Upgrade your broadcast graphics with Avid Maestro
Graphics are central to a TV show’s identity. The look. The feel. The combination of elements that bring a story to life and elevate a program above the competition by giving it a defined and identifiable personality. When people think of a show, they remember how it looked. It is part of TV’s DNA. In short, broadcast graphics are essential.
But creating a compelling graphics package is a challenge for even the most seasoned newsroom. It begins with ideation, taking into account the opinions of the producer, news director, and, perhaps, reporters. There’s the actual creation of the graphics and subsequent review cycles. It ends with the gathering of all elements into a single package before their on-air debut. It’s a time-consuming process, and when it comes to news in particular, time is often the last thing the production team has.
Avid Maestro delivers on all these fronts - a complete suite of broadcast graphic tools to meet every need, streamlining the creation and management of on-air graphics. In addition to the creative benefits of an integrated solution, there is also now greater flexibility in how Maestro is deployed and financed – available as software only, and through subscription.
Avid Maestro offers designers the vital ability to create stunning graphics, combined with the capacity to collaborate and focus on the artistic task. To accomplish this goal, the editorial team often needs to have the power in their own hands, to use pre-defined graphic templates to create the graphics required for daily tasks.
In a recent webinar, Avid experts demonstrated the latest Avid Maestro capabilities, from graphics authoring, rendering, and control to distribution, delivery, and playout. Maestro simplifies the graphics workflow for a full range of on-air applications. It can deliver 2D, 3D, animated, data-driven, and virtual graphics for in-studio news and sports broadcasts, journalists in the field, special reports, and all manner of video presentation. Maestro graphics can even be mapped to indoor or outdoor objects.
Martin Appleton, Avid Maestro Product Manager, outlined the benefit of Maestro now available as a software-only solution via subscription for the first time.
The announcement means customers can supply their own hardware on which to run Maestro.
“We have just included support for an additional platform from Dell – the Dell 3930 1 rack unit workstation that is ideal for simple CG production,” Appleton says. “As this workstation also has short depth, it will be right at home in an OB Van rack.”
This option is in addition to the Dell Precision 7920 2 rack unit hardware previously announced.
Existing Maestro customers are also at the forefront of the new software version.
“The move to off-the-shelf hardware has very little impact on your existing Maestro setup; the newly released software suite is compatible with existing Maestro Engine hardware as well as the new off-the- shelf hardware,” Appleton explains. “Migrating content from earlier versions of the Maestro graphics suite is seamless.”
In the webinar, Let’s Get Graphical, Avid Solutions Specialist, Ola Kovtun, shows how to create, animate, integrate, fulfill, and deliver broadcast graphics and graphic templates using Avid Maestro | Designer, Avid Maestro | News, and the web-based Avid MediaCentral | Cloud UX.
She also highlights the powerful workflows with Adobe After Effects and Photoshop softwares and Maestro’s easy integration with non-linear editors such as Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro. In addition, she discusses the use of Avid Maestro in a variety of Newsroom Computer Systems (NRCS).
