I saw the news the other day that you guys had written a video mixer for Linux, with integrated Chyrons, transitions, and all that. That's great work, but I do have a question about the motivation behind it.
As a former television technical director, I was curious what made you choose to write a custom software video mixer. The alternative, of course, would be picking up a cheap digital mixer, like a Grass Valley, and encoding its program output instead. Was the impetus financial in nature? Technical, since making a video mixer train work is a little challenging unless you have experience (reference signals, CCU if you have fancy-enough cameras, and so on)? Are you mixing audio in your software suite as well, or do you have an external mixer? (The rationale for each is the same, IMO.)
I'm just curious. Not saying the work isn't valued, just steaming ahead on writing a custom software mixer is an interesting decision. Production houses usually have old digital mixers in storage and might be willing to donate to your effort, too.