Analogue Video Primer by LZX Industries

Posted: März 3rd, 2013 ˑ Filed under: Hardware, Theory ˑ Comments Closed

With advancing digital video formats it seems like the knowledge about analog video gets lost very fast as it is not needed any more. That knowledge seems somewhat exclusive to a rich tradition of video artists from the 1960′s and 1970′s.

One of the most straight forward analog video synthesizer developers of today are LZX Industries, a Texan/Australian partnership drawn together by mutual obsession with early video art and frustration with the lack of available hardware products for modular video synthesis and processing. With their small company they have already developed over a dozen of analog video hardware modules for their modular analog video synthesizer system „LZX Visionary“, inspired by pioneers of video synthesis who created their own instruments such as Dan Sandin, Stephen Beck, Stephen Jones, Steve Rutt, Bill Etra, Bill Hearne, Richard Monkhouse, Dave Jones, Eric Siegel and others. LZX Visionary is a line of EuroRack format synthesizer modules designed for creating and manipulating video and images.

What is modular video synthesis?

A modular synthesizer is a type of analogue computer which is programmed by connecting the inputs and outputs of various functional modules to each other, typically in order to produce or process audio signals. The advantages of a modular synthesizer are its expandability and flexibility, since a system can be designed around goals the user wishes to achieve, and easily reconfigured (or patched) for multiple uses. Video synthesis is another application of the modular synthesizer, and while the application is different, the same principles of analogue signal paths and voltage-controlled parameters still apply.

While many functional modules are useful for both audio and video, some new module designs must be introduced which deal with the special requirements of video signals. The LZX Visionary modular video synthesizer can function as a traditional video mixer, keyer, or special effects unit, or delve into experimental territory such as the creation of abstract patterns with voltage-controlled oscillators, complex color space modulation, audiovisualization, and many as yet to be discovered techniques.

To make the step into analog video synthesis more easy and to make the knowledge of the past century more accessible LZX industries – besides the great videos explaining their synth modules – have published a first introduction into analog video synthesis.