After having used it 5 times with no training i would have to say i am getting used to it. i did a lot of work on my show by using the simulator mode before i even looked at the switcher. I was able to source patch, map,setup all my colors and even label all my macros. my biggest complaint is that there no bank buttons near the me's. i cant seem to build a macro that will do that for me. If anyone knows how to do that please let me know, i have a show on it tomorrow. not sure about the source rules or the stripe menus yet either. thanks 

Having done 2 whole shows on a Kayenne, I guess I'll weigh in my opinion here, and maybe ask a question too.I don't like the panel design.  The colorfulness seems like a sales tool and is too distracting.  Moreover, you cannot color the source display, just the buttons.  So, your "Red" machine display cannot be red.  It's just green letters over black.  I do find it difficult to see what is on the air which unfortunately slows me down.  I also don't like that there are no "Bank" buttons on the local E-Mem panels (or the master panel for that matter).  That slows me down when cutting to a source with or without CG as I often build E-Mems to make that quicker.  I HATE where they put the next transition background button.  It's too far away from the key buttons.  One thing that is nice about it though, is that if you double-punch it it will automatically light up whichever keyer is on the air making it easy to cut or dissolve clean.I also had the switcher lock-up on me while on air.  I tried to run a replay and nothing happened.  So I pushed Run again and this time the matte channel went through but no fill.  Then I was stuck in the replay and couldn't get out of it.  I couldn't punch on PGM/PST, couldn't recall another Emem, nothing.  After about 10-15 seconds it began to come back to life, and within about 30-45 seconds all was OK.  But, no explanation for what happened.  Fun!I do have a question for anyone who may no the switcher well.  When you delegate the local Emem panels as an Emem panel there is a row of about 4 or so blank buttons.  Is there a way to make them be Bank buttons?  You can't make a macro do it.  I already tried that.As for my opinion about how the over all system works.  It works, software-wise, very much like a Kalypso.  I was able to build my shows with little difficulty, although I was slower because of lack of familiarity with the whole menu and Emem edit structure.  But, peripheral control was easy, programming emems and macros was what I was used to.  So, from that standpoint it worked well.  The truck that I was in decided to go with the E-DPM instead of a DVEous or something.  I wasn't wild about that, mainly because I now will need to build all new effects instead of loading from disk.Anyway, that's my 2 cents.  Gotta get on a plane.--Mike 

Bob, liked your post. I like the idea of floating resources. "They" may have a good reason why it can't be done, but how many of the hardware people have sat next to a TD while the TD was working? Just a thought, couldn't Grass "update" the Kayenne in the future like Sony did when they changed hardware from the 8000 to the 8000A series? There are things an "A" and "G" can do that an original 8k can't. Yes, first adopters would be stuck, but it would be a way to add 1080p as well as more outputs.

I see that it's been a while since you posted your questions and no one's responded - so allow me to weigh in on the product with one of my usual diatribes... [quote="Mandy"]So how good is the Kayenne ? Just wondered why we haven't heard much about the pro's and con's now that it has been out a few months.[/quote] Like pretty much every product that gets released, the Kayenne is getting a lot of hype, as it's the "latest & greatest". As to how good it is, that will depend on your skill level & the type of TD'ing that you do. Do you need 6 keyers per M/E on what amounts to 5 M/E's? For many operators, that is overkill. However, for a growing share of users such as sports TD's, it's exactly what they need. It's pretty easy to see that not only the high-end stuff is getting more complex, but even simpler shows are now often requiring the TD to be able to set up some sort of split or multi-client feed. Yes, you can always steal M/E's from your primary client to support the seconday feed, but this often requires a lot of source linking, and results in your having to switch your show(s) with effectively fewer resources - maybe 2 M/E's instead of 3. Having more resources on each M/E means being able to share those M/E resources within the M/E without resorting to parting out your switcher. A switcher should always be "smarter" than the operator - it should always have more "headroom" than what is currently needed to do what the TD wants so that the TD always has room to grow their own capabilities. Many people have "maxed out" what they can do with the Kalypso, and their productions have grown to exceed the capabilities of what the current crop of switchers can offer. So whether it was GV or some other company to introduce a new larger switcher, somebody needed to do it... many productions have simply outgrown the Kalypso or the Kayak or the 8000. GV has done a very smart thing by getting a lot of high-end sports TD's involved in marketing the Kayenne. It is these people who because of their productions will first benefit from the extra power of the panel, and by "bringing them on-board" these TD's have a sense of ownership in the product, and will (and have) become Evangelists for the product. [quote="Mandy"]Is the very colorful panel good or dose it make it hard to see whats on air. Are the oleds too reflective and would we like more colors in the oleds?[/quote] The panel can be as colorful as you want it to be, or can be set up to look like the traditional 3-color GV panels, or can be set up to look like the DD or SONY-style all white button layout - it'll be up to you. Just because you CAN make it look like a Christmas Tree doesn't mean that you HAVE you. The beauty of a user-defined panel is that you can tailor it to what YOU want it to be...and for my money, OLEDs are much easier to read than LCD's that fade out when you get off-axis. People have gotten used to tri-color LCD's on other products (both the 8000 & Kalypso have only 3 colors to offer, but the Kalypso lets you invert the type & backgrounds...it's not a true 6-color display but it's useful), so anything more than 3 colors is in my opinion a gift compared to what we've all been using. [quote="Mandy"]What about the save and load times ? In the Vegas video there seemed to be some concern over the load times when you have 1000 macros emems etc.[/quote] It's hard to argue with limitations of hardware & software - when 1 E-MEM on a Kalypso has more information than ALL of the E-MEMs of a 4000 - it's not surprising that Kalypso suffered from up to 6 minute load times. But your save-and-load times should be based on how much data you're actually using. Realistically, how many users will (soon) be using 1000 E-MEMs or Macros? The maximum load times are ususally based on worst-case scenarios of using up the maximum amount of switcher memory...I would bet that it'll be a while before somebody maxes out the number of registers or number of macros. Would you want to try and load your newscast in the break between the 5 & 6 PM shows? Probably not - but I wouldn't do that even on today's switchers. Based on current switcher load times, I always recommend to multi-users that one show load incorporate all of the back-to-back newscasts (the 4 PM at the 0-3 banks, the 5 PM at the 4-6 or 4-7 banks, and the 6 PM at the remaining banks). When I use an 8000, my show loads (if you take into account both register data & Frame Memory data) take anywhere between 25-40 min...on a Kalypso it takes a couple of hours (based on loading the Still Store images from my computer) - but that's because I max out Frame Memory data. You tend to either get used to the limitations of the system or you back-time your ESU to compensate for the additional needed time. Perhaps future switchers could use flash-memory to speed up the process, but that won't help you if you never use the switcher's hard drive - I always use my laptop as my data storage...it keeps the switcher "clean" for others, and prevents malicious or accidental manipulation of my show data by others if I were to leave it on the switcher's hard drive. [quote="Mandy"]Finally what about the main frame, if we now have 6 keyers are 4 pgm outputs enough and where is the 3G option.[/quote] The original Kayenne was designed as a panel upgrade to the Kayak mainframe. The Kayak mainframe always had 6 keyers per M/E, but the DD-35 software that drove the switcher didn't allow for more than 4 keyers, and the Kayak panels were all designed to work with the DD35 software...so the frame was much more powerful than the panels. The Kayenne panel solved this problem by providing access to all of the Kayak frame features. But because of the original frame limitations and because of the requirement to make the Kayenne software look more "Kalypso-ish", there are restrictions as to some things such as the number of outputs per M/E. Personally, I have always been a proponent that the number of M/E outputs should ideally be at least 50% more than the number of keyers on the M/E - thus 6 on a Kalypso or 9 on a Kayenne. What I believe would make even more sense would be to design the frame in such a way that the number of outputs "float" and could be used elsewhere...you may not need all 6 outputs of M/E 1 and could get by with just 2, but on M/E 2 you may need 10 - why not "float" the hardware of M/E 1's extra outputs to be software-utilized by M/E 2 so that it could have its own 6 + the 4 from M/E 1? Because manufacturers tend to build M/E's as individual stand-alone elements as opposed to centralized, poolable resources than can be assigned where needed when needed, I doubt that you'll be seeing this kind of implementation soon. If you run out of outputs, don't forget that the PVW outputs can be utilized as partial clean feeds and background substitutions depending on how you set up your transition control. Because the original Kayenne utilized the Kayak frame, and because the Kayak mainframe was designed before the advent of 1080p or 3D, I doubt that you'll see a 3G option on current systems until such time as a new mainframe is developed. The SONY 8000G system was built with a dual-link feature that lets you use up 2 inputs to take in 1080p (or 3D), 2 M/E's to manipulate the source & 2 outputs to output 1080p (or 3D), but that was designed into the switcher from the start...SONY of course sells 1080p TV sets, so it follows that their broadcast equipment (which had been designed a few years ago) had the design to somehow manipulate the extra required bandwidth to support their consumer division sales. The down side of this is that to do 1080p or 3D, you basically have to halve your switcher...half the inputs, half the M/E's & half the outputs. I have yet to see a Producer or Director that agrees that the complexity of the production is based on the format of the signal. So to sum up (finally)- will Kayenne be a good switcher? Yes. Will it be great? Probably. Will it be the best ever? Maybe, maybe not, depending on who you talk to...if you've followed this website for any length of time, you know that it is rife with users for whom devotion to specific products or manufacturers rivals an almost extreme religious fervor (it's pretty easy to spot these people by the language they use in their postings). No matter what GV comes out with, there will be SONY, Ross, or Kahuna users who will find fault with it. If SONY, Ross, or S/W came out with a 20 M/E switcher with 15 keyers on each M/E, you'd still have some users post how "it's not as friendly to use as a Grass". As I have pointed out over & over, most of these complaints from all sides stem from a lack of understanding of how to use the other guy's products. I have always contended that it's not the switcher that does effects...it's the TD. And a competent TD can find a way to do virtually anything on one brand that they can do on another. While at the SONY booth at this last NAB, they were showing on the 8000 how to assign specific keys to specific sources (just like Kayenne's new feature), and how to do automatic transitions on multiple AUXes (just like Kayenne) - was it as elegant to accomplish these things as on Kayenne? No. But it could be done. Should you learn to use Kayenne? Definately. But you should also take the time to learn the SONY, the Ross, and the Kahuna...not because you are going to be seeing them in the trucks or the studios that you work in, not because they are the best product ever made, but because if you can get past any resentment that because the other guys do things not in a wrong way but in a way that YOU are not familiar with and realize that by having to learn a different way to accomplish a task that you already know how to do, you will now have more tools and more skill to go back to the products that you DO use on a regular basis and make these products work even better.