Portal Media Center

Portal Media Center - aggregating live videos, video clips, graphics and audio into a single box solution

The Portal Media Center

Orad’s Portal Media Center consolidates a wide variety of media formats into a 3D environment, streamlining the production workflow like never before. Live video feeds, clips, stills, 3D graphics, texts and audio are aggregated and consolidated to a single output.

Gone are the days in which a graphic device was dedicated to displaying on screen titles. Today's live productions require tight integration between 3D graphic systems and multiple live video streams, multiple video clips, full frame backgrounds and audio. Furthermore, the number of video sources that need to be incorporated on the screen is growing by the day as is the importance of being the first to air the latest news.

Consolidating and streamlining all media sources

One of the most commonly used on-screen presentations involves the use of DVE channels to simultaneously display re-sized video images so that they can be incorporated into the main program feed. Typical formats include the 2-box (e.g. news anchor plus one remote guest), 3-box, 4-box and big little (one main video box in a larger size, and a secondary, smaller box). Even 5 or 6 boxes are becoming popular. These screen layouts are usually built using a process involving the assignment desk, production switcher, multiple DVE channels, a character generator and video server. This one display is vulnerable to on air mistakes and is labor intensive, due to the lack of coordination between a significant number of devices, some with their own operators.

The Portal Media Center consolidates, automates and streamlines all these media sources including multiple live HD and SD video feeds, video clips in any format or resolution, 3D graphics, audio and full screen backgrounds into a single output that can feed the production switcher.

At the heart of the Portal Media Center is Orad’s HDVG video rendering platform with its unique real time playout capability of up to 12 SD video inputs or 6 HD video inputs or a mixture of each at the same time. Using Orad's advanced video to texture technology, the incoming video feeds are mapped onto any object in the graphic scene regardless of its shape or dimension. These objects are easily animated allowing the creation of an unlimited number of 3D effects playing in concert with your graphics branding.

Combining textual and graphical elements

The Portal Media Center is a dynamic system actively combining video sources with their appropriate textual and graphical elements into a complete presentation. The Portal Media Center controls the plant router making it possible to map the right input video to the relevant 3D object in the scene. For example, when different video feeds from all over the world are coming from different sources into the router. The Portal Media Center operator can easily define which of these incoming sources will be mapped to which video box in the scene by using a simple user interface that does not require router training. The operator can combine an artist’s scene with new video inputs on the fly or map the video inputs ahead of time and recall them randomly.

Prior to going on air, the Portal Media Center operator can preview the layout from the user interface allowing last minute corrections to the scene. Once verified, the operator can take the layout to air immediately.

Advanced video clip playing capabilities

The Portal Media Center video playback is extended even further with its ability to playback all commonly used video file formats including Quick Time (RGBA), AVI, MPEG 4, MPEG 2, DV, DVC 25 and even 3G cell phone files. These video clips are played in their native resolution regardless of their format or bit rate, eliminating the need for a time consuming transcoding process. The displays can incorporate a mixture of input videos and video clips streamed from shared storage directly to air, negating the need to ingest them prior to playout. A sophisticated silent loading mechanism manages the caching of video clips in advance, thereby ensuring real time performance at all times.

The Portal Media Center supports 16 channels of embedded audio for the incoming video insertions and video clips with mixing, cross fades with user definable presets.

Integrating captivating 3D graphics

Not only does Orad’s Portal Media Center handle video and audio, but it also integrates advanced real time 3D graphics. The Portal Media Center provides a fully featured real time graphic solution capable of integrating full frame graphics, lower thirds, clip transitions, editable graphic transitions, true 3D video frames, multiple tickers and more. Based on Orad's intelligent template approach, sophisticated logic is easily introduced, connection to multiple databases is achieved and last minute updates are at the operator’s fingertips.

The Portal Media Center easily adapts to existing workflows using Orad’s dynamic scene blending module. On air tasks can be distributed among multiple users to be played out from a single or multiple HDVG. For example, in highly intense events such as elections one operator can be responsible for handing all the incoming videos and transitions while a second operator can be responsible for the graphics.

In addition to standalone usage, the Portal Media Center can be integrated with popular newsroom systems such as iNews, ENPS, Dalet+ or Octopus. Journalists can specify the look and sequencing of an entire show by using a single plugin in their own newsroom environment.

Based on Orad’s HDVG, The Portal Media Center is designed to be a part of your critical infrastructure. The HDVG runs on a Linux operating system in a compact 3U rack mount chassis with redundant hot swappable power supplies, dual Ethernet connection, RAID 1 system disk, mechanical and software video bypasses. The user interface is Windows based.

Key features and benefits:

Consolidates a variety of media formats including: live video sources, video clips, 3D real time graphics and audio to a single output
Streamlines the production workflow by centralizing all media elements into a single unified output
Creates and playouts any type of 3D and 2D DVE effects coupled with corresponding 3D graphics
Controls the plant router, routing the relevant video feed to the relevant video box
Supports up to 12 live video feeds in SD or up to 6 live video feeds in HD
Playbacks multiple video clips in different bit rates and resolutions. All commonly used video files formats such as Quick Time, AVI, MPEG 4, 3GP, MXF, DV, DVC 25 are supported
Operator preview of the coming next layout including videos graphics and animation
Fully featured 3D on air graphics system
Distributed architecture allows control over the same output channel by multiple consoles
Up to 16 channels of embedded audio
Fully compliant with Orad's Graphic Asset Management system
Fully featured user rights management system
Integrates with automation systems, GPI support and manual triggering
Linux based operating system
Fully redundant system with hot swappable power supplies, Raid 1 system disk configuration and dual link network card.

Click here for more information about Orad's Portal Media Center