Orad Pivot, Track Focus on Sports Analysis

Orad will unveil  number of new products at NAB, including its new Pivot Windows-based controller and Spark Tracked Telestrator at NAB next week. Designed to accelerate the PlayMaker Live Analysis and Sports Replay workflows, the company says Pivot provides a powerful set of tools that can be used by multiple operators simultaneously to quickly facilitate production tasks such as file logging, sports highlight preparations, on-air playout and more.

“Pivot is a true extension of PlayMaker, creating a much more fluid and efficient workflow for fast-paced sports content production,” comments Avi Sharir, president and CEO of Orad.

Pivot’s workspace is organized for fast sports production, includes intuitive tools that allow users to quickly create clips from available recordings as well as create and edit highlight playlists using the simple drag and drop capabilities. Operators and/or any production assistants can easily tag clips with metadata tags, which are also searchable from the PlayMaker controller. Pivot also facilitates clip and playlist playout to multiple outputs as well as the management of file transfers between servers and/or shared storage devices.

Orad will also unveil its Spark Tracked Telestrator solution, a system the company says is ideal for both studio and live sport productions, Spark enables commentators to easily and quickly add captivating enhancements. The Spark telestration tool features a powerful 3D graphics engine and dedicated touch-screen interface designed for fast live sports productions.

The underlying engine accelerates production, allowing enhancements to be put on air even for a first replay. Unlike traditional telestrators, Spark can draw graphics either on screen or in field perspective, with the option to key the graphics onto the field, beneath the players.

Spark comes with an extensive library of ready-made rich graphic effects including arrow, markers, magnifiers and beams. Attributes, including colour and width, are easily modified and controlled. Spark includes an easy-to-use toolset to further enhance the asset banks.

To better streamline productions, Spark is equipped with a two-channel video server. This allows Spark to record and grab the relevant footage; playing to air directly from the Spark system. No need to use external video servers. Spark is a fully redundant solution and is available in a compact 2U rack mounted box.

Orad will also demonstrate its user-friendly, cost-effective, scalable iFind media asset management (MAM) solution. The new version of iFind offers enhancements to its content, asset and graphic management workflow capabilities. Also demonstrated for the first time at NAB is the company’s entry-level media asset management solution, which ships as part of the Orad Blend channel in-a-box solution.

Orad iFind vastly improves the user content management experience across the Orad Live Production solution. Recent updates included better live feed and file ingest management, deeper connection to the NRCS with placeholder capabilities, and better integration with Adobe Premiere Pro CC editing, bringing post directly into the production pipeline.The new iFind adds support for all file types including video, documents, graphics, audio and more. Automation capabilities streamline processes with an intuitive user interface for fast workflow design and live monitoring.

The new Orad entry-level MAM, integrated with the Blend channel-in-a-box, provides new channels and smaller operations a solid foundation to scale operations into a full multi-channel environment.

Lastly, Orad’s new Artwork SeQuencer is designed for studio productions as it is a file-based clip and still playback server coupled with superior real-time graphics controlled from a single user interface. ASQ will be typically used for playback of transitions as well as playback of sequences and images onto studio displays.

ASQ provides all the expected functions of a clips-and-still store, including ingest from file, video and image capture from live feed, alpha preview, back-to-back playout with transitions, rundown creation; plus many additional features that make its integration in modern workflows easy:

• Content tagging and cataloging for easy search and access
• Possibility to be triggered by switchers or studio automation
• Real-time graphics controlled from the same user interface
• Streamed preview of the real output as well as preview of individual assets available as part of the user interface

In its full capacity, ASQ is equipped with up to six video channels, typically two input streams of video in and four streams of video out. ASQ supports all commonly used file formats and wrappers. It can host clips from different formats in the same playlist and can play clips back to back.

Streamlining the workflow, ASQ is fully compatible with all major newsroom systems, allowing journalists to select and preview the media before publishing it to the rundown. Playback of ASQ items can be triggered manually, from an external device such as switchers or studio automation, or from Orad’s SmartShot.

ASQ is fully redundant solution with hot swappable dual power supply, Raid protected hard drives, and dual network cards, all from a compact rack mounted 2U box. ASQ is equipped with eight TB of Raid protected storage with automatic copying and deletion processes.