Avid Shift Gear In Broadcast Graphics

Creating synergies or even unifying the content creation process (in all its aspects) for distribution over multiple platforms has been a concern for many broadcasters for some time, says Raul Alba, Senior Principal Product Manager Broadcast Graphics at Avid.

Graphics are an essential part of news content, both in the linear broadcast or all the varieties of non-linear and new media distribution channels; because graphics are the most relevant part of the visual 'brand', and in a context where competition is bigger than ever, being able to stand out from the crowd is essential.

Media producing companies need unified creative tools to create appealing content easily, and Avid graphics provide a comprehensive set of tools that cover the complete end-to-end workflow from the creation to the distribution. Avid can provide a streamlined way to enrich video and audio content with graphics as part of the editorial process by non-specialized users (most commonly journalists), regardless of where this media will later be used; and an automated way to render these graphics in the most suitable way for each distribution method, including using different graphic looks or layouts adapted to the needs of different distribution channels.

Social media has become an integral part of the news production workflow, it's both a source of information and trends, and an unavoidable channel of content distribution. Nobody can imagine a news production any more without analysing discussions and reactions happening in social media, and including this is an essential part of the story telling process. The same way, it's impossible to ignore the reach of social media as a distribution channel, especially with newer generations, and not restricted to the geographical boundaries of a traditional broadcast.

Avid has put social media at the core of its story centric strategy for news productions, with two products: Media | Distribute and the Social Media Hub, that are perfectly integrated into the MediaCentral platform and that allow searching, filtering and retrieving social media generated content for its usage in the production environment; as well as publishing finished content to multiple new media channels, including social media.

The days of a single-screen household are firmly gone. For a broadcaster or brand to increase its viewership, drive web traffic, and create a buzz across its multiple channels, generating engaging social content is paramount. One way to achieve this is with a story-centric workflow. Simply put, it's putting the story at the centre of operations, spanning planning through to delivery. By providing production teams with the right tools to collaborate, plan, gather, create, manage and deliver news, they're best placed to deliver compelling content to a wider range of viewers across multiple plat-forms.

There is also high demand for new ways of presenting information in news and other studio productions. Augmented reality and large video wall surfaces, with or without interactive areas, are becoming a common tool to enhance the story telling process. Some time ago, the demand was to 'do something wonderful', while today, even if the visual impact is still very important, the focus on the customer requirements has moved to the behind the scene process required to efficiently generate the content that will fill these new ways of delivering content.

We see a growing demand in technologies that help improving the storytelling process by, for example, providing new ways of displaying editorial information in an innovative way that's more appealing to the audience. Augmented reality, virtual sets and large video wall surfaces are great tools to communicate, but in the current climate of tightening operational budgets, every single production wants to be able to display content in creative ways without increasing the operational costs.

That's why the content is generated, managed and controller is nearly as important as the quality of the content, because if using AR or Virtual solutions, broadcasters will be required to add several people to the daily operation, so most won't go for it.

Avid has a wide range of solutions to display information in creative and appealing ways, but maintaining the creation, editorial and playout processes remains unchanged. The integration with the Avid production workflow and the MediaCentral platform has tightened in the last 12 months, and this provides a new dimension to the graphics editorial process, because now a journalists using MediaCentral | UX can access the catalogue of graphics (any kind of graphics, including AR and virtual graphics) from anywhere and include them in the story telling process.

www.avid.com

This article is also available to read at BFV online here, page 28.

(JP/LM)