your displays. Most installers will simply
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drag and drop these buttons into your UCI to give the user the ability to do simple switching. That’s
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definitely the easiest route, however you can get pretty crafty here if you know a little Q-SYS Scripting.
6:04
By the way, you probably noticed that there are more input options than you probably expected. The
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first three options, labeled Graphics 1-3, will display one of three static images you can upload using the
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Core Manager, which are useful for displaying color test patterns, business logos, or standby screens.
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You can also select any of the three local non-encoded HDMI sources of the Decoder unit, if you have
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any sources located near this device. Finally, your encoded AV streams are listed at the end. If you’re
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curious why they’re listed last even though they seem like the most commonly used buttons, I’ll tell you.
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The graphics and local HDMI sources are fixed at three each, but you can customize the number of AV
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streams. This means you can add new AV streams later without breaking any logic you’ve built for
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activating the graphics or HDMI sources.
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If you were following along with real hardware, congratulations—you currently have a
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functioning design! Your media enters Q-SYS through an HDMI port on the encoder, and you can select
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to display that content across the network with the decoder.
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However, this was a very simple scenario. In the next videos we’ll get more complicated and show
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multiple displays, different source types, and breaking away the audio out from your HDMI streams.
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One final awesome feature I wanted to show you is you might have noticed a label called
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“USB Bridging” in the NV-32-H’s properties panel.
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In addition to managing HDMI video stream, NV Series doubles as an bridge for Q-SYS conference
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camera video and audio for use with soft codec conferencing application like Microsoft Team, Zoom, GotoMeeting, etc.
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This eliminates the need for an additional Q-SYS bridging endpoint device that needs to live at
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the table … less cost and less hardware.
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If you want to learn more about how to do USB Audio and Camera video bridging, we have a
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different tutorial for that. Alright! So take a quick break and move on whenever you’re ready.
Lesson Description
Designer Basics
8m 8s
A basic look at how to wire up the NV-32-H in the Q-SYS Designer Software.