Roland V-160HD Streaming Video Switcher
The Roland V-160HD is a professional streaming video switcher that can handle any live event or production. With 16 inputs and 12 outputs, the Roland V-160HD can easily manage any type of live stream or meeting. Whether you’re streaming a church sermon or streaming the Super Bowl, the Roland V-160HD has you covered. Plus, with built-in effects and powerful scaling capabilities, you can create high-quality video streams with ease. If you’re looking for a top-notch streaming video switcher, then the Roland V-160HD is definitely worth considering.
1. USB Output
The Roland V-160HD switcher is equipped to use the switcher’s output as a USB camera source in desktop operating systems and applications that support USB video class (UVC) and USB audio class (UAC), such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and other conferencing applications. By doing this, it enables an experience for remote attendees. Additionally, many WebRTC web apps and hosting providers support capture from locally connected USB camera sources, which the Roland V-160HD can be used with.
The Roland V-160HD has a new type of USB port. You can use it with any USB 3 cable on computers that don’t have USB-C ports. This is great because you don’t need to set up a special SDI or HDMI output from the switcher to use with SDI or HDMI capture hardware on your computer like you do with other video switchers.
2. Input Assign
There are two features in the V-160HD that I have not seen before in other Roland switchers: eight independent HDMI and eight SDI inputs (on the right in Figure 2) and the ability to quickly assign the input source for each of the 10 cross-point buttons. For the former category, the SDI and HDMI input number on the back of the unit does not need to correlate to a specific switched Crosspoint button on the console.
Older switchers had inputs that were only for specific console buttons. This means that if a console button didn’t have an HDMI input, it would never be used. With the V-160HD, you can use any of the HDMI, SDI, or still-image bank resources for any of the 10 cross-point buttons.. The V-160HD also features a helpful Input Assign button found on the console, so that you’re not fumbling around in the settings menu trying to assign inputs. To use it, hold down the button and then press either PGM/A or PST/B repeatedly until you’ve reached your desired input for that specific cross-point button. This easy operation will save hours of time when setting up for live events.
3. Four PinP or Key Composition Layers
The Roland V-160HD has four PinP or Key composition layers. With the Roland V-160HD, you can have live video of up to four different cameras at the same time on your screen. You can also use the Roland V-160HD to switch between these live video sources or to keep a live video source on your screen while adding in a recorded video or image from another source.
Do you want to add four presenter headshots over a PowerPoint or Keynote slide deck or add a green screen ASL interpreter shot to a specific corner of the program feed? The V-160HD switcher can do it, and it has more console buttons to make input position, selection, preview, and program output easy without (again) the need to go into nested menu options. The switcher has all four PinP (picture-in-picture)/key compositors available on the console.
The Roland switcher has options for shapes, mattes, and border effects. The keyer can use white or black, or chromakeys. The V-160HD also has a sampling marker feature that enables you to pick a chromakey color directly from a selected keyer input.
4. Two DSK Overlays With Alpha Channel Support
The V-160HD switcher also has two independent Downstream Keyer (DSK) compositors. These are designed to overlay input sources on the whole screen, such as lower-thirds for presenter names/titles, game scoreboards, and more.
I like DSK overlays because you can use PNG images with transparency. With older Roland switchers, you had to use BMP images with a chromakey background (like lower-thirds on a green or blue background) and adjust the keyer settings. Now, you can have super-clean alpha channels created in tools like Adobe Photoshop to produce beautiful DSK overlays without worrying about chromakey settings.
The machine only supports FAT32 for USB memory. This means that you will need to format your USB memory stick as FAT32 in order for the machine to recognize it.
5. Audio Inputs
The V-160HD switcher can use a lot of different audio inputs for your live feed: two balanced XLR inputs, two RCA (left/right) inputs, a USB-C audio input, audio channels available in the SDI or HDMI inputs, and a new Bluetooth input. The Bluetooth input lets you connect any Bluetooth device to the V-160HD switcher. For example, you can play music from your smartphone to add as a background track to the rest of your feed.
One thing I liked about the V-60HD that is not available on the V-160HD is the additional XLR inputs. This allowed me to record independent wet/dry audio across four XLR inputs, which made it easier to make postproduction tweaks to live event recordings. The V-160HD can output up to eight independent audio channels in the embedded audio output over HDMI/SDI, but you’ll only have two XLR input channels available.
Final Thoughts
The Roland V-160HD is a powerful live video switcher that is easy to use. With its multiple input options, different PinP/Key layers, DSK overlays, and audio inputs, the Roland V-160HD is a great live video switcher for events of any size. The Roland V-160HD is a great live video switcher for events of any size. With its multiple input options, different PinP/Key layers, DSK overlays, and audio inputs, the Roland V-160HD is a great live video switcher for events of any size.
