Clip Store
In addition to a powerful switcher and CG, every model includes a clip store. It's a
great place to keep opens, closes, bumpers, or any clips or animations. It can record and play is digital uncompressed clips. It can also import QuickTime clips (.mov files encoded in DV, DVC PRO, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC) or MPEG2 clips. And in addition to clips, the clip store can also play
animations for intricately moving graphics or spinning logos.
Thumbnails of the clips are tiled on the Multi-View monitor wall on the
system's computer monitor. As shown at the right, the system can have
two independent channels of clip stores. For example, the second
channel could hold additional clips and some animations.
PixPadThe first channel of clips is standard, and it holds one
hour of clips. It can be expanded to up to four hours, and a second
channel is a surprisingly economical option. When a clip store is
selected all of the control panel's device controls are instantly
assigned to it, including the knobs, motion controls and the dynamic
PixPad. The PixPad is shown at the right, and its buttons display the
names of the clips. These clip names are automatically taken off of the
files names of each clip and placed on the PixButtons. You can see 9
clips at a glance, to correspond to the 9 thumbnails shown on the
monitor wall, above. And when you press the next button, both the
PixPad and the monitor wall jump to the next nine clips in the library.
Or you can access them by number, which is handy if you have a lot of
them.
Auto Start, Auto Stop...
When you press the Controls PixButton on the above PixPad, it
displays the clip modifiers, as shown at the right. You can set a clip
to auto-start, at the instant it is taken to air. Even the largest studios
have great difficulty providing this feature with expensive add-on gear,
and it is free with every Broadcast Pix system. Each clip can be set
to auto-stop when it comes off-air, and even auto-rewind. Or press
loop to have the clip endlessly loop, which is ideal for animated
backgrounds, such as "Jump-backs" from Digital Juice. The controls
also enable you to set mark-in points or mark-out to trim off unwanted
portions, and then the auto-start function will work from there.
The motion controls and knobs are shown below. The displays tell you
at all times which clip store is active, which clip is selected, and which
modifiers are applied to it. In this example, AX means it is set to both
auto-start and auto-stop. The display always, shows the time code for
the clip. The motion buttons work just like on any VTR to play, pause,
or rewind. And the left knob can scrub a clip, to quickly find a spot.
Animations
In addition to clips, the clip store is a great place to hold and play
out animations. The system can create an animation from a wide variety
of animation creation software packages, including the Inscriber
TitleMotion Character Generator that is included as standard equipment
in every Broadcast Pix Studio switcher. Inscriber can create an
animation out of just about any graphics, including complex fly-ins of
each component. Or use another popular animation generator, including
Digital Juice, or Adobe or ArtBeats. Just export your animation as a series
of Targa (.tga) images and they can be brought into a Broadcast Pix
system and rendered together into a powerful animation. The animations
can have keys, so they can be over-layed, and they can have sound. In
addition to .tga animations, the Broadcast Pix Studio can create an
animation out of a series of .jpg, .gif, .bmp or .png files.
Audio...
All clips can have audio, with 6 XLR connectors for analog stereo audio: one pair for recording onto the clip store, and two pairs for playing out two channels to send to your mixers. All clip stores also accept and playout audio embedded in the SD-SDI stream. The 2100 also adds digital audio AES/EBU.
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Broadcast Pix was in our budget and easy to learn for ourselves and our volunteers, while also preparing us for an HD future.