After extensive field research and invaluable customer feedback, Vizrt has now embarked on a new product roadmap for its next-generation VizEngine – the core of its real-time compositing technology – that takes into account all of the advantages of IP while conserving spacing and processing capacity.
If new producers want to get the story first, and with the most comprehensive graphics support, they have to move to a workflow that requires the least amount of effort and the most flexibility.
Petter Ole Jakobsen, Vizrt’s chief technology officer, said that the industry needs to migrate to a platform that can do more with the same resources. IP is the most enabling part of the puzzle.
Yet Jakobsen has even bigger ideas for IP across the product line. The IP-based Viz Engine requires only a network connection and IP input/output. He envisions a day when IP triggers are used to control a media server to play out a rundown of stories, complete with complex transitions, without the need or a traditional production switcher. Vizrt’s timeline editor application is used to place desired graphics and video clips on a timeline. Users then drag the video and graphics elements that are built as MOS objects over to the playlist in Viz Trio – all from within such popular newsroom computer systems.
This process saves significant time and manpower while getting the story to air faster. And using this strategy often times results in less on-air technical errors. For news stations, it’s a veritable win-win all the way around. And since this dedicated server easily fits as a component within a facility’s existing IP-based workflow, there’s no need to interface the unit with the station’s routers, SDI cabling, or other SDI infrastructure. The IP-based Viz Engine can also work in a hybrid mode, SDI in and IP stream out, providing simultaneous output to air as well as to online and mobile environments. The time saving combined with a look that, until now, has not been available for IP productions is thus a fact.
“The idea is to save cost while bringing the reporter and producer closer to their final story, that way the story is conveyed in the most comprehensive way,’ Jakobsen said. “We are looking at ways to make our software tools very easy to use and very task-specific so that teams of people can be as efficient as possible.’
Indeed, Vizrt’s IP strategy also allows reporters to edit clips on-site and transfer them back to the station using any IP-enabled transmission device. That could be an expensive mobile production truck or a handheld cell phone. It also supports the tight integration of third-party products alongside the wide array of Vizrt production tools – such as a new Adobe integrations with Viz Media Engine and Viz World as well as the Viz Trio character generator (CG) and Viz Content Pilot. Again, this saves time and resources and gets news to air faster.
