Vizrt announces MOS support for Viz Flowics

Vizrt has added MOS support to its cloud-native HTML5 platform, Viz Flowics.

MOS (Media Object Server) protocol is the backbone protocol for communications between Newsroom Computer Systems (NRCS) and other systems such as graphics platforms. However, newer graphics technologies, such as HTML5, did not offer native MOS compatibility, creating an integration roadblock to existing news broadcast workflows.

Viz Flowics is the first HTML5 graphics system with a MOS Gateway and HTML plug-in for all MOS-compliant newsroom computer systems. MOS support simplifies the newsroom MOS workflow to efficiently create and manage graphics playlists for playout.

Vizrt has long offered a comprehensive newsroom workflow using the MOS protocol, but this release provides an alternative graphics system for newsrooms and broadcasters who want to adopt HTML5 as their graphics technology.

“We want to make it easier for customers, especially broadcasters with more simple graphics requirements, to incorporate HTML5 graphics. The new MOS support, in combination with our native integrations with local weather, traffic and markets data providers, makes this solution a perfect fit for regional broadcasters and local stations who are looking for more cost-effective graphics systems, and we have already signed up the first two customers who are implementing this solution,” said Gabriel Baños, co-founder of Flowics.

For journalists, there is no change to their existing graphics editing workflow when working on a particular story in a rundown inside the NRCS. They log in to the NRCS and will have the possibility of opening the Viz Flowics plug-in to access the templates available in the graphics package for a particular newscast or show. Just like with any other newsroom graphics plug-in, they use the templates to create, save, and drop graphics into their stories in the news rundown.

Viz Flowics MOS Support, via its own MOS Gateway, manages the connection between the NRCS and the Viz Flowics cloud backend, creating the associated graphics playlist once the rundown is enabled. Viz Flowics keeps the graphics playlist in sync and updated whenever there is a change, such as a story being removed, or a graphics overlay being added. The graphics operator in the control room opens the Viz Flowics Rundown Control web-based interface and selects the bulletin’s dedicated graphics playlist to play out graphics according to the running order.

Viz Flowics is a multi-tenant SaaS platform, and all graphics packages are hosted on the Viz Flowics cloud, so there is no need for the customer to operate its own cloud accounts, provision any servers or do any local installation, apart from running the MOS Gateway.

This is the first phase of the MOS support for Viz Flowics, with more integrations including studio automation workflows, coming soon.