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What’s New in Avid Thunder version 7.1

With version 7.1, Avid Thunder delivers an exciting new Hybrid configuration.

Thunder 7.1 Capabilities Include:

New Thunder Hybrid configuration now shipping.

Avid Thunder gives customers even greater flexibility from a single, compact and powerful system with the option to switch between SD and HD formats.  With the same core feature set and reliability found in MX and HD models, the Hybrid configuration enables greater cost savings for broadcasters working in multiple formats.

High-definition model: Thunder HD

With legendary reliability and same core benefits as its SD counterpart, Thunder HD is available with one or two channels of HD broadcast-quality video and key. It stores native 720p and 1080i MXF files on internal RAID storage with capacities starting at 750GB. 

Key Thunder features include:

  • Thunder "Super Channels":  Any single Thunder channel can play back high-definition video, key, audio, ingest, display graphic overlays, and transition with key, without requiring another channel; a single Thunder channel can do the job of six VTRs in a traditional workflow.
  • Unrivaled Graphics Capability: PostDeko integration can be used to add and edit graphic templates such as lower thirds supers, OTS captions, and full screen graphics. With Thunder Browse software, graphics and playback sequences can be edited from any desktop computer in the facility.
  • Highly Interoperable: Thunder systems interface with newsroom control systems including Avid iNEWS and ENPS with comprehensive MOS support.Journalists can directly associate stills and clips with their story script and make up-to-air edits of the rundown.

A complete list of features can be found on the Thunder product pages.

Compound Playout of Clips and Graphics

Thunder version 7.0 enables users to associate a video clip with a still graphic. Once this association is made as a property of the graphic, every time that graphic is recalled either by sequence playback, drag and drop, or via direct number recall to the air channel, the associated clip plays back with it. And Compound Playout allows for many different graphics to have the same background clip without having to create unique instances of a clip – saving creation time and system storage. It also provides the ability to quickly and easily change a background clip across multiple graphics.

Thunder’s Compound Playout feature made its debut at the 2006 Winter Olympics. It was used to combine static athlete head shots and animated pictograms of the related sport into a single Thunder channel.

Thunder Station

Avid Thunder 7.0 is the basis for the new Thunder Station, an affordable news editing, production server, and on-air graphics solution for smaller broadcast applications. Thunder Station combines Thunder MX, NewsCutter, and PostDeko to deliver fast story turnaround and improved productivity.

This represents key capabilities introduced with Thunder version 7.0 and 7.1 software. A complete list of new features, operational changes and software issues resolved, can be found in the Avid Thunder Version 7.0 and 7.1 ReadMe document in the Knowledge Base.