Viz Pilot User Guide

Version 8.5 | Published December 16, 2019 ©

Viz Pilot Components

The Viz Pilot system consists 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 system contains features like Pilot Data Server, Object Store (image database), and Thumbnail Generator.

Director is dependent on several systems in order to work in a control room, the most important of which are Media Sequencer and the Viz Pilot database. The basic setup therefore consists of a connection to Media Sequencer and the Viz Pilot database. A Viz Engine with a connection to Graphic Hub 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. The Director operator will then only monitor and control playout of the playlist elements, and 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 sequencer connections to the Pilot system, see Media Sequencer Configuration. The Media Sequencer may be installed locally or on a separate server (see Command Line Startup Options).

The following components can be installed:

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's possible to manually edit and play out all media available in the Viz Pilot system, and play out scenes from Graphic Hub.

GPI drivers

General Purpose Input (GPI) drivers permit external control of Viz Pilot.

INI file Editor

Viz Pilot’s configuration file editor.

Local preview plugin

Used for previewing scenes locally in Director and Viz Pilot News. Note that it's recommended to use the Remote Preview or Remote Snapshot Preview rather than this component. See Viz Engine Preview Configuration.

Local documentation

Local documentation for the Viz Pilot system.

Object Store

Helps store and retrieve images, 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

Oracle Instant Client is used for accessing an Oracle database, if applicable to your configuration.

Quick CG

A system tray application for the quick creation of character generated (CG) data elements.

Spellcheck plugin

Installs a set of default OpenOffice dictionaries that uses the Hunspell spell checker. Includes 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

Creates templates for use within the Viz Pilot system.

Viz Pilot News

Integrates into the newsroom system allowing journalists to add graphics to a story.