Welcome to the Viz Pilot User Guide.

This introduction contains information about the following topics:

• Viz Pilot System

• System Overview

The following terms are used in this guide:

• Background scene: A background scene contains logic that enables an operator to toggle the states of multiple front scenes. A typical background scene also contains back plates and transition effects for each state of the front scenes. For example, a lower third may be on-air at the same time as a bug, and the lower third may be taken off-air without taking the bug off-air or reanimating it.

• Component: In Template Wizard, components are used to create text fields, buttons, drop-lists, database connections etc.

• Control plugins: A graphics scene can contain all sorts of objects that can be controlled from a template such as text, back plates, images, colors and more. The graphics designer uses control plugins to expose objects to make them editable in a template. When importing a scene to Template Wizard, the exposed objects with control plugins appear as list items with check boxes.

• Control Object: Every scene with control plugins must have one instance of the control object plugin at the root level of a scene tree. Control Object reads the information from all other control plugins. When a scene is imported to Template Wizard, the information about other lower level control plugins is read by Control Object.

• Data element: A data element is a template filled with data. A data element contains a reference to its template (original) just as the template contains a reference to its scene. A data element contains a set of data and references to where data such as images and video clips can be found. In most cases, it's the data element that is played out on-air, and not the template.

• Front scenes: A front scene is a standard scene that makes up one part of a transition logic scene.

• Newsroom Component: In a Newsroom Computer System (NCS), the Newsroom Component (NrC) is used to add data elements to a story. The newsroom component is an embedded application in the NCS that connects to a database of templates. The templates can be filled with text, images, video and maps. Vizrt’s newsroom component is called Viz Pilot News.

• Scene: Scenes are built in Viz Artist. These can be either a single scene, or one part (layer) of a combination of scenes (transition logic).

• Template: A template is a customized interface created in Template Wizard. The template is used in Director or Viz Pilot News to create data elements that are added to a playlist for playout. A template is based on one or several (transition logic) Viz Artist scenes.

• Transition Logic Scene: A set of scenes built in Viz Artist. Consists of a background scene and one or several front scenes. The transition logic scene contains one scene (the controlling scene) that controls the state of or toggles a set of scenes (the layered scenes). The controlling scene toggles in and out of the layered scenes using pre-configured or customized transitions effects. This means that scenes that are already on-air do not need to be taken off air. For example, a lower third may be on-air at the same time as a bug, and may be taken off-air without reanimating or taking the bug off air.

• Viz Artist: The design tool where the graphics scenes and all animations are created.

• Viz Engine: The output engine used for playout of graphics, video, images, SDI sound and sound effects.