VizRT CG System Improves Transitions
By Ken Kerschbaumer -- Broadcasting & Cable, 4/14/2003
Graphics-system manufacturer VizRT has found believers in broadcasters like CNN and CBS, which use the company's VizTicker and VizContentPilot products. Now the company is seeking additional believers with its new VizTrio character-generator system.
Starting price is $35,000 for a one-channel system that, according to VizRT CTO Peter Ole Jakobsen, can work with a facility's existing application protocols. More important, it gives the user more-advanced graphics with the use of VizRT's 3-D graphics "transition-logic" technology.
"It allows the graphics to flow around the screen," says Jakobsen. "For example, the graphic can go from over the shoulder to a front lower third without the operator needing to consider what to do to move from one layer to the next. It will animate out one graphic and then animate in the next one."
VizRT also introduced a graphics system that sits on top of Panasonic's new graphics processor. Jakobsen says the new processor has impressed him, adding that he hasn't seen anything else that is close to its performance level. Forty of the units have already been sold to Japanese broadcasters, among them NipponTV, which will use it for virtual-studio and other graphics applications.
"With two live video inputs, stations can create HD broadcasts without a production switcher or DVE," Jakobsen explains, "and that can be very attractive."
