Features

Optimize your operation

Maestro | News easily integrates into any production environment, reducing operational costs. It offers workflow-specific tools for designers, journalists, editors, and other team contributors to collaborate. And it establishes logical relations between different devices in your control room, making it a versatile solution for news, branding, studio productions, OB vans, editing, and post production.

Access MediaCentral in Maestro | News—just added

Browse, search for, and access MediaCentral-managed content directly from your Maestro | News interface with the integrated MediaCentral browser. Find the assets you need faster, without having to bounce between separate applications. Plus, the browser sports the same look and feel of the MediaCentral web-based interface, so you’ll feel right at home.

Connect into MediaCentral news workflows

Maestro | News can also be accessed from within MediaCentral, enabling journalists and production staff to edit and drag and drop Maestro graphics templates right into MediaCentral to build a story. And because MediaCentral can be accessed in a web browser or on a mobile device, journalists and producers can work from any location—wherever the story takes them.

Turn around content quickly

Maestro | News enables you to play back non-flattened sequences, eliminating the need to flatten projects to a single file and transcode media—before or after editing—to a single codec, so you can get edited video to air faster. A critical requirement for live news and studio productions. You can also play out media directly from Avid NEXIS instead of transferring it to your playout device, eliminating the time wasted and need to render projects.

Search faster

As graphics libraries continue to expand, Maestro | News now makes finding content even easier. With scaled and improved Simple Search, search results automatically update as you type. Plus, new wildcards enable better filtering, greatly enhancing content management. Simple Search also works across all integrated solutions too, including MediaCentral | Asset Management, MediaCentral | Production Management, and the MediaCentral | Newsroom plugin.

Create stunning visuals with Maestro | Designer

Maestro | Designer is the core graphics authoring application and is included with Maestro | News. It provides all the tools you need to create high-end 2D/3D graphics, plus integration with your favorite design and 3D modeling tools too, enabling you to present information in visually compelling ways.

Enable burned-in graphics—just added

With the latest Maestro | News plugin for MediaCentral, you now have the option of rendering and mixing down all graphics and audio to a video clip as a single file that can be sent directly to playback or archived for future use. This provides more flexibility when working with captions and subtitles, giving you the choice to burn in the text or send it as a sidecar file.

Get easy user management

Easily know and control who has access to what content to maintain security and prevent accidents, such as bringing the wrong content to air. With Maestro | News, you can simply connect its user rights management to your MediaCentral user management system or to Windows Active Directory, so you can manage all users on a single system.

Get powerful rendering and reliability

Maestro | News works in conjunction with the high-performance Maestro | Engine for real-time 3D, HD/UHD, and HDR graphics and video rendering. It provides the dedicated hardware rendering power you need to composite high-res graphics, video, text, and data into stunning visuals. And it makes it easy to transition from SDI to video over IP workflows whenever you’re ready. 

Create intelligent tickers 

Display multiple tickers and take control of the speed, loop, content, and more. You can introduce content manually or extract it from external databases, RSS feeds, or even social media. You can also add “intelligence” to their behavior, enabling different content to play out depending on context.

Interact with social media

Increase viewer engagement by bringing content from social media, news agencies, video sharing platforms, and news websites into your workflow with x.news. Integrated into your Maestro | News and MediaCentral workflow, or used standalone, x.news enables you to retrieve, monitor, filter, and moderate content—and download the associated media—for use in your stories and graphics to enhance your coverage.

Save time with smart logic

Easily compose graphics that automatically change based on onscreen events and/or predefined rules. This ensures that data and animation always display properly—regardless of the playout order. And it allows graphics to react differently to different situations, without adding complexity. You can have a single operator managing visually complex productions, while drastically reducing the risk of on-air mistakes.

Control video and clip playback

Maestro | News can control Avid VideoEngine devices, including FastServe | Playout, to manage and play video and graphics. Add video elements to a news rundown or directly on Maestro | News. Play clips directly from any Maestro | News page.  And easily retrieve content and rundowns from MediaCentral, Interplay, and iNEWS, enabling a single operator to control all video and graphics content for an entire show.

Access content outside of MediaCentral

In addition to accessing MediaCentral-managed content, you can now browse and search for video, audio, and image content housed on local network storage in the same way. This extended integration enables teams to browse and select content from both MediaCentral and any Maestro-accessible storage location and drop assets directly into Maestro graphics templates—all within the same browser.

Connect editorial with HTML5

As production moves to decentralized workflows, you need innovative tools to provide editorial access to stories. With HTML5-based newsroom plugins, journalists and editors can build stories, preview content, and add graphic elements to Maestro | News stories directly from any web browser—no additional software required. These plugins work with all newsroom systems that use the HTML5 MOS plugin specification, including MediaCentral | Newsroom Management.

Integrate your newsroom

Streamline graphics production by linking Maestro | News to your newsroom system using the News Producer plugin. Journalists can then browse or search templates, enter relevant data, preview the graphic on their workstation, and add it to the newsroom system’s rundown. Once updated, a mirrored rundown within Maestro Controller is automatically updated as well.

Use graphics in post production

With the included News Producer NLE plugins, you can use an existing Maestro graphic template you created for broadcast within your video editing system environment too. This enables you to achieve a unified look for both real-time and post-production elements—without requiring extra work to create new graphics.

Repurpose content easily with RenderServer

Generate clips from existing graphics and quickly repurpose content for different applications, including Internet, social media, and mobile. You can also make rendered content available to third-party editing systems without requiring native graphics integration. And enable designers to create rendered versions of graphics for approval or preview.

Add animated maps

Need a visually interesting way to convey location? Create animated map locators and embed them into graphics automatically with the WorldMapper option for Maestro | News. Any Maestro | News page can have a map item embedded, and every user with access to the page can use attractive map templates to create compelling, animated maps that seamlessly integrate into the graphics.

Boost your broadcast and brand

Elevate the look and feel of your broadcast and brand by expanding your workflow to other Avid graphics solutions. From giving your studio set a makeover with Maestro | Virtual Set and Maestro | AR, to interacting with, automating, and controlling content using Maestro | Interactive, Maestro | TX, and Maestro | PowerWall, your creative possibilities are endless.

Maestro | News works with all leading vendors who provide newsroom, editing, automation, and traffic management systems used across today’s broadcast environments. These include the following:

• Newsroom—Avid MediaCentral | Newsroom Management, iNEWS, AP ENPS, OCTOPUS Newsroom, ANNOVA OpenMedia, Dalet+, NorCom NCPower, and Dayang
• Editing—Avid Media Composer | Enterprise, Adobe Premiere, Quantel qEdit, Sobey, Sony SONAPS, and EVS Xedio

• Studio automation—MediaCentral | Command, Ross OverDrive, Viz Mosart, Sony ELC, Aveco ASTRA Studio, Grass Valley Ignite, and Dalet Playout
• MCR automation—Imagine Communications, Snell Advanced Media, SGT, Aveco ASTRA, and Pebble Beach Systems
• Traffic—MediaGeniX and PROVYS