Thank you guys for your help. Do you know of anyone in the Northeast who would let me shadow them on a GVG 3000/4000? It would be nice to get some experience actually looking at the switcher and working on it. I appreciate your help, thanks.

Mapping Crosspoints happens in the CONFIG/INPUTS menu...you assign V/K pairs there, and there is no "Source Patching" or separate "Button Mapping"- what you map in the CONFIG goes everywhere. The CONFIG is also where you will map AUX buses and DPM level assignments. Take some time & get familiar with the various parts of the CONFIG menu, as doing so will really help you set up the switcher the way you want to. The Still Store has only 1 output, but 4 pages of Video & 4 pages of Key on that one output. You can timeline the positioning of the Still Store just like the Kalypso to get a 2-D DVE move, and unlike Kalypso you can do this while passing live video throught the Still Store. As I recall, the Still Store E-MEM is ALWAYS attached to the MISC level, and AUX 4 ALWAYS feeds the input to the Still Store - if you have 4 channels of external DPM that are fed via AUX buses, then channel 4's input gets shared with the Still Store's input. While each of the 2 keyers per M/E is full-featured, options such as Chroma Keyers, secondary wipe generators & Keyer Borderline Generators are hardware based - look under the CONFIG menu to see what boards are assigned to which keyers. & M/E's. As was mentioned, you can put an M/E into LAYERED MODE which turns the A & B buses into simple keyers & causes the M/E to output a Video & a Key signal, just like the Kalypso's SPLIT LAYERED mode. The total pool of keyframes which is shared among the registers is much smaller than Kalypso - it was a fairly common occurrance for TD's to run out of keyframes. The E-MEM menu has a display that shows you the total number of available keyframes remaining on each level. Note that the pool of keyframes is SHARED among ALL 4 DPM levels - be careful how you build keyframes into these levels, as the keyframes get used up REALLY quickly. One trick that I used to do to save DPM keyframes was if I was using DPM 1 as a CPL driver for a DVEOUS, you only needed to match the DVEOUS' total effect length with a 2-KF switcher DPM/CPL effect...as long as the total effect lengths matched, the CPL timeline could be just 2 KF's while the DVEOUS may have had lots more KF's in its effect. The only reason to add additional CPL keyframes was if you needed to add a pause into the DVEOUS effect. If I got REALLY short of DPM level keyframes, I would only put 1 keyframe in the DPM1 level - this was enough to recall the DVEOUS effect & by having ANY other active level that had multiple keyframes (such as M/E 1), the CPL would still track based on the timeline position of the other level. Hopefully you won't need these tricks, but be careful as it's VERY easy to run out of keyframes on a 3000/4000. One thing that you will NOT have is any kind of SPLIT mode like the Kalypso has. If you really need this functionality, have the EIC hard-wire the M/E's Look-Ahead Preview back into the input matrix & use the M/E's Preview as another simple M/E. This is another type of workaround like the previously mentioned GPI loopbacks. Compared to Kalypso, you will have fewer E-MEM levels to deal with, and fewer AUXes to deal with - a maximum of 9 AUXes were available on the 4000. You'll have 2 DSK's...although layering & re-entering an M/E into a DSK can extend this. As strange as it may sound, I have always found that being forced to do more with less (as you will have to do on a 3K/4K compared to a Kalypso) actually makes one a better TD. If you can use some of the tricks mentioned here & elsewhere as well as some new tricks of your own to work around the lack of keyers & other fru-fru that you're used to on your previous switchers, when you DO get back onto the newer & bigger switchers you can apply those 4000-style tricks to get even more power out of the Kalypso. And be sure to bring a 3 1/2" floppy - that's what the 3K/4K switcher uses for storage.

not a huge difference in terms of the "grass way of doing things"....emems are saved the same way..panel layout will look similar...menu labeling and navigation is a little different, but given an hour you can pick it up....The big difference in my opinion is flexibility. only 2 keyers per M/E (although it does have a layered mode which allows for 4 keyers) and no macros and no internal DPM, so you must plan your show with a little more forethought as to use resources efficiently as possible. It does support GPI loopbacks though so you can use those as a replacement (sort of) for the lack of macros in some situations. I can say that a lot more of the communication between DVE, and SS, etc...is less invisible to the user like a kalypso, meaning you need to understand how to interface equipment a little more at the engineering level. I hope this helps...someone who grew up on these things can provide a lot more insight