At NAB 2016 on the Vizrt booth (#SL2417) Astucemedia, a leading provider of creative and technical services and data will unveil the latest features and capabilities of its Astucemedia Data Platform (ADP)—a powerful, full-featured solution that simplifies the often complex process of creating and managing visually pleasing live broadcast graphics infused with real-time data feeds and media assets.
Astucemedia will demonstrate its new integration with the Reuters Media Express and Getty Images data services, as well as integration with the Associated Press (AP) for U.S. elections data, and with Vizrt’s Viz One for media asset management (MAM). Astucemedia is also demonstrating the latest features of its financial market data and sport modules.
The ADP is a modular, software-based environment, that offers a wide range of purpose-built modules to capture real-time data feeds and parse the dynamic information into a myriad of graphics templates for live, real-time broadcast and display.
The ADP modules include:
- Finance (timely financial market data from Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg services)
- U.S. Election (National, regional and local U.S. election results, and voter and polling data from the AP)
- Sports (Individual modules designed for the coverage and analysis of many major sports)
- Weather data (temperature, forecasts, and observations of weather conditions, based on data from StormGeo)
- News & Social Media (Multiple data streams and media-rich content from a variety of service providers)
The news about the news module
From within the News & Social Media module, ADP users may search and curate video, images and text, timely content and feeds available from various data services—all from a single user interface. This content can be automatically ingested to the ADP as well as newly-integrated Viz One, making it instantly available to the graphic systems.
At NAB, Astucemedia will also show new integration between its News & Social Media ADP module and the following:
- Reuters Media Express, which provides images, video and text
- Getty Images, which provides images and video clips
- Vizrt’s Viz One media asset management, based on the automatic ingest of dynamic assets from the ADP
The News & Social Media module also supports Thomson Reuters, Blomberg, AP and many other RSS feed providers for straightforward news feeds as well as content from many social media platforms including:
- Vine
All ADP modules come with native Vizrt plugins—developed by Astucemedia—that seamlessly interface with Vizrt systems, and facilitate the process of creating the graphics and using the data links.
These plug-ins enable the Astucemedia platform to form a seamless, unified workflow that is fully compatible with the Vizrt graphics/playout chain, newsroom computer systems and components like ActiveX. Data platform content is fully searchable and accessible from within these environments.
Real-time, data-driven graphics made easy
Customers can begin creating their own sophisticated, custom live graphics on day one, without need to write their own scripts or software. All of the inherent complexity has been taken care of by the ADP’s smart design, plugins and underlying technology—including the data ingest, external-APIs, intelligent template logic, plugins, live web data monitoring, and data publishing to various platforms.
“Real-time data—such as financial market, motorsports, soccer, and U.S. elections feeds—are particularly challenging to integrate within live graphics because the information is often quite complex, voluminous and in constant flux,” said Alexandre Leclerc, President of Astucemedia.
“Broadcasters need a system that they can rely on to take this data and populate it automatically within graphical displays, virtually instantaneously, and with unwavering accuracy,” he added. “In the race to be the first to air with breaking news, it would be impractical, if not impossible, to generate a high volume of data-rich graphics without a purpose-built automation system like our data management platform.”
Interactive broadcast and sports graphics
Astucemedia will present a pre-built portfolio of U.S. elections graphics that are integrated using the ADP. The U.S Election ADP and the graphics portfolio will also be displayed by Vizrt as part of its Augmented Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality presentation at the booth.
On-camera presenters can access interactive graphics for sports, social and financial data by using an on-set touchscreen display to call up graphics containing information they want to illustrate in their reports.
At the show, Astucemedia will also demonstrate ADP for Sports, which gives broadcasters a reliable, open, software-based workflow that simplifies live TV graphics creation integrated with real-time data feeds from STATS, OPTA, and other sports data service providers. There is an ADP module addressing the unique needs of each of the following sports:
- Soccer
- Football
- Basketball
- Hockey
- Tennis
- Golf
- Motorsports
At NAB, Astucemedia will also highlight its platform’s seamless data integration with another Vizrt system, Viz Libero, a 3D virtual sports solution used to generate live 3D replays, novel game perspectives and sports analysis.
“With our custom Vizrt plug-ins, our data platform now captures valuable in-game data—such as scores, goals, player statistics, leaderboards, team standings, heatmaps, formations and more—and integrates it within graphics templates and live graphics as well as natively in Viz Libero,” said Leclerc. “Users are completely free to use, modify, repurpose and monetize these graphics anytime, any way they wish, because they own the rights to the assets.”
Astucemedia’s data platform is the culmination of its more than a decade of experience providing world-class creative and technical expertise and data management software. The company also provides a full range of creative design services performed by a talented team dedicated to creating fresh, trendy, custom broadcast graphics, templates, and channel branding that bring visual concepts to fruition on-screen.
