Skip to content

Concepts

Many of the terms and concepts used in RouteMaster VR will be familiar to video and audio engineers, but it's worth explaining how some of these concepts and terms ure used in RouteMaster VR.

Routers

Conceptually, a video router is a matrix of numbered inputs and outputs, with a control interface that allows tany inputs to be switched to one or more outputs. Third party systems (like RouteMaster VR) use this protocol to control the router and monitor its state.

Physical Routers

Physical routers are actual hardware device, made by companies like Blackmagic, Evertz, and Pro-bel. Historically they would route SDI or analog video, or audio. Control of these would originaly be via protocols based on RS422 serial connections, but network control is now common.

Virtual Routers

Virtual routers are an abstraction of a physical router, existing entirely within the RouteMaster VR software.

RouteMaster VR acts a a virtual router, with a set of virtual inputs and outputs. In turn, it can communicate with one or more physical (or virtual) routers, mirroring the state of the physical routers in the virtual router. This allows clients to connect to RouteMaster VR and control the physical routers via the virtual router, without needing to know the details of the physical router connections.

RouteMaster VR supports various virtual routers internally.

  • A Dummy Router just simulates a physical router, and is useful for testing and evaluation.
  • An NDI router allows NDI sources and destinations to be switched in a similar way to a physical router, but without the need for any physical hardware.
  • A Multi-Router allows multiple physical routers to be controlled as if they were a single large router. Tieline management between the physical routers is handled automatically by RouteMaster VR.
  • A Stacked Router allows multiple physical routers to be controlled as if they were a single multiple level router. This allows separate video and audio routers to be controlled as a single system, for example.

Control Protocols

Many different control protocols are used by physical routers, and RouteMaster VR supports a wide range of these. Control protocols allow a control system to control and monitor routing, request input and output names, and fire salvos.

Northbound vs. Southbound

When RouteMaster VR is controlling a physical router, this is known as a southbound or downstream connection. RouteMaster VR also allows external clients to connect to it and control the virtual 'master router' using a northbound or upstream connection.

Typically for a southbound connection, the physical router acts as a TCP server, whil RouteMaster VR acts as a client. For incoming northbound connections, RouteMaster VR acts as the server.

RouteMaster VR's virtual router sits between the northbound and southbound connections, translating between the two.

Client Connections

RouteMaster VR supports many different control protocols for northbound connections,and these can all be enabled at the same time. The maximum number of connected clients is restricted by your license, but can be up to 256.

Inputs, Outputs and Levels

A router typically appears as a 2-D grid of inputs and outputs. However, some routers have multiple levels of switching. For example, a router may have a main layer of video switching, and a second layer of audio switching. Routing signals between layers is not directly supported.

RouteMaster VR supports up to 32 levels of switching.

Numbering

RouteMaster VR internally numbers all inputs and outputs from zero, not one. If a physical routers refers to its inputs as 1-16, these will appear as 0-15 in RouteMaster VR.

The terms Input and Source are used interchangeably in RouteMaster VR, as are Output and Destination.

Both physical and virtual routers are limited to 8192x8192 inputs and outputs, but the actual number supported depends on the router model and license.

Names

Most routers support the concept of naming inputs and outputs. This allows a more descriptive name to be used instead of just a number. Early routers only supported short four or eight cgharacter menmonics, but modern routers support much longer names, often with Unicode characters. Some routers also support named levels.

Names flow from the southbound physical routers to the northbound clients via the virtual router. The names from a physical router can be overridden by RouteMaster VR, allowing you to give more descriptive names to the inputs and outputs. RouteMaster VR supports Unicode names of unlimited length internally, for inputs, outputs and levels.

Some control protocols allow clients to make routes by input and output name rather than by number. When using this it's important that names are unique.

Signal Groups

When working with larger routers, it's useful to divide signals into groups, such as 'Cameras', 'Monitors', 'Servers', and so on. RouteMaster VR allows you to defineboth input and ouput signal groups, and assign inputs and outputs to these groups. This allows you to filter the view of the router to just a specific group of signals.

Signal Types

RouteMaster VR is unaware of signal types, and treats all inputs and outputs as generic.

Salvos

A salvo is a pre-defined set of routes that can be fired with a single command. Salvos are typically used to implement 'presets' or 'favorites' on control panels, allowing a specific set of routes to be recalled quickly.

Some routers support salvos natively, but RouteMaster VR also allows you to define salvos that can be fired by any client, regardless of the capabilities of the physical router.