When you’re putting together a presentation, it’s important to understand the different types of equipment at play that ensure your project runs smoothly. Presentations comprise several devices, all working in unison to provide you with exciting and engaging content that hooks your audiences and encourages them to respond.

These technologies capture, transmit and display audio and visual content in a clear format that’s easy to process. To help you get the most out of AV technology, we’ve compiled this complete guide that explains how AV technology for presentations works so you can start optimizing your displays as soon as possible.

Keep reading to advance your AV technology knowledge.

What is AV technology?

Before we start, let’s discuss what AV technology means. AV technology for presentations refers to the technology used to convert analog signals, projectors and video walls to display content, video wall controllers, matrix switchers, and processors to configure video walls, speakers, and microphones to communicate with your audiences.

This technology is crucial to collaborating and interacting with your audience and is central to education, business, and entertainment settings. It’s important to remember that your presentation purpose or setting will likely dictate much of the AV technology you use.

For example, if you’re hosting a conference, your AV technology will comprise some of the equipment mentioned above and conferencing software to enhance collaboration. This is integral to note, as how your AV technology works will depend almost entirely on your usage requirements.

How Does AV Technology Work?

In short, AV technology operates by capturing audio and visual content through remote or wired devices and processing and compressing signals to then transmit them to receivers to display on your visual devices. While the technology that does this may vary, these steps are essentially the same for most AV devices, like projectors, video walls, and other displays like digital signage.

Let’s go into a bit more depth:

1. Initial Devices

The initial devices involved with your presentation display are the capture devices. These are the devices responsible for capturing any footage or images. For example, suppose you’re connecting to a remote network and displaying security footage from around a building that’s fed to a control room for security professionals. In that case, the capture device in this scenario is the camera itself.

In essence, a capture device is any device responsible for recording audio or visual content used for your presentation. Most capture devices then convert these signals into a digital and viewable format using analog-to-digital conversion (ADC). For audio equipment, microphones are the capture device.

The quality of the capture and subsequent audio or footage depends almost entirely on the capture device itself. If you’re using a high-quality DSLR camera, you can expect your capture to be high-resolution and extremely detailed.

Similarly, to this, using wired or wireless microphones will make a big difference to the quality of your capture, as wired devices tend to provide more reliable audio as they’re less prone to cutouts. This is why it’s vitally important to assess which capture equipment is right for your desired presentation quality.

2. Signal Processing and Compression

After the initial capture of core content, devices then process and compress content to minimize file size to make it easier for computer systems to pass on or store. This process uses digital signal processors (DSPs) and computer programs known as codecs.

DSPs are specifically tailored microprocessors that target digital signals and apply effects like noise reduction, reverb, and equalization. You can also use DSPs to mix audio signals together, helping you to adjust to levels required for your audience.

Codecs are more computer oriented and instead focus on the coding element of presentations. These consist of specific algorithms to compress and decompress digital signals.

Usually, they focus on getting rid of any redundant information in order to reduce the total file size. Codecs vary, so it’s important to use the correct type for your presentation. Each type will come with different compression ratios and qualities.

3. Storage and Transmission

Once you’re happy with the processing and compression, these signals are then sent to a device either for display or storage. This is done using a wired or wireless network and is then stored using either a physical or cloud-based drive.

You can use a flash drive or hard drive, as well as cloud-based storage solutions like Google Drive or Dropbox. You can then return to this to edit it and display on your chosen display technology, such as a projector or video wall. Signals are typically encoded and transported to other devices as packets using internet protocol (IP) for security. Signals will be decoded on your chosen device if you want to then play this back.

What AV Technology Will I Need for A Presentation?

Depending on your display type, the technology you need for your presentation will vary. However, most of these technologies will follow the above steps to ensure you can access your display footage and imagery to then impress your audience and achieve your business goals. To help, we’ve created a list of technologies that we think could elevate your presentations, transforming them into a professional-scale event:

• Microphones (Wired or Wireless)
• Speakers
• Video walls (LED or LCD)
• Matrix switcher
• Video wall processor
• Video wall controller
• Projector
• HDMI cables
• Lighting
• Cable adaptor

Final Thoughts

Understanding how your AV technology works is a key part of using this technology to your full advantage. With this knowledge, you can choose the correct computer programming algorithms to optimize your video and audio footage, providing your audience with an impressive and high-quality display.