Typically a vision mixer would be found in a professional television production environment such as a television studio, cable broadcast facility, commercial production facility or linear video editing bay. The term can also refer to the person operating the device.

Vision mixer and video mixer are almost exclusively European terms to describe both the equipment and operators. In the United States, the common name for a device of this kind is (video) production switcher and the common name for the operator of the device is known as technical director.

Capabilities and usage in TV Productions

Besides hard cuts (switching directly between two input signals), mixers can also generate a variety of transitions, from simple dissolves to pattern wipes. Additionally, most vision mixers can perform keying operations and generate color signals (called mattes in this context). Most vision mixers are targeted at the professional market, with newer analog models having component video connections and digital ones using SDI. They are used in live and video taped television productions and for linear video editing, even though the use of vision mixers in video editing has been largely supplanted by computer based non-linear editing.

Older professional mixers worked with composite video inputs. There are still a number of consumer video switchers with composite video, S-Video or even FireWire available. These are often used for VJing, presentations, and small multi-camera productions.