A video patch bay is hardware commonly used in video editing suites or newsrooms. The equipment allows you to take the video feed from any device and send it into any capture device. For example, if you have several computers, you can take the output from any of the computers and hook it up to any VCR, tape deck or television. If you are setting up your own home video patch bay, there is some specific hardware you need.
Instructions
1. Position the patch bay connector in a easy-to-access location. This connector is full of many different connection ports. On the front side there are typically two rows of quarter-inch connections. These are the feeds you connect the equipment together with. On the back of the connector, you have the connection ports. This is how the hardware connects to the patch bay connector.
2. Run the audio/video cables from the "Video Out" of your computer or other source device and insert the cables into the "Video In" ports on the rear of the patch bay connector. Insert these into the first port; each port is numbered so you know what device connects to where.
3. Run the audio/video cables from your computer's "Video In" ports into the "Video Out" ports on the connector, which is directly under the ports you used for the "Video In."
4. Repeat this connection process with all of the devices you want to use in your video patch bay.
5. Look at the front of the patch bay connector. This area is completely clear of cables right now, because all the cables are currently hooked up in the back. Find the device you want to send the video source from and plug the quarter-inch audio/video cable into the bottom port on the front of the patch bay connector. This is the "Video Out" connection, because the video feed is coming out of the selected device.
Now locate the device you want to send the video feed to, such as a VCR. Plug the opposite end of the cable into the top connection port associated with the device. This is the "Video In" feed. The quarter-inch cable now creates a circuit flow that takes the original video information from the computer (or other device) and sends it into the VCR.
Tags: patch connector, audio video, Video ports, audio video cables, cable into, cables from