The Zodiak is a smaller, but 2nd generation switcher compared to Kalypso. The Zodiak's Transform engines are field-based and less powerful (and less expensive) than the Kalypso's frame-based TE's. As such, each keyer can afford to have its own channel, while the Kalypso pools its higher-end (and more expensive) channels. When the Kalypso was originally designed, the use of (and importance of) internal DPM's had not yet been fully appreciated as it is now. Most people had only 2 channels of external DVE's with their switchers, and very few used more than 4 channels - 6 channels was considered at the time as a quantum leap - the idea of pooling those channels was the most flexible way to use those 6 channels among the 16 keyers.

Bob, how is it that the Zodiak has the capability to transform up to 12 keyers but Kalypso can only do as many as 6? It just strikes me as extremely odd that the "little brother" can do things the Kalypso can't ... Hopefully one of them will eventually get more robust macros and partial keyframes ... JH

When a keyer is effect-sent, the transfom engines "belong" to that keyer for as long as the Efects Send light is lit on the keyer. You must 1st release a transform engine from one keyer before it is available elsewhere. The exception to this would be if you did back-to-back transforms on the same keyers on the same M/E. The workarounds for this would be to remove the Effects Send from the last keyframe of each effect (if possible, depending on the effect) - this is a good habit to get into: Even if it's just a single keyframe effect, you can build a 2nd keyframethat releases the TE's...run the effect when you're cear of it before calling up your next effect. Or you can build an intermediate effect that does this - use it before calling up your next effect. Or you could build a macro to release all TE's - run it before calling up the new effec. The point is that you need to release TE's before you can use them elsewhere.