BBC signs four-year framework agreement for Vizrt 3D graphics systems

Vizrt has signed a four-year framework agreement with the BBC for live rendered complex 3D graphics systems.
The broad-reaching deal provides an easy purchasing facility for any division or subsidiary of the BBC to purchase Vizrt graphics software at special rates. The agreement covers Vizrt’s flagship real-time 3D graphics design, rendering and template graphics systems, and allows for add-on modules to be supplied when required. Vizrt expects that the BBC’s networked news programmes and the larger national and regional stations will be among the first to take advantage of the new agreement.
Vizrt’s package for this agreement includes its award-winning Viz|Content Pilot template graphics, which will be integrated with a networked ENPS newsroom system. In addition, Vizrt’s subsidiary, Curious World Maps, will provide a close integration with the template graphics system to enable journalists to select local, regional or national maps to incorporate in the news graphics template. Vizrt’s real-time 3D caption generator, Viz|Trio is also included, as is the Viz|Trio NLE plug-in for editing systems such as Avid and Quantel.
Vizrt’s Account Manager, Scott Barber, welcomed the news: “This agreement is highly significant, both as an immediate graphics enhancement for the national and regional news programmes around the country, but also as the start of a new workflow, with journalists taking responsibility for both the editorial and graphics content of a news story. This is the trend around the world and it is very successful. Journalists feel a greater sense of complete ownership for their news items and designers can devote their talents to the creation of unique news graphics.”
Other departments can also take advantage of the special terms of the framework agreement and Vizrt’s high-quality real-time 3D graphics are ideally suited to live sporting events, game shows and reality programmes. Once a core Vizrt system has been installed, the system can be extended easily through the addition of add-on modules and specialised plug-ins. These can include financial data feeds, virtual studios, weather forecasting as well as new media applications such as 3G delivery and streamed content for the Internet. Recent examples of this modular flexibility are the new Vizrt software for SMS tickers and viewer voting which the company is launching at NAB and which can be attached to a core Vizrt system as a plug-in.
Likewise, a method of synchronising a daisy-chain of multiple Vizrt rendering engines has also just been developed for use with video walls, to provide a very high-resolution graphics background, no matter what the size of wall.
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