News Channel Al Arab to Launch With Viz Mosart Production Automation From Vizrt

Al Arab, an independent 24-hour news channel to be launched this year, is being built around two Viz Mosart studio automation systems from Vizrt.

Al Arab, which will broadcast from Bahrain, is entering a fiercely competitive news market in the Middle East. It’s relying on Viz Mosart to help it deliver high production values and engaging content, while also creating a consistent user experience and workflow to help staff move seamlessly between studios. This is Vizrt’s first major sale of Viz Mosart licences since the newscast automation solutions specialist became part of the Vizrt group.

The deal, for two Viz Mosart newsroom automation licences, will cover its two studios in Manama, the Bahraini capital. The larger studio will be for a 24-hour rolling news live broadcast, and the  – Viz Mosart studio automation will control equipment from Snell, Sony, Calrec, Avid, and Vizrt graphics, among others. The Viz Mosart system will also integrate closely with Avid iNews and with the LSB Virtual Studio Management (VSM) switching and management system.

The second studio will be used to produce news features and packages to insert into the rolling news output, where Viz Mosart will interface with the Avid Airspeed 5000 editing environment and Vizrt graphics. The Al Arab installation will be the first Viz Mosart installation which interfaces directly with Avid Interplay. The Viz Mosart ActiveX functionality in Viz Mosart allows it to appear as a web client to Avid Interplay.

“We believe that Viz Mosart will help us to quickly make a big impact,” said Yahia Al Masri, Chief Operating Officer of Al Arab News Channel. “Our audiences look to us to be the first with the news and clear, independent, in-depth analysis. Viz Mosart will enable us to consistently deliver engaging, graphics-rich news television to our viewers, all through a lean and efficient studio operation.”

“This is our first major sale of Viz Mosart licences since it became part of the Vizrt group, as well as the first sale to an Arabic-language news broadcaster,” said Francois Laborie, Chief Commercial Officer of Vizrt. “The fundamental reason for choosing Viz Mosart remains the same: by providing continuous improvement in workflows we help broadcasters make better news, by providing huge efficiencies, and by allowing them to focus where it matters: on the news-gathering.”

Al Arab also purchased a full compliment of Vizrt broadcast graphics and media asset management (MAM) tools for the news channel. These include a complete newsroom workflow for journalists to control all of their media content from within the Avid iNews interface. A series of Viz Pilot templates allow the journalist to search for clips in Viz One, Vizrt’s MAM system, as well as choose and edit graphic templates. The edited graphics and video are added to a playlist that will be controlled by Viz Mosart in the control room. Additional tools such as the mapping system, Viz World, and the design system, Viz Artist, compliment this workflow.

The news channel will use Viz Ticker to provide live updates of news, stocks, sports and weather scrolling on the screen. Viz Multichannel will provide consistent branding across multiple channels of live content. All graphics and video content will be composited in real-time using Viz Engine. The entire Vizrt infrastructure will be monitored for continual system health with the addition of Viz Secure.