Werbung
W W W .T V T E C H N O L O G Y .C O M R E P R I N T E D F R O M M A Y 2 , 2 0 0 1
Copyright 2001 IMAS Publishing (USA), Inc. Reprinted with permission.
NEWS
Entering vi[z]-dom
by Claudia Kienzle
NEW YORK
Once the domain of well-heeled stations in top 10 markets, sophisticated,
real-time 3D broadcast graphics and virtual set systems (VSS) can now
be used by anyone, including small-market stations and Webcasters.
This is because vi[z]rt (pronounced viz-are-tee) has expanded the capabili-ties
and platforms supported by its product line, putting the same graphics
tools used by top broadcasters within the reach of most production budgets.
The versatile vi[z]rt (visualization in real-time) product line is the synthesis
of RT-SET’s virtual set technology and live broadcast graphics technology from Peak Broadcast Systems (acquired in July 2000) — plus Windows NT graphics technology from Evans and Sutherland’s Digital Video Division (acquired in April
2000).
Now, Peak’s Everest rendering engine (currently called vi[z]) is the core renderer for all vi[z]rt’s broadcast graphics prod-ucts,
including the vi[z] virtual studio. Peak’s pilot technology — renamed vi[z] content pilot — offers graphics templates, real-time
data displays, as well as delivery of content to traditional, interactive and Internet broadcast outlets. vi[z] modeling provides real-time
3D modeling and broadcast graphics authoring tools. And, unlike other high-end broadcast graphics systems, vi[z] products are not limited
to SGI Onyx2 class computers. They run equally well on Windows NT (Intel) PCs, SGI O2 and even Linux, so customers can take advantage of
affordable platforms without sacrificing quality or real-time performance.
An aggressive marketer, vi[z]rt is tackling one of the biggest fears station managers have about purchasing live broadcast graphics sys-tems
— will today’s hot product dead-end as tomorrow’s legacy before realizing a return on investment? In today’s recessionary climate,
where capital expenditures have been limited and cautious, stations have shown a reluctance to upgrade their live broadcast graphics infra-structures
due to the high costs and uncertainties associated with this dynamic technology.
With its new strategic vision, Gregory Petroff, vi[z]rt’s vice president of Marketing, said the company is confident it can win over broad-casters
with the integrated, scalable, modular, open-architectured vi[z]product line, designed to fit every budget and need.
vi[z]rt’s Gregory Petroff
vi[z]rt Draws Broadcasters to Its Enterprisewide
Graphics Paradigm
TV TECHNOLOGY: How does the vi[z]
product line meet the challenges facing today’s
broadcasters?
PETROFF: Besides resolution-independent
3D graphics and virtual set creation tools, our
solution streamlines the entire work-flow
process enterprisewide and offers broadcasters
unprecedented efficiency and control over
graphics assets. Our robust soup-to-nuts solu-tion
includes asset management, content man-agement,
a searchable database server, the
ability to take thousands of live data feeds —
like sports scores, election results and stock
market tickers — and use that data in timely
graphics, and the creation of graphics tem-
plates that maintain a consistent branding while
allowing journalists closest to the breaking
news to fill in data for display. With support
for XML, HTML, streaming encoders and more,
our vi[z] content pilot acts as the glue that con-trols
all the station’s content and delivers it to
traditional, interactive television or Web broad-cast
outlets simultaneously from a single, scal-able platform.
Small-market stations and Webcasters can
enter our product line at a low-price point —
[such as with] a single NT-based vi[z] 3D graph-ics
system — then add studio peripherals, a
chroma-keyer and camera tracking gear when
they’re ready to upgrade to virtual sets. They
can mix and match different operating systems
(OS), such as placing an Onyx in the broadcast
operations center but NT boxes on their mobile
units. Should the live system in the truck go
down, it automatically reverts to the Onyx at
headquarters and continues delivering graphics
without interruption.
TV TECHNOLOGY: Now that you’ve
absorbed the research and development teams from
Peak, Pilot and Evans & Sutherland, how do they
work together to develop your next-genera-tion
products?
PETROFF: Our three development teams
are working to promote a unified product
strategy. In Austria and Norway (locations for-merly
associated with Peak and Pilot), the core
mission is to
further develop
the vi[z] ren-dering
engine
and authoring
tools regardless
of hardware
platform and
improve upon
our manage-ment
and
w o r k -f l o w
tools, respec-tively.
In Tel
Aviv, Israel,
where RT-SET
has been based,
20 of the com-pany’s
140-member work force focus on devel-oping
better virtual set controls and production
tools, such as lens calibration. However, the
worldwide headquarters is now in New
York City.
Through our combined resources and exper-tise,
we now have greater “bandwidth” to gen-erate
new products for our vi[z] platform. For
example, we just introduced the vi[z] video
engine, which ties a dedicated DDR to a vi[z]
modeling workstation so that customers can
build a complex graphic and render it to the
disk in “fast post.” Then, they can play that
graphic to air while rendering additional real-time
graphics on top of it live to air — creat-ing
a hybrid pre-rendered/real-time graphics
package. In this way, a station’s graphics depart-ment
can generate bumps, promos and opens
that run daily, but then add additional graph-ics
with that day’s specific information.
Another new product, content pilot CG, is
a version of vi[z] that works like a Chyron
iNFiNiT! so that the user interface will be famil-iar
to Chyron operators. We’re offering a Chy-ron
replacement program, where we will credit
customers for any Chyron that we take offline.
TV TECHNOLOGY: Many manufacturers
have designed dedicated hardware processors for
their Windows-based live graphics solutions to com-pensate
for its limitations. Why does vi[z]rt believe
Windows is the way to go for live, high-end broad-cast
graphics?
PETROFF: Well, Windows NT had a rep-utation
for being unstable, but that was because
people were pushing the hardware too hard —
the bus width and processor speed were insuf-ficient
for live broadcast graphics. Now, on
Windows 2000, we have more headroom and
so it’s as stable and reliable as an Onyx.
At vi[z]rt, we’re a software company, but we
want to control our own destiny, so we build
our own NT boxes and use Open GL in our
rendering engines. Whenever a better, faster
card comes along, we can easily swap it to
extend the product life. The development effort
for better, faster NT graphics cards is quite
robust, driven by the huge PC gaming market,
and we expect that the price performance of
inexpensive NT cards will soon surpass the
high end. We also view Linux as an extremely
efficient real-time OS, so we’re developing our
own video drivers for Linux.
We’re committed to providing an open set
of tools, including an SDK, so any developer —
even a competitor — can write to or utilize our
vi[z] rendering engines. Our focus is on pro-tecting
our customers’ investment and maxi-mizing
work flow so their broadcast operations
can be more productive.
Copyright 2001 IMAS Publishing (USA), Inc. Reprinted with permission.
NEWS
Entering vi[z]-dom
by Claudia Kienzle
NEW YORK
Once the domain of well-heeled stations in top 10 markets, sophisticated,
real-time 3D broadcast graphics and virtual set systems (VSS) can now
be used by anyone, including small-market stations and Webcasters.
This is because vi[z]rt (pronounced viz-are-tee) has expanded the capabili-ties
and platforms supported by its product line, putting the same graphics
tools used by top broadcasters within the reach of most production budgets.
The versatile vi[z]rt (visualization in real-time) product line is the synthesis
of RT-SET’s virtual set technology and live broadcast graphics technology from Peak Broadcast Systems (acquired in July 2000) — plus Windows NT graphics technology from Evans and Sutherland’s Digital Video Division (acquired in April
2000).
Now, Peak’s Everest rendering engine (currently called vi[z]) is the core renderer for all vi[z]rt’s broadcast graphics prod-ucts,
including the vi[z] virtual studio. Peak’s pilot technology — renamed vi[z] content pilot — offers graphics templates, real-time
data displays, as well as delivery of content to traditional, interactive and Internet broadcast outlets. vi[z] modeling provides real-time
3D modeling and broadcast graphics authoring tools. And, unlike other high-end broadcast graphics systems, vi[z] products are not limited
to SGI Onyx2 class computers. They run equally well on Windows NT (Intel) PCs, SGI O2 and even Linux, so customers can take advantage of
affordable platforms without sacrificing quality or real-time performance.
An aggressive marketer, vi[z]rt is tackling one of the biggest fears station managers have about purchasing live broadcast graphics sys-tems
— will today’s hot product dead-end as tomorrow’s legacy before realizing a return on investment? In today’s recessionary climate,
where capital expenditures have been limited and cautious, stations have shown a reluctance to upgrade their live broadcast graphics infra-structures
due to the high costs and uncertainties associated with this dynamic technology.
With its new strategic vision, Gregory Petroff, vi[z]rt’s vice president of Marketing, said the company is confident it can win over broad-casters
with the integrated, scalable, modular, open-architectured vi[z]product line, designed to fit every budget and need.
vi[z]rt’s Gregory Petroff
vi[z]rt Draws Broadcasters to Its Enterprisewide
Graphics Paradigm
TV TECHNOLOGY: How does the vi[z]
product line meet the challenges facing today’s
broadcasters?
PETROFF: Besides resolution-independent
3D graphics and virtual set creation tools, our
solution streamlines the entire work-flow
process enterprisewide and offers broadcasters
unprecedented efficiency and control over
graphics assets. Our robust soup-to-nuts solu-tion
includes asset management, content man-agement,
a searchable database server, the
ability to take thousands of live data feeds —
like sports scores, election results and stock
market tickers — and use that data in timely
graphics, and the creation of graphics tem-
plates that maintain a consistent branding while
allowing journalists closest to the breaking
news to fill in data for display. With support
for XML, HTML, streaming encoders and more,
our vi[z] content pilot acts as the glue that con-trols
all the station’s content and delivers it to
traditional, interactive television or Web broad-cast
outlets simultaneously from a single, scal-able platform.
Small-market stations and Webcasters can
enter our product line at a low-price point —
[such as with] a single NT-based vi[z] 3D graph-ics
system — then add studio peripherals, a
chroma-keyer and camera tracking gear when
they’re ready to upgrade to virtual sets. They
can mix and match different operating systems
(OS), such as placing an Onyx in the broadcast
operations center but NT boxes on their mobile
units. Should the live system in the truck go
down, it automatically reverts to the Onyx at
headquarters and continues delivering graphics
without interruption.
TV TECHNOLOGY: Now that you’ve
absorbed the research and development teams from
Peak, Pilot and Evans & Sutherland, how do they
work together to develop your next-genera-tion
products?
PETROFF: Our three development teams
are working to promote a unified product
strategy. In Austria and Norway (locations for-merly
associated with Peak and Pilot), the core
mission is to
further develop
the vi[z] ren-dering
engine
and authoring
tools regardless
of hardware
platform and
improve upon
our manage-ment
and
w o r k -f l o w
tools, respec-tively.
In Tel
Aviv, Israel,
where RT-SET
has been based,
20 of the com-pany’s
140-member work force focus on devel-oping
better virtual set controls and production
tools, such as lens calibration. However, the
worldwide headquarters is now in New
York City.
Through our combined resources and exper-tise,
we now have greater “bandwidth” to gen-erate
new products for our vi[z] platform. For
example, we just introduced the vi[z] video
engine, which ties a dedicated DDR to a vi[z]
modeling workstation so that customers can
build a complex graphic and render it to the
disk in “fast post.” Then, they can play that
graphic to air while rendering additional real-time
graphics on top of it live to air — creat-ing
a hybrid pre-rendered/real-time graphics
package. In this way, a station’s graphics depart-ment
can generate bumps, promos and opens
that run daily, but then add additional graph-ics
with that day’s specific information.
Another new product, content pilot CG, is
a version of vi[z] that works like a Chyron
iNFiNiT! so that the user interface will be famil-iar
to Chyron operators. We’re offering a Chy-ron
replacement program, where we will credit
customers for any Chyron that we take offline.
TV TECHNOLOGY: Many manufacturers
have designed dedicated hardware processors for
their Windows-based live graphics solutions to com-pensate
for its limitations. Why does vi[z]rt believe
Windows is the way to go for live, high-end broad-cast
graphics?
PETROFF: Well, Windows NT had a rep-utation
for being unstable, but that was because
people were pushing the hardware too hard —
the bus width and processor speed were insuf-ficient
for live broadcast graphics. Now, on
Windows 2000, we have more headroom and
so it’s as stable and reliable as an Onyx.
At vi[z]rt, we’re a software company, but we
want to control our own destiny, so we build
our own NT boxes and use Open GL in our
rendering engines. Whenever a better, faster
card comes along, we can easily swap it to
extend the product life. The development effort
for better, faster NT graphics cards is quite
robust, driven by the huge PC gaming market,
and we expect that the price performance of
inexpensive NT cards will soon surpass the
high end. We also view Linux as an extremely
efficient real-time OS, so we’re developing our
own video drivers for Linux.
We’re committed to providing an open set
of tools, including an SDK, so any developer —
even a competitor — can write to or utilize our
vi[z] rendering engines. Our focus is on pro-tecting
our customers’ investment and maxi-mizing
work flow so their broadcast operations
can be more productive.
