Panasonic MX-30 And AVE-7 Video Mixer
Tips and Tricks
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Creating The Film Look

You can give your videos a “film look” by using the first strobe setting on the MX-30 and AVE-7 mixers. Add a slight orange/yellow tint, which will give the footage the look of an old 8mm movie. It’s a great effect for special openings and closing highlights.

Creating a Double Picture-In-Picture

With the Panasonic MX-30 and AVE-7 video mixer, you can create two Picture-In-Pictures (PIPs) on the screen at the same time. Simply recording one compressed PIP onto a submaster tape, then play that tape through the Panasonic MX30 and AVE7 video mixer a second time while creating another PIP.

To create two PIPs over a video background, record the double PIP over a black matte color, then feed that tape through the mixer’s luminance key. This time through, a third video picture will fill in the black matte. The end result is two PIPs over a video background.

The Panasonic MX-30 Video Mixer 7.5 IRE Black

The Panasonic MX-30 video mixer does not put out an NTSC standard “color black” in both the matte color section and the video fade section.

Normally, this does not pose any serious problems, however, every now and then some time base correctors will get a little flustered when trying to discern the color black at 0 IRE from the video sync information that resides in the 0 to -40 IRE neighborhood. (That’s why the color black is normally 7.5 IRE.)

You can, however, obtain 7.5 IRE black from your Panasonic WJ-MX30 video mixer simply by substituting the background color white with the color level knob set at that “9 o’clock” position.

So, if you need to fade to “Black”, just fade to “Matte” and select “9 o’clock white” in the matte generator. If you need black drop shadows on your titles when going through the Downstream Key Section, select “9 o’clock white” in the matte generator.

Like I said, under normal circumstances, the Panasonic MX-30's 0 IRE black won’t upset your productions, but if you want to be on the safe side, try “9 o’clock white”. And if you were wondering where the “chroma” level knob in the color corrector section should be if your want “unity gain” (that’s where the knob should be if the color corrector is turned on and you don’t want to add or delete any chroma gain), try the “2 o’clock” position on that knob.

(The preceding levels were determined by feeding the Panasonic MX-30’s output into a waveform monitor and a vectorscope and then comparing the test signal’s level with and without the processing of the MX-30 video mixer.)

Another Way to Generate 7.5 Black

This is another, more accurate way, of obtaining a 7.5 IRE Black level out of MX-30: use the background color Blue with the color level control turned all the way counter-clockwise, with the Gradation turned off, of course. (Sure enough this technique puts the black level right on the 7.5 IRE line.)

Up On A Pedestal

NTSC broadcast standards dictates that a video signal, when displayed on a waveform monitor (or the Studio 1 Video Level Meter), fall within the range or 7.5 IRE for the color Black and 100 IRE for the color White. The Panasonic MX-30 video mixer passes these standards perfectly when the video signal originates from an external source, however, the built-in color matte generator (background colors & color bars) are factory set at 0 IRE and 78 IRE for White. Panasonic states that this should not be a problem, even thought the Black level of 0 IRE is dangerously close to where the video sync signal resides (below 0 IRE).

NOTE: If you perform all of your editing in the “insert” model (video and/or audio) onto a “pre-blacked” tape with continuous control track, and you’re experiencing some top to bottom rainbow ripples on your inserted video, it may be from the Black being set at 0 IRE. I was getting that myself and so were a few others that I’ve talked to, however, since we started “pre-Bluing” our tapes with the Panasonic MX-30’s solid Blue background color (no gradation), the problem has ceased.

Freeze Frame Recovery

Have you ever dumped a video still from memory while stringing together a photo montage?

Here is a simple solution to that problem. You can recover the lost frame by removing the edit master from your editing VCR and place it in the playback VCR. Bring the tape up to the point where the still picture was last recorded and re-freeze it again into your digital mixer.

Take your edit master tape out of the playback VCR and put it back into the editing VCR. You can now resume your photo montage.

You shouldn’t have any shifting of the still picture or loss in resolution if your playback and editing VCR are the same make and model.

Panasonic MX-30/AVE-7 External Key Tricks

A neat little trick, using the Panasonic MX-30 and Panasonic AVE-7 External Key Mode, is the creation of oblong or tapered Picture-In-Pictures. Kind of like what you see on the TV show Entertainment Tonight where the P-I-P appears to be going off into the background.

This is accomplished by pointing your External Key camera at a white graphics card with a black rectangle on it and twisting the graphics card away from the camera. This descending shape of a box will become the wipe pattern for the two video sources coming in through Source 1 and Source 2. You can even move the graphics card from side to side while you’re recording to give your P-I-P the “warped” look.

Another “moving” effect is the one used on the opening title sequence of the “MX-30/AVE-7 Mixer Magic - A Unique Mix Volume 1” in which the word “WJ-MX30” was the wipe pattern between two other video scenes.