[Rob Duncan]

Depends on your needs.

For archive with rare access to clips, a DVR is great. Especially one with a HD on board, multiple DVDs can be churned out quickly on demand.

If you need to get to it for editing, or don’t want MPEG-2 encoding in the middle of your workflow, find a cheap analog to digital converter box (I use an 8 year old Dazzle Hollywood DV bridge), and capture directly into your favourite media software (QuickTime Pro or iMovie is quick and easy).

Loss of quality is not a huge concern if you’re coming out of an older composite-based switcher — it’s already gone!

Rob.

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Freaky People Productions,
Live Event Technical Production
Toronto, CANADA

[Rob Duncan]

Foonshoe,

If (and it’s a big if) you’re able to gather all the various presentations of your meeting together, are certain of the order they will occur, then there are several ways to string them together into a large master Powerpoint, or several smaller and interconnected PP presentations, that each return to a static, or default slide. This can then be done without additional hardware, although it takes extra scripting and preparation time at the front end.

Also, a relatively affordable rental from your local A/V supplier is a scan converter / scaler box that is capable of freezing the image temporarily. For example a Sony 1024, though Extron, Analog Way, Folsom and Kramer all make something similar. Although these boxes will all switch various input devices (computer, DVD, etc), you don’t need to switch between sources, which causes a momentary black screen (as ThomasLeong mentioned previously).

Instead, pad your presentations front and back with your meeting default slide, and when you get to the end of a presentation, freeze the screen while you cue up the next one. Unfreeze it, and voila! the audience has no idea that you’ve changed presentations.

This is an easy cheat that avoids multiple computers, allows for last minute changes and substitutions, and means that the screen never goes black.

Rob.

————–
Freaky People Productions,
Live Event Technical Production
Toronto, CANADA