use mixer video as mixer audio

Hello to everybody,
I have a question: can I use an audio mixer (with 2 channels) to mix
two cameras performing live?

Thank you,
Greg

 

If you mean, hook video into an audio mixer, no.
There are some DJ video mixers however that may have audio-tripped
effects tot he video, that's probably your best bet. Try Ableton Live
and see what you find from there.

There are some nifty post production tricks you can do in AfterEffects
that let the action in the video be altered based on the accompanying
sound wave forms, but those are not generally live effects.

In the old days, the way you got an analog switcher to wobble a wipe
border around a shot was to feed the wipe generator a modulated tone,
and if that tone was replaced by program audio, the border and edges
could be made to "vibrate" or wobble to the beat of your music or the
sounds of speech, etc.

But if you are wanting to automate video switching to follow audio,
such that a camera cuts when one person speaks and cuts away when
there is silence or another person speaks, and the Dj video mixers
don't do it, that's pretty much something you'll have to cobble up
yourself out of a couple of the "stick-on" audio modules you can find
at Markertek.com

What you'd want, I guess, is a sound-controlled (voltage-controlled)
relay sending a logic pulse to another relay switch that would
actually cut the video signal from one input to a second one. Tv
stations have a circuit something like this at the transmitter
sometimes called the "loss of signal" alarm: If the switcher output
goes dead, this box detects that and switches over to a "please stand
by, technical difficulties" graphic stored in memory, or to an
alternate program stream, whatever is hooked to it. usually it also
activates a "wake up, you imbecile" alarm at the C.E.'s desk and
perhaps the GM's pager or blackberry. This technology is not
something you throw together with a soldering iron on a rainy
weekend.

Parkervision used to have an automated switching system for very small
Tv station news operations with robotic PTZ cameras that would follow
you all over a set or lecture hall, because your wireless mic gave
them an IR homing signal. The switcher may have offered this "switch
to whomever is talking" feature as part of an automation package, the
circuitry was adapted from telephone conference-call systems. Some
other company bought Parkervision and promptly sunk it to where I can
not find it again. Pity. If you know whatever happened to them or more
importantly their products, please post.