 Clips
Every Slate system include a powerful Clip store, which holds up to 200 hours of clips and animations. It's a great place to keep opens, closes, bumpers, or any clips. It can import QuickTime clips (.mov files encoded in DV, DVC PRO, H.264, ProRes). It can also record and play digital uncompressed clips. And in addition to clips, the clip store can also play animations for intricately moving graphics or spinning logos. Clips can have a key (alpha) and audio. Fluent Clips is highly integrated with the rest of the Slate system, and content can flow into it from your favorite editing and graphics systems with Fluent Watch-folders.
Thumbnails of the clips are tiled on the Fluent Multi-View 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 on all models, and it holds up to 50 hours of clips. A second channel doubles capacity and is a surprisingly economical option on the Slate 100 and 1000 and standard on larger models. The Fluent clip store can be expanded to up to 200 hours. 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.
Controls
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 System 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 System 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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We chose these Broadcast Pix systems for their attractive price/performance. Because of the Slate’s integrated functionality—including a two-channel Harris® Inscriber™ CG, six keyers, DVE, still and clip stores, and multiviewer monitoring—we were able to build out our control rooms very cost-effectively. And one operator can manage the entire production from a single control panel.”