When Midwich US set up their AVonAir podcast studio at InfoComm 2026, they didn’t just show up with a camera and a microphone. They built a broadcast-grade, fully PoE-powered production environment inside a trade show booth, and used QuickLink StudioPro™ to run it.
More than 10 episodes of AVonAir recorded live. Multiple hours of polished content. Episodes hitting YouTube within two hours of wrapping. All from a booth on the InfoComm show floor.
Here’s how they did it.
A Studio on a Show Floor
Hugo Chevrette from SFM, part of the Midwich group, was the Technical Director for the AVonAir production at InfoComm 2026. His brief was straightforward in ambition if not in execution: build a broadcast-quality podcast studio on a trade show floor, keep it running across a packed recording schedule, and get content out fast.
The design principle Hugo and his colleague Jeff Barnes landed on was elegantly simple: if it needs a wall outlet, it doesn’t belong in the build. Every single piece of equipment in the studio ran on Power over Ethernet, PoE or PoE++, fed from a NETGEAR M4250 24-port PoE++ switch. No wall outlets. No separate power runs. A clean, self-contained infrastructure that could be packed up and replicated anywhere.
The camera rig was three PTZ cameras, a BirdDog XL and two PTZOptics Move 4K units, all feeding NDI over the network. Ikan LXB8 and LBX10 fixtures handled lighting, also PoE++-powered and controllable remotely. Shure SM7DB microphones took care of audio (the SM7DB’s extra built-in gain over the standard SM7B turned out to be a smart call on a noisy show floor), routed through a Turtle AV Mineola 4×4 Dante conversion box managed virtually from the control room.
It was a proper studio. It just happened to be inside a booth.
Running the Show from the Other Side of the Wall
While guests and hosts were on camera in the studio, Hugo was on the other side of the wall keeping everything moving.
He was controlling PTZ cameras via the BirdDog KBD controller, its built-in display giving him visual feedback as he worked across all three cameras. Kiloview handled monitoring duties throughout, with Multiviewer Pro giving Hugo a consolidated view of all feeds and a Kiloview N60 on the studio side delivering visual cues to the host. A Miri Technologies 5G bonding solution gave the whole team reliable high-bandwidth internet, independent of the venue’s Wi-Fi.
That last point mattered more than it might sound.
“We were able to shoot something, and within two hours it was already on YouTube,” Hugo said. “That really helped us — having high bandwidth and not having to rely on the InfoComm Wi-Fi, because as you know, this can get pretty spotty.“
A lean operation. A lot of moving parts. And a recording schedule that didn’t have much room for things to go wrong.
Where QuickLink StudioPro™ Came In
At the heart of Hugo’s control room workflow was QuickLink StudioPro™, handling live switching and recording for every episode of AVonAir across the week.
For Hugo, InfoComm 2026 was one of his first real hands-on experiences with StudioPro. Given the pace of the production, there wasn’t much of a runway for learning a new platform. What he found was that it didn’t take long at all.
StudioPro’s Scene-based approach to switching felt familiar from day one, conceptually close enough to the M/E workflow of legacy hardware switchers that Hugo could get productive quickly, without having to rebuild his mental model from scratch. The learning curve that often comes with new production software largely wasn’t there. And once he was up and running, StudioPro offered considerably more creative flexibility than a traditional hardware switcher, from graphics and overlays to custom scene layouts and streaming outputs, the platform opened up production options that simply aren’t available on legacy hardware.
The intuitive StudioPro Fusion control surface, combined with the powerful capabilities of StudioPro, makes this video switching solution one of the most compelling and flexible available in the industry. I was able to create my template on my laptop well in advance of the production and simply load it onto the workstation once it arrived in the control room the day before the live event.
One Panel to Run It All: StudioPro™ Fusion
Alongside StudioPro, Hugo was using the StudioPro™ Fusion control panel, and this is where the workflow really opened up.
The StudioPro Fusion is a compact but serious piece of kit. 113 tactile buttons. A built-in 5.5″ LCD screen. An integrated T-Bar. But what made it genuinely powerful for the AVonAir production was its native Bitfocus Companion integration, which let Hugo reach well beyond the vision mix from a single surface.
From the StudioPro Fusion, he was switching camera feeds, adjusting PTZ cameras, and controlling lighting, all without taking his hands off one piece of hardware. With native management of over 600 external devices through Companion, the panel became the central system of the entire production rather than just a switcher.
On a busy show floor, with back-to-back recordings and guests cycling through, that kind of consolidated control isn’t just convenient. It’s what makes the difference between a smooth production and a stressful one.
Since I was already familiar with Bitfocus Companion, I felt right at home when programming macros to create an alternate mix output that provided visual cues for the show's host.
StudioPro also handled all recording throughout the week, two ISO camera feeds plus a mixed program output running simultaneously, giving the on-site editing team clean material to cut from and get episodes out the door fast.
The Numbers
Across InfoComm 2026, the AVonAir team produced 10 episodes and hours of content, recorded live from the show floor and published to YouTube within hours of each session wrapping.
For a small team, operating in one of the noisiest environments in the AV industry, that’s a meaningful result, and a workflow worth paying attention to.
What It Means for Your Productions
The AVonAir setup wasn’t built for InfoComm specifically. It was built to be repeatable.
A PoE-powered infrastructure, a compact control surface with deep device integration, and a production platform with an easy learning curve, that combination works just as well in a corporate studio, a house of worship, a university, or a live events space. If a two-person team can pull off professional podcast production on a trade show floor, the same approach scales comfortably into almost any live production environment.
For integrators specifying live production setups, that’s the real takeaway from InfoComm 2026: the tools exist to deliver broadcast-quality output without broadcast-scale complexity. QuickLink StudioPro and the StudioPro Fusion panel are a significant part of why.
Want to See StudioPro in Action?
QuickLink StudioPro is a professional, award-winning live production platform for switching, recording, and live streaming. Paired with the StudioPro Fusion control panel, bringing tactile hardware control and deep Bitfocus Companion integration to any production environment. Discover QuickLink StudioPro™ »
Midwich US is a QuickLink North American Distributor, and their broadcast team works directly with integrators and production teams to find the right fit for their environments, whether that’s a fixed studio build, a live events setup, or a deployable kit like the one that powered AVonAir at InfoComm 2026. Talk to Midwich US »
