In NAB 2025 Afterglow, Grass Valley Touts New Imagers, Production Switchers, AI Capabilities Brand-new LDX 180 integrates shallow-depth-of-field shooting By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director Monday, May 5, 2025 - 11:39 am
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A month after NAB 2025, Grass Valley is focused on helping the market understand the wide range of new technologies that made their debut or were on display there, including a couple of developments in cameras and the LDX 100 platform.
Topping the list, the brand-new LDX 180, which has a full-frame S35 global-shutter CMOS imager, adds momentum to the industry-wide embrace of shallow-depth-of-field shooting. It is designed to facilitate integration of shallow-depth-of-field shooting without compromise (a compact version is expected early in 2026).
We develop all our image sensors ourselves in our Breda facilities in the Netherlands, explains Grass Valley Chief Product Officer Adam Marshall, so the new imager integrates totally within the LDX 100 series, providing the same coloristic style and sharing the same Creative Grading shading platform. It can connect to a GV XCU base station or leverage native IP with full ST 2110 or JPEG XS TR08 directly from the camera head.
Grass Valley's Adam Marshall: We're seeing customers looking for smaller, more cost-effective [production-switching] solutions that still have top capabilities.
Also on the imaging side was the NAB Show rollout of two systems that allow RF- and 5G-transmission capabilities to be integrated within the LDX 100 RF series camera bodies: introduced late last year and making their NAB Show debut were the Vislink INCAM-GV HEVC UHD HDR-ready wireless system and Wave Central AXIS GVG4K systems partnered with Grass Valley.
Marshall notes that the integration is about more than removing the need for external cabling and offering a water-tight integration. It also lessens engineering and equipment needs, makes the camera head more balanced, and improves the speed to air as well as the control of the image: With 5G, for example, you can control it from anywhere over a 5G signal and start streaming straight back to AMPP [Grass Valley's Agile Media Processions Platform] systems, including remote camera shading and return program and tally.
Software-Based Production Switching On the production-switcher front, the Karrera V2 panel made its U.S. debut, along with the new K-Frame VXP Video Processing Frame.
The new Karrera is available as a two- or three-stripe panel using the latest panel modules from the new Kayenne panel, says Marshall. The VXP is a 5RU frame with 48 24 native UHD I/O support and also has all the same advanced technologies that you see on the bigger sibling switchers but at a lower price point and a mid-tier production size. We're seeing customers looking for smaller, more cost-effective solutions that still have top capabilities. That's exactly what the VXP is, with integrated HDR LUT conversion and native UHD I/O.
Of course, AMPP is a major focus for Grass Valley, and the Maverik X AMPP-native production switcher is an example of the flexibility offered by a software-based production switcher that can be operated via either a touchscreen or a tactile hardware surface.
Its flexibility matters because customers are ultimately migrating to software solutions in order to increase agility while lowering costs, says Marshall, noting features like hardware or software-based control surfaces, automatic crossconversion, and support of all major formats, including NDI and ST 2110. Their operators need familiar interfaces with a traditional surface or panel that can be customized however they want. Any button, any dial, any fader, any joystick can do any function of any app. That's the most important thing: they design and configure it in the way that suits their operation.
And Grass Valley's Sports Producer X, combining high-end creative capabilities with a single-person user-friendly interface, reimagines live-production workflows. Built on the AMPP platform, it offers multi-layered graphics, text, replay, and live-video control, delivering the functionality of a traditional switcher in an intuitive design that empowers both creatives and operators.
It brings top-tier production capabilities to a single-person UX operation where creative operators can build more content at a faster pace, says Marshall. Media organizations today are trying to build and develop and ship more content cost-effectively. They're having to diversify and look at lower-tier productions, and they can't do that at scale with traditional large control rooms. They need a newer way of producing content, and solutions like this allow them to do that.
He notes that one of the key goals has been to build an open ecosystem that allows third parties to easily integrate and connect to AMPP. Some of those are native to AMPP while others are connected services, such as Layercake's production-orchestration tools, allowing a software-based production to be spun up at a moment's notice.
New this year at NAB, he adds, is that Ross Video are now part of the GV Alliance and users of Ross Video OverDrive can control Maverik X.
AI and Asset Management As for the role of AI, Grass Valley now has the ability to automatically log content, allowing users to search for assets via such commands as find a boat on a lake with the sun in the background.
Says Marshall, It's about making your content more readily searchable, accessible, and discoverable. It's about streamlining the workflow with compelling tools, without taking away creative control.
