Viz Pilot User Guide

Version 8.0 | Published May 30, 2017 ©

Viz Pilot Components

Viz Pilot system refers to the entire system, consisting of Viz Pilot News, Director, Template Wizard, the Viz Pilot database and so on. The Viz Pilot system consists of multiple applications, but you can divide the main areas of use into; control room, newsroom and template design.

In addition you have the Pilot Data Server, Object Store (image database), Thumbnail Generator, and more; which act as service providers to the main areas of use.

Director depends on several systems to be able to function in a control room. Most important are the Media Sequencer and the Viz Pilot database. The basic setup therefore consists of a connection to a Media Sequencer and the Viz Pilot database. For actual playout you will also need a Viz Engine with a connection to a Graphic Hub for content creation and graphics playout. Any graphics or images added to a playlist must be available to the Viz Engine.

A common setup is also to run Director with a newsroom system connection. A newsroom connection allows Director to fetch playlists made available by the newsroom system. This effectively means that the Director operator will only monitor and control the playout of the playlist elements, and not create them.

Additionally, for playout of video clips a connection to Viz One for search and transfer of video clips to Viz Engine can be used.

Note: The Media Sequencer is, amongst other things, used to configure connections to Media Sequencer Configuration. The Media Sequencer may be installed locally or on a separate server (see Command Line Startup Options).

The table below describes the main components that can be installed as part of a Viz Pilot system.

Viz Pilot Components

Type

Description

Director

The Director control room client is the main application for managing the graphics (and video) playout of both the MOS rundowns and any other playlist. The user of the client has full control over templates, data elements and content. Manual editing and playout of all media available in the Viz Pilot system, including playout of scenes from the Graphic Hub, is possible.

GPI drivers

The General Purpose Input (GPI) drivers allow for external control of Viz Pilot.

Inifile Editor

Editor for Viz Pilot’s configuration files.

Local preview plugin

This is used for local previewing of scenes in Director and Viz Pilot News. Note that instead of this component, it is recommended to use the Remote Preview or Remote Snapshot Preview. See Viz Engine Preview Configuration.

Local documentation

Locally installed documentation for the Viz Pilot system.

Object Store

The Object Store helps store and retrieve images, sounds and video clips to and from the file share (stills and person information), and the Viz Pilot database (thumbnails), for use in templates.

Oracle Drivers

If the Viz Pilot database is configured to run on an Oracle database, the Oracle Instant Client is used for accessing the database.

Quick CG

A system tray application that allows quick creation of character generated (CG) data elements.

Spellcheck plugin

Installs a set of default dictionaries that uses the Hunspell spell checker.By default the installer includes the following OpenOffice dictionaries: Arabic (both North Africa and Middle East), English (both United Kingdom and United States of America), French, German, Norwegian (both Bokmaal and Nynorsk), Russian and Spanish. See OpenOffice.org.Dictionaries are UTF-8 formatted by Vizrt.

Template Wizard

Template Wizard is used to create templates for use within the Viz Pilot system, and in some cases for Viz Trio and Viz Ticker.

Viz Pilot News

Viz Pilot News integrates into the newsroom system allowing journalists to add graphics to the story.