TVE Controls Graphics with Avid iNews Commands on Vizrt Newsroom Connect

Vizrt Ltd., a provider of content production tools for the digital media industry, has completed the implementation of Vizrt’s “Newsroom Connect” ActiveX plug-in for Viz Content Pilot at TVE — Spain’s largest public television network. Viz Content Pilot is Vizrt’s core content control system.

Vizrt’s graphics creation tools are now fully integrated within the Avid newsroom environment of TVE’s Galicia Territorial Center, making TVE one of the first broadcasters in Spain to implement this technology. TVE has used the system since December for its Territorial Journal.

Vizrt’s ActiveX plug-in allows users of the Avid iNews newsroom computer system (NRCS)—as well as many other NRCS — to create graphics for their news stories from within the NRCS. Newsroom Connect now goes a step further and interfaces with Avid iNews Command, Avid’s automation system that manages the “playlist” and playout of news stories in the rundown.

“The newsroom computer system, which is at the heart of any modern news broadcast operation, gives journalists all the tools they need to develop, write, and edit news stories without leaving a self-contained production environment.  Now that Viz Content Pilot is fully integrated with iNews and Command, journalists, news directors, and producers can create, preview, control, and playout their Pilot graphics without ever leaving that workflow,” said Petter Ole Jakobsen, Chief Technology Officer at Vizrt.

Viz Content Pilot graphics can then be linked to specific news stories, along with their start/end timecodes and durations and dropped into the Avid iNews rundown.  Once that rundown and the associated graphics metadata are loaded into Avid Command, the automated playout system generates a playlist that triggers playout from a Viz Engine real time rendering system, with video clips as primary and graphics as secondary events.  The integration allows Avid Command automatically to see, request, and playout specific Viz graphics at the appropriate time during newscasts.

“With this innovative newsroom integration, our journalists who are most familiar with particular news stories can create their own animated graphics by adding elements such as text, lower third supers, data, images, and video into ready-to-use Viz Content Pilot templates, all from within iNews,” said Alberto Lema (Chief of Production and Media) at TVE in Galicia.