The Pilot
We had a perfect administrative program, we had a great timekeeping. What we needed to be able to take on the biggest competitions was TV-graphics. We evaluated many different solutions but none was as flexible as we would like. With that background, the Pilot was born. A professional tool for real-time rendered TV-graphics, complete with SDI key and fill, synched with a genlock from the production company.
We also use this software to create animations and graphics for our big screen LED scoreboards.
The Pilot enables us to real-time render data which is continuously pushed from Equipe via a plugin to the timekeeping. An operator can decide which information that should be displayed, but animations can also be triggered by events in Equipe. For instance; Display time to beat when there is 15 sec. left to the leaders time if the current rider has the same or less penalties compared to the leader. The different triggers in the Pilot makes it possible to create a vast amount of powerful effects.
The Pilot communicates with XML data over a TCP/IP network. This is also a great way to create graphics for scoreboards that are fully automated.
When we designed the Pilot, it was important to separate the rendering from the control. This makes it possible to place the graphics hardware in the studio, and the control system can be placed anywhere as long as there is a network connection between the two computers.
When our german customer, Sporthaus Verden, presented this solution to the german tv-station WDR/NDR, the response was "This is pure genius!". Before there were many cables running back and forth but now only a standard network is required, something that often already exists.
The Pilots main views
Scene Editor
Here you create the different scenes in a easy to grasp tree-view. You can open many scenes at the same time and copy/paste between them.
The scene consists of a tree with different objects, text, images, shapes, movie clips, masks, alpha and much more. All these objects can be animated with different events. The events are sent with an XML format over the network that updates the scene.
Controller
The controller map incoming information from the network to the scene on the graphics computer. This is done with the motion editor. Every motion has a start and a continue mode, which can be triggered with different events.
Under Motions, you can execute events created in the Motion Editor. You can also create playlists of events to make the flow of a live sport event simpler. For example; Show name, remove name, show time, show rank, etc.
With the playlist tool you can for instance create a list of everybody that will be interviewed during the broadcast, and map it to graphics in the scene.
Under the tab matrices you can prepare full-screen signs and then paginate between different signs.
If you want crawling text, you can prepare it under the crawl-tab.
References
Sporthaus Verden several broadcasts with WDR/NDR
Stockholm International Horse Show SVT and SVT24
H&M Grand Prix SVT24
Granvideo
Keopps Grand Prix, Denmark, DR2
Price
The Pilot is bundled with a graphic hardware system. For more information, contact us.
