BL
bluecortina
RyanE posted:
Looking at the rest of that programme from 1986, it looks as though the DVE had to be fed with two feeds as it was able to rotate one image into another as can be seen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIUXDnWlkR8
So each time they did a transition, they would have to select two feeds to send to the DVE, cut from the clean input to the DVE, perform the effect and then cut to the new on air input?


Yes, that’s exactly how they did it. Two or more aux outputs selected as required from the desk into the DVE.

RyanE posted:
Was a separate person responsible for the DVE in those days or did the person vision mixing control it?


That I’m not sure on that be honest. It depends where the DVE control was situated. In Bristol it was above the vision mixer, so it was possible for the same person vision mixing to also operate the DVE.


Ref your last point. It depended on the complexity of the production. Generally the DVE control panel(s) were within easy reach of the vision mixer and for something simple like ‘Blind Date’ the VM could easily do it. For something more complicated like ‘Saturday Night Live’ there’d be an additional VM to just operate the DVE although this generally consisted of recalling a list of pre-recorded effects, Later on we had staff who were dedicated (part time so not their entire job) to build effects for the VM’s. As integration between DVEs and vision mixers (electronics) became more widespread and better integrated it made everything somewhat easier as I’m sure you know.