Chyron has introduced Prime 5.2, the latest software release of the company’s engine for live production graphics. At the core of the 5.2 release are sweeping enhancements to Prime CG’s rich integration with Adobe After Effects and Adobe Illustrator – accelerating the speed with which designers can go live to air with a dynamic CG graphic via direct import of Adobe design projects. In addition, Prime 5.2 delivers a wide variety of new design tools, fine-tune controls for on-air playout, and faster system performance.
Prime is used by broadcasters around the world to enrich productions with on-air graphics, visually fluid video walls, dynamic touchscreen displays and more. Prime’s Designer application provides the tools to design and prepare graphics for live playout, but many designers start their process in Adobe After Effects. Prime 5.2 introduces an updated After Effects export tool that enables designers to directly import projects into Prime Designer, with support for first level precomps as base scenes.
“This next step in Prime’s After Effects integration is absolutely game changing for broadcast design teams,” said Chris Amodei, Prime product manager at Chyron “With precomp support, the original design of a graphic will stay fully functional upon import into Prime – rather than flattening a project into pre-rendered clips like other CG systems on the market. Upon import, designers can immediately start formatting their project into a Prime scene for on-air playout with intuitive logic, data-binding and replaceable elements. We’re talking going from a blank canvas to controllable on-air graphic in literal minutes with an Adobe After Effects project – designers are going to love this.”
Prime 5.2 also introduces support for direct import of Adobe Illustrator .ai and .pdf files. Designers can quickly and easily import their favourite logos as true vector objects, allowing for unlimited scale, rapid import and easy 3D object creation for on-air graphics.
Beyond the Adobe integrations, the latest 5.2 release also accelerates the design process. New functionalities include intuitive filter-based search for objects in a vast scene tree, straightforward copy/paste of AutoFollow expressions across scene elements, and the ability to quickly access base scene resources during editing. Additionally, new designer tools are available for shader effect animation and designer canvas configuration.
For playout operators, text control objects are now customisable with standard and active border colours, providing better visual clarity for control of text-heavy scenes. For producers, control panel elements can be gated to use in preview channel, program channel, or both – preventing access to controls that aren’t intended for on-air use. In addition, for touchscreen applications, Prime supports active drag control of objects on the screen.
Last but certainly not least, Prime 5.2 optimises software performance to deliver increases in speed. Prime’s load performance of replaceable elements has increased by up to 50%, a significant improvement for customers who utilise hundreds or thousands of replaceables within their graphics packages. Prime’s startup speed has also increased by making the playout interface immediately available, ensuring operators and automated workflow can get back-on air faster in the event of a system relaunch.
