AJA Gear Helps Power Live Director Toby Santos' Hybrid Production Workflow

In today's fast-paced live production environment, technical and creative roles are blending, and workflows are evolving rapidly.

For Los Angeles-based live production director Toby Santos, that shift has meant rethinking how shows are built, from planning and preparations through to the final product. With a background spanning news, sports, music, and corporate events, he's embraced a hybrid approach, combining technical direction with production and streaming in one cohesive workflow. At the core of it all is AJA's Corvid 88 video/audio PCIe I/O card.

When traditional production came to a halt in 2020, Santos turned a challenge into an opportunity. Drawing on his experience and demand from past collaborators, he built a live control room inside his home studio, enabling him to produce and stream professional live content remotely, with AJA Corvid 88 a key component of his workflow. Since then, he's continued to leverage the technology in portable production setups.

"For six months, I played an essential role in producing several different Viacom shows out of my house. I helped direct, record, and manage graphics and logging for seven shows through my control room and two other control rooms for MTV and BET, manage two live broadcasts for BET, and record PSAs for CBS," Santos recalled. "I needed a rock solid I/O device that could handle multiple SDI feeds, integrate with vMix, stay in sync with no latency issues, and provide a reliable output to my recorders. Corvid 88 delivered that and more, which is why it's now an integral part of my portable production flypacks."

Whether in his home studio or on-site, Santos receives incoming signals via decoders, which are converted to SDI and routed through a Corvid 88 for real-time processing inside vMix live streaming software. The card is also used to output the signal to Santos’ recorder. Whether he's recording, switching, or outputting feeds for live delivery, the card provides the flexibility and stability he needs to manage complex productions with confidence.

Even as in-person productions have resumed, Santos continues to rely on his home setup for remote audio and technical roles on large-scale shows. "We're in an age where producers are also stream engineers, and directors are wearing multiple hats," he explained. "The lines are blurring, and having equipment like Corvid 88 in my toolkit makes it easier to stay ahead without ever sacrificing quality."

As Santos looks to the future, he's focused on blending cutting-edge tools with trusted technology. He concluded: "The key is balance. New workflows are exciting, but you still need gear that won’t let you down. AJA gives me that peace of mind."

Corvid 88 allows developers to build solutions that enable users to maximise video and audio I/O capacity. Each SDI connection can be configured individually as input or output and mix formats for up to eight HD or SD channels on a single card. As demand rises for higher resolutions, it allows developers to combine SDI connections for multiple 4K/UltraHD channels, providing incredible flexibility and future proofing with playout and ingest servers or channel-in-a-box systems.

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