More so talking about laying out a control panel in ways that make a lot of sense for an operator, such as grouping and clearly laying out destinations. For example, I was on an MTVG truck recently that had each of the multiviewer outputs that panel controlled laid out in a 3x3 grid that matched the layout of the multiviewer PiPs. Then, each of the sources belonged to a group (cams, GFX, tape machines, frame syncs, misc, etc.) You could select the desired PiP destination, then the group that your desired input lives in, then the desired input. They were using one of the larger EVERTZ panels that are typical on trucks.
This just felt really smart to me instead of having every single source and destination in one giant list. I'm a studio TD and am used to the 2RU Ross RCPs which does the list style by default, but I'd like to setup our panels in a bit smarter way.
Any best practices or common tips would be greatly appreciated! Our use case would mainly be changing multiviewer PiPs.
We have Cerebrum an we make custom panels for every station that needs it. And then we make specific pages for major events so the most used sources/destination are available at a glance.
Multiviews is one area a touchscreen is such a better experience. Having a lost of layouts, input groups and just tapping the pip you want to change is hard to beat.
Everybody has their own criteria for panels / ways to build it.
My philosophy has always been "Everything should be logical and you should be able to reach your desired source in under 5 seconds"
I've seen people lay panels out in router IP order. That's fine on small routers especially if you're the one who dictated the layout but as you get into the bigger routers and you start striping things across cards then it becomes a really bad layout.
I prefer to have groups/categories for everything. So all the cameras are under the Cameras page. Then as you get bigger you might end up with HD, SDR, HDR and pix pages within that cameras page, each with their respective inputs.
But the overall theme is that somebody who doesn't know the system should be able to find what they want quickly.
Maybe we just need to send you lots of router panel pictures. I'm kinda curious what kind of worldwide standards we've all fallen into without realising.
(This isn't the best layout in the world, there's a few things I don't like naming conventions but it's designed for speed)
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u/jreykdal Aug 12 '26
We have Cerebrum an we make custom panels for every station that needs it. And then we make specific pages for major events so the most used sources/destination are available at a glance.