The Panel Is In:
An Operator's View of the
Ideal User Interface

by Mike Krim

In 1969, when the TV business was already 25 years old, Grass Valley Group, a young electronic engineering company headquartered in a town with the same name, in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California's Gold Country, introduced a radical new idea in production switcher design: a standardized operator panel. At the time, production switching was dominated largely by custom-made products, designed by such companies as RCA, Sarkes Tarzian and Richmond Hill. The 1400 series, as Grass Valley called it, was unique because it was a complete family of standard production switcher products, all sporting essentially the same panel layout, the same type of control buttons and levers, and combinations of features from essentially the same feature set. The idea of standard panels and features was an almost instant hit.

With widespread acceptance of the standardized switcher, operators soon developed virtuoso control over the panel, learning where functions and setups were almost by second nature. Soon, skilled operators were part of the creative force in television, developing reputations for their ability to create magic through their expert control of the switcher. Operators started to get hired for their creative talent as much as for their technical skills.

By the mid-'70s, operators were talking about a switcher's look and feel — that package of image qualities and tactile response of controls that give the operator a feeling of confidence, certainty and command.

A state-of-the-art component digital switcher [courtesy GVG]

The standard panel, or what might be called the standard user interface, permitted engineers to focus on new issues, and a steady flow of new features entered the market: integrated mixer/keyers, borderline key edging, shadow chroma-key, rotary wipes and a serial editor interface. In 1976, two features, integrated digital video effects and E-MEM effects memory, changed production switching forever. Now, with E-MEM, operators could flawlessly recall and repeat complex switcher setups and effects sequences. And digital video effects gave operators creative control over the TV images themselves, letting operators control shape, color and motion. E-MEM and a handful of digital video effects systems, such as GVG's Mark II DVE, Vital's Squeezoom, NEC's DVE, Ampex's ADO and Quantel's DPM-5000, were the true forbears of computer-generated imagery. With growing creative control over picture manipulation, the push was on to optimize the switcher for the demands of live production and for a larger role in post-production.

Overnight, TV viewing audiences were introduced to the hall-of-mirrors, flying logos, tumbles, page turns and spinning multi-channel cubes with a different image on each side. Increasingly, these effects were programmed into the switcher, as switcher designers adopted more and more technology from the computer industry and as switcher manufacturers hired more and more software engineers.

The digitization of video that came with digital video effects instructed producers in the creative possibilities of multiple generations of video without image degradation. Immediately, video editors began to adapt the audio editing tactic of making multiple passes through the program material to build effects, layer upon layer.

By the early 1980s, there was an army of switcher operators in video production — and another army in post-production — who could go from coast to coast, sit in almost any control room or suite and within a short time begin to work their magic on video. Through successive generations of switchers, operators had defined their territory and selected their tools: illuminated buttons here, T-bar levers there, displays here, soft-keys there, knobs here, joystick there, and so on. There was almost no mention of the phrase, user interface.

Today, the phrase "user interface" is on lips everywhere. Yet as a switcher operator, I feel as though I belong to one of the oldest, most extensive, most thoroughly tested focus groups ever assembled to evaluate a product or device.

The switcher panel was not forced on us. We chose it. It's not like there weren't plenty of attempts to try other kinds of controls on us. And, it's not like we didn't readily adopt new types of controls whenever they let us do something better and faster.

There was a time when wipe patterns selector panels started to run amok. Fortunately, the digital video effects system came along to channel our passion for new shapes and sizes into more productive areas.

The switcher control panel continues to evolve, but it will not disappear. You can do far more with your ten fingers controlling multiple functions than you can while holding a pen or a mouse. You can't switch a live broadcast news show with a pen-mouse control interface. And although I love the point-and-click, drag-and-drop features of the mouse on my computer for performing certain functions, I am eternally grateful for its old-fashioned QWERTY keyboard when I have to type something like this article.

I think a painter should use the best interface designed for the task — the paintbrush. But even then, I don't want her to use the same paintbrush to paint my portrait as she does to paint my house.

Each creative job requires the appropriate tool. Dedicated control interfaces provide quick access to functions and controls. The operator can also visually scan the control panel interface and receive an instant status of the system without having to plow through menu-intensive displays or a series of overlapping virtual windows. Yet some of the menu-driven systems today are so complex that they need two displays just to manage their own menus.

The best switchers provide the best balance between dedicated control functions and menu controls. The conventional switcher panel provides control right at hand; perhaps 90% of the possible functions an operator could choose are available in one button push. In fact, if a control panel operation does have an extended menu function, the user only has to double-press the corresponding physical button on the control panel and the appropriate associated menu item appears on the built-in CRT display automatically; thus, the operator doesn't even have to memorize the menu navigation functions.

So the design and function of the switcher derives its basic sensibilities from the fact that it has physical controls such as buttons, switches, etc. After all, no one needs to be trained on how to use a knob. But with so much of the modern switcher's functionality ultimately rooted in software, manufacturers are still able to issue periodic upgrades that bring the user new features, improvements and enhancements, many of which result from user feedback. Thus, most new software-based features (many supplied free) are easily loaded and instantly apparent in the new menu displays. This process rejuvenates the hardware and extends its useful life.

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Much of what the switcher panel is today is the collective wisdom and judgment of generations of TV professionals. New technologies coming to the market are keen to emulate in software what has already been achieved in hardware. The dedicated video production switcher counts among its assets a few features that will prove hard, though not impossible, to recreate as well in software, including real-time video effects, real-time previewing and the dedicated control panel.

But the mouse-pen, pull-down menu interface is no more appropriate for driving a production switcher than it is for driving a car. And although I realize that a generation of operators raised on video game controllers and mouse pads is just around the corner — I've also noticed that the teenagers at the arcade still prefer to operate their car racing games with an ersatz steering wheel, foot pedal and gear shift ... It might have something to do with that "look-and-feel" thing.

© Copyright 1995, Intertec Publishing, A PRIMEDIA Company. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Krim, who has worked in broadcast and TV production for more than 20 years, is a training specialist and consultant based in Boston.

His essay was originally published in the April, 1995 issue of Video Systems magazine.