Ross Video systems sit at the heart of broadcast studios and live production environments worldwide — switchers, graphics engines, routers, and video servers that drive everything seen on air. RossTalk is the open ASCII-based control protocol that lets external systems talk to that hardware over the network. With the new RossTalk Controller Extension for SP Grid, teams can now bring the full Ross Video estate directly into Grid Studio — unifying switcher, graphics, routing, and playback control alongside camera tracking, media servers, lighting, and the rest of the AVLM ecosystem.
The Extension implements the RossTalk protocol over UDP, giving Grid Studio a comprehensive command surface across the Ross Video product family. Setup is straightforward: install the RossTalk Controller from the Grid Studio Library, restart Grid Studio, add the module to your project, configure the target IP and port, and connect. From there, Grid Studio has access to more than 200 commands spanning Carbonite and Graphite switchers, XPression graphics, Ultrix routers, openGear frames, video servers, and legacy Acuity/Vision systems.
What makes this particularly powerful in show control workflows is that every Ross device becomes a node in the same logic graph as everything else in the room. ME banks, keyers, and transitions on a Carbonite switcher can be triggered from a cue, a sensor, or a touch panel. XPression graphics buffers and layers can be driven by spatial events or timeline progress. Ultrix routing crosspoints can be reconfigured per level, in sync with content changes happening elsewhere in the pipeline. Video server transport — play, pause, cue, jump — sits alongside the rest of your media playback control. And openGear frame operations, including virtual GPI, plug straight into Grid Studio's automation logic.
Beyond command output, the Extension provides real-time connection monitoring and structured response parsing, surfacing device status back into Grid Studio's node graph. That means operator interfaces built with Grid Viewer can reflect the live state of the Ross estate — connection health, command acknowledgements, and error feedback — alongside everything else they're already monitoring.
For broadcast, studio, and live production teams already running Ross Video infrastructure, the RossTalk Controller Extension makes the entire Ross stack a controllable, observable part of SP Grid — from one environment, one source of truth.
https://help.rossvideo.com/acuity-device/Topics/Protocol/RossTalk.html