Viz Pilot User Guide

Version 8.4 | Published July 03, 2019 ©

Viz Pilot Components

Viz Pilot system refers to the entire system, consisting of multiple applications such as Viz Pilot News, Director, Template Wizard, the Viz Pilot database. Viz Pilot is mainly used for control room, newsroom and template design.

In addition, the Pilot Data Server, Object Store (image database), Thumbnail Generator, and other features act as service providers to the main areas of use.

In order to function in a control room, Director is dependent on several systems, the most important of which are Media Sequencer and the Viz Pilot database. The basic setup therefore consists of a connection to a Media Sequencer and the Viz Pilot database. A Viz Engine with a connection to a Graphic Hub for content creation and graphics playout is also required for 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; this allows Director to retrieve playlists made available by the newsroom system. This means that the Director operator only monitors and controls the playout of the playlist elements, and does not create them.

A connection to Viz One for the search and transfer of video clips to Viz Engine can also be used for playout of video clips.

Note: The Media Sequencer is used to configure connections to Media Sequencer Configuration, among other things. 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 main application for managing graphics and video playout of both MOS rundowns and any other playlist. The user has full control over templates, data elements and content. It is possible to manually edit and play out all media available in the Viz Pilot system, and play out scenes from the Graphic Hub.

GPI drivers

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

INI file Editor

Viz Pilot’s configuration file editor.

Local preview plugin

This is used for previewing scenes locally in Director and Viz Pilot News. Note that it is recommended to use the Remote Preview or Remote Snapshot Preview rather than this component. 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, and sound 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. The installer includes the following OpenOffice dictionaries: Arabic (both North African and Middle Eastern), English (both UK and US), 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 a story.