NAB 2009: Vizrt Focuses on Workflow

By Carolyn Braff

Vizrt will have its trademark flurry of content-production tools on display at NAB 2009, but the keyword driving this year’s show is

workflow.

“For the first time, we will come to NAB with a complete workflow, from ingest to multiplatform production, handling both video and graphics content,” explains EVP of Marketing François Laborie. “As always, we have a lot of products to show, but this full integration is really something to put forward.”

Having acquired Escenic, a content system for online publishing that powers the Websites for many major European newspapers, Vizrt is now better equipped to build out a platform capable of addressing the complete needs of live-event production, including video and graphics.

“We can target TV productions, as we’ve always done, but we can also now turn our focus to the Web,” Laborie explains. “The same video assets that you store in our media-asset-management solution are available for a playlist on TV and can also be attached to an article on the Web. That way, a journalist can prepare his online article in parallel to his on-air contribution.”

In the Vizrt workflow, all graphics resources function the same way, so a journalist can apply the same templates used in a live event to generate content that will be published online, as either video or still graphics and photos.

Also of note is Media Asset Management (MAM) In A Box, which offers new integration with tape robots, Avid editing systems (in addition to the Final Cut default), and the Escenic online-content-management system.

“This solution is something you would use for a small production team, perfect for sports clubs or newspapers who want to do media-asset management for online,” Laborie explains. “It’s a modular system that’s a very good way to start, and it has now been integrated with all of our graphics tools, so an operator standing behind our CG can search the clips database, add clips to graphic animation, and create highlights very easily.”

Also on display will be products that go beyond MAM In A Box to streamline workflows. Vizrt will demonstrate studio-in-a-box environments at the show, which enables a single operator to have full control of the studio, making the production all the more efficient.

The current economic climate makes Vizrt’s streamlined workflows highly relevant to the predominantly North and South American audience the company expects to see at the show.