ChyronHego at NAB 2017: the advantages of virtualization

One of the main new features from Evertz at NAB 2017 is the virtual server platform intended to host end-to-end live production workflows.

One of the pillars on which ChyronHego is basing its presence at NAB 2017 on virtualization as a way to gain agility and usability; redundancy and scalability; space and energy savings.

Jesper Gawell, Chief Marketing Officer at ChyronHego, said: "With last year's introduction of CAMIO Universe, we took a big step toward helping our news broadcast customers make the transition simple and inexpensive with solutions that maximized workflow efficiencies. And now, with the VPX platform, we're entering the next phase of IT-enabled broadcast operations by allowing these solutions to operate in a virtualized server environment. With VPX, we're showcasing a clear way that the transformation from SDI to IP is here.”

VPX has emerged from a logical progression that began with comprehensive software workflows that were virtually hardware-independent. CAMIO Universe created a comprehensive software workflow for every aspect of live production, including video and audio switching, broadcast graphics, clip playback, virtual sets and weather graphics, all with a high degree of broadcast automation. The next step is a migration from SDI, which gives live production components the ability to share video within the software-based workflow and without the need to pass through SDI.

Finally, relying on a standardized IT infrastructure allows broadcasters to adopt the basic doctrines of the wider IT world, such as the ability to run live production workflows all from virtual instances running on a single server. With VPX, broadcasters can cherry-pick applications from ChyronHego's product portfolio, allowing users to build workflows for all types of productions such as news, sports, current affairs, entertainment and others.

A key component of running live production workflows in a virtualized server environment is the ability to share and distribute video over IP within the virtualized server environment. Today, the ChyronHego family of products supports NewTek's Network Device Interface (NDI) video protocol.

Live Assist Panels

ChyronHego is demonstrating in Las Vegas the Live Assist Panels platform – an all-new dashboard and user interface creation tool for the company's Live Assist family of playback automation systems. The Live Assist Panels platform leverages the latest multi-user web technologies to enable the creation of custom-designed user interfaces for the control of any ChyronHego product, while also supporting an increasingly wide range of protocols used by ChyronHego and other industry-leading vendors.

Additionally, the Live Assist Panels platform offers ultra-low latency video previews that allow the creation of multiple individually configured multiviewers and their distribution over standard IP networks. Live Assist Panels works in browser environments, making it completely platform independent and usable using secure internet connections.

The Live Assist Panels platform has been designed from the ground up to allow even non-technical users to build custom playback workflows.

The Live Assist Panels software-based platform includes a built-in programming engine that includes IntelliSense, code completion, and code hinting to make it easier for users to include highly advanced interaction in their custom user interfaces. The panels themselves can be created within Live Assist Panels by simply dragging and dropping a series of predefined widgets such as drop-down menus, push buttons, input boxes and scrollable selectors. Panels can also be designed in Adobe Photoshop and imported directly into Live Assist Panels. Visual commands to activate LyricX graphical playback, shuttles to control the playback speed of a Paint “illustrated replay,” or scrollable dials to control audio levels from an external sound panel are examples of what users can easily add to the Live Assist Panel.

Live Assist Panels are ideal for stadium production. With a Live Assist Panel controlling ChyronHego's stadium production tools, including LyricX, ClickEffects PRIME and Live Compositor, as well as production tools from other leading vendors, users can trigger advanced animations on multiple LED displays using ClickEffects. They can run multi-layer video effects in Live Composer, update LyricX graphics, and much more, all with the push of a button.

Click Effects PRIME

ChyronHego has introduced Click Effects PRIME, a highly integrated turnkey graphics creation solution for A/V presentations in stadiums and live outdoor venues. Click Effects PRIME unites the creation, rendering and data stitching power of PRIME, ChyronHego's renowned graphics ecosystem, with the leading stadium graphics generation and custom digital display control solutions of CrossFire and Blaze from Click Effects.

Jesper Gawell said: "Since acquiring Click Effects less than a year ago, we have been fortunate to be able to leverage the extensive industry experience and know-how of the Click Effects team to take CrossFire and Blaze technologies to the next level and deliver a fully integrated ChyronHego solution. The result, which we proudly displayed at NAB, is Click Effects PRIME — which may easily be the most powerful and versatile location graphics platform available today."

CrossFire de Click Effects ofrece herramientas de creación de gráficos para reproducción y repetición de vídeo y audio, generación de caracteres, DVE y muchas otras posibilidades a nivel de gráficos, y Blaze es un sólido sistema para el control y gestión de múltiples pantallas LED de distintos tamaños, de forma simultánea o independiente. Ambas soluciones ofrecen características fáciles de usar para el operador y a buen precio, a través de un interfaz de usuario intuitivo y coherente.

Click Effects PRIME genera una integración fluida de CrossFire y Blaze con el entorno de creación y el motor de renderización PRIME para todo tipo de software de 64 bits de ChyronHego. Esto expone a los usuarios a las potentes características de PRIME como la renderización a tiempo real de objetos 3D dinámicos y enlazados a datos como sombreadores, luces, materiales y texturización de vídeo. Otras características que se han ampliado incluyen la capacidad para crear transiciones de desplazamiento y barridos en tiempo real personalizadas para vídeo y gráficos, así como luces y reflejos en tiempo real, mosaicos de vídeo en tiempo real y controles de reproducción en bucle de cuatro puntos para clips.

Los vínculos a los productos de seguimiento del balón y jugador en tiempo real de ChyronHego permiten a los usuarios de Click Effects PRIME crear el mismo atractivo análisis de vídeo jugada a jugada al que los espectadores están acostumbrados en las emisiones deportivas televisivas.

Click Effects PRIME puede no sólo compartir de forma fluida formatos completos construidos con otras utilidades ChyronHego PRIME, sino que la nueva plataforma también es plenamente retrocompatible con gráficos previamente construidos con Blaze y CrossFire. Esto significa que los usuarios que están habituados al interfaz de usuario CrossFire/Blaze no necesitarán instrucción adicional para empezar a utilizar Click Effects PRIME.

Soporta vídeo 4K con muy baja latencia tanto para entradas como salidas, con hasta cuatro canales de emisión máscara/relleno HD-SDI y hasta ocho canales de emisión de vídeo HD-SDI.

Access to the NAB 2017 SPECIAL in Panorama