Vizrt has introduced a new cloud-based subscription service, Viz Social, that allows editorial staff to moderate and curate social media content for broadcast in new ways. 

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Vizrt: New technology in Viz Engine 4.1 enables interviews in virtual space

Delivered in collaboration with audience engagement specialists Never.no, Viz Social connects directly with data fields in popular Vizrt graphics tools, allowing broadcasters to tell stories driven by social media content, curated on the fly.

Real-time graphics workflows are also enhanced by Viz Social, adding another powerful and seemingly inexhaustible data feed for intelligently curated storytelling.

“Broadcasters today need tools that make it easier to work efficiently with social media content that provides access to breaking news, as it frequently does,” explained Remo Ziegler, head of global product management, Vizrt Group. “Viz Social combines leading-edge mapping of collected social media content from Never.no with the most flexible and visually compelling graphics platform in the world, so torrents of social media content can be tamed and used to tell stories that are clear, concise and up to the minute.”

Viz Social lets customers search and monitor conversations on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and RSS feeds in order to quickly track and respond to content as it develops online. Filters and moderating techniques can be applied to send the most relevant and compelling content to air through content mapped directly to Vizrt scenes and tools, allowing users to create stories that engage audiences. The quality of the experience for audiences and online participants is aided by powerful inline compliance tools.

“This new partnership integrates our next-level social media monitoring, search and aggregation services, and audience interaction capabilities, with the raw data visualisation power of Vizrt’s real-time graphics platform. By collecting and visualising social media and live interactive content, Viz Social engages audiences in ways they’ve never experienced before,” claimed Never.no CEO, Scott Davies.

Also useful in these days of social distancing is Vizrt’s new ‘teleportation’ system that can bring journalists separated by the needs of quarantine rules or physical distance together into the same studio using its newly launched Viz Engine 4.1.

It believes the system “could become the future of remote live interviews”. Using IP and the built-in Fusion renderer in Viz Engine 4.1, two individuals located in separate countries can appear to be in the same room having a conversation in a live, one-on-one TV talk show format. The company has used the system on its own Vizr.TV service, a new online platform utilising Vizrt tools to provide its broadcast customers with insight into the latest company offerings in lieu of cancelled industry tradeshows. Social distancing mandates not only moved the timeline of VizrTV production up by several months but added the extra challenge of having to produce from multiple locations remotely – and even from home, a similar challenge faced by many Vizrt customers.

In a first outing for the just-released technology, host Chris Black appears seated in a room next to guest Gerhard Lang, Vizrt’s CTO, conducting an interview. However, Black was in a green-screen studio at the Vizrt global headquarters in Bergen, Norway while Lang was in the Vizrt office in Vomp, Austria more than 2,000km away. A virtual set provides a common background behind both individuals.

“The ability of Viz Engine 4.1 to key two or more independent streams at the same time while rendering and compositing everything together is the real magic here,” said Lang. “Getting good quality video from Chris’s location with very little latency to the Viz Engine 4.1 in Austria via public internet was crucial for the keying quality and natural dialogues.”

Two Matrox Monarch Edge devices were used to send and receive the SRT streams from Norway to Austria.