A new end-to-end production newsroom and automation system called iTX News from Omnibus that includes everything from graphics, to editing software, and more and is designed for the news and sports markets will be previewed at NAB.
"iTX NEWS consists of a wide-ranging suite of product components that can be mixed and matched to provide solutions to suit large network broadcasters, as well as smaller regional news operations," says OmniBus CTO Ian Fletcher. "It combines a high degree of efficiency, through extensive automation, with the ability to react extremely rapidly to late-breaking news. With built-in news-optimized editing facilities, and all rendering done in real time, journalists can take edited sequences to air immediately, making reaction times to unfolding events very rapid indeed."
The system includes iTX Edit, a purpose-designed multi-format editing system tailored for news and sports applications, with the unique ability to take edits to air without prior rendering – iTX does this in real-time, with graphics, audio and video effects, stills, captions and voiceovers. EDLs can also be exported to Final Cut Pro or AVID for craft editing if required.
iTX NEWS has multi-format capabilities, allowing users to easily ingest and edit together SD and HD sources, and combine them in the same playlist with non-broadcast material such as security footage and user-generated content, with real-time format conversion and rendering of effects.
The iTX architecture streamlines the output of multiple versions of the same playlist for SD, HD, Internet streaming, mobileTV and other platforms, with automatic transcoding and distribution of content.
iTX NEWS includes media acquisition, asset tracking and logging tools, powerful browse capabilities and rapid Windows Media encoding for news streaming. Content can be acquired from a wide variety of sources – Avid, Apple Final Cut Pro, live ingest, digital news delivery services and viewer-generated sources – and any mixture of formats can be combined in the same playlist.
Fletcher says frame-accurate proxy streaming is available to all users via the OmniBus SmartClient, which provides access to content and metadata, either embedded within the journalist's newsroom computer system or via a Web browser at any Web-enabled location. Journalists can view material at the desktop, cut it together into sequences for further editing, or send it directly from the SmartClient for immediate transmission without the need for transcoding, copying, or rendering.
iTX NEWS includes an optional, integrated, advanced 3D graphics package; it can also control many of the industry-standard graphics devices, allowing both graphics and video elements to be controlled from within a single playlist.