In Broadcast - April 2018 - 65

65

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 8 - Issue 4 | April 2018

InFocus

Newsroom Systems:
Steadily More Social

VSN's Wedit could have a future in news operations

the branding). This has three distinct
editions: live, social and news.
The Inception News Edition provides
studio connectivity via encrypted MOS
link and features what the company
likes to refer to as idea-centric news
production. Stories are grouped into
assignments, allowing users to track
their evolution and make the most
of their components, with a drag and
drop interface that allows elements to
be swiftly added into the grid. There
are also tools to curate inbound social
content and monitor wire services,
intelligent contact management, team
working messaging, and more.
It's an interesting system with
the costs being not the least of it.
Inception.cloud News Edition pricing
is per user per month, with a minimum
of 10 users - the social edition is the
cheapest of the three per month for
five users, though its lack of MOS
connectivity could prove problematic
for broadcast operations.

Viz Story has hit version 1.4

VSN has been partnering with Ross
for a handful of major tradeshows
now, and it's a joint demo that tends
to snag interest. Effectively it uses the
MOS protocol to link Ross' Inception
with its own VSNEXPLORER MAM
software, which provides media
management.
The
goal
is
to
improve
communications between departments
- it is no coincidence that a growing
number of news systems highlight
their productivity and collaborative
tools - and MAM functionality is a
positive boon for media management
when publishing to the sheer number
of platforms that a modern news outfit
is obliged to do. It will be interesting
too to keep tabs on the company's
Wedit HTML5 editor which is being
shown integrated into VSNEXPLORER
at NAB and could go on to have an
effect in news workflows as well.
It's always worth making a quick
diversion into the radio side of the

cont'd...

news equation. Australia's NewsBoss
is celebrating two decades in business
this year and is now on version 6.3 of
its well-regarded software which is
used at 450 sites in over 30 countries.
Latest features include the ability
to save and reopen, not to mention
undo/redo, multitrack sessions, a new
look single track audio editor, and
support for the new AP WebFeeds
audio download which replaces AP
PrimeServer. And ANNOVA owner
SCISYS, meanwhile, has extended
its deal with the BBC to support
the bespoke version of dira! the
corporation uses for all its radio news
and entertainment for up to another
decade.
SI Media celebrates its fortieth
birthday at NAB. The company has
been up to some interesting things
elsewhere in its product line up,
notably the introducing of AI tools to
recognise problematic content such
as naked scenes or those featuring
smokers, and it will be interesting to
see how the current industry-favourite
buzzword can be brought to bear on
innovation in the news space.
Recent installations of its NCRS
include the National Television and
Radio Company of Uzbekistan, where
the main installation in Tashkent is to
be followed up by 12 regional sites,
and a 40 user MediaNews system
for Televisa in Mexico. Impressively,
newsroom users at the three sites
involved managed to migrate 100%
from the previous system to SI Media's
in less than three weeks.
Vizrt's VizStory 1.4 added a wide

amount of news features when it
was released at the tail end of last
year, all of which will be on display
in Vegas. Custom metadata fields
should improve archiving and search
efficiencies,
while
Meta-Graphics
integration will allow journalists to
change graphic content right up until
the moment that video and graphics
are played on air. There is also tighter
integration with the Viz World mapping
software, which in turn has partnered
with Google Maps for improved
cartographic visuals.
Finally, Dalet has added a range
of new features to its Unified News
Operations. These range from
enhancements to the Dalet Cube
suite of broadcast graphics tools,
which include integrations with the
Dalet Galaxy platform for creating
and managing CGs, crawlers, tickers,
lower-thirds, logos, full-frame graphics
and complex 3D animations. A new
Content Discovery module intriguingly
recommends to journalists and
producers content on the platform that
matches their assignments or work in
progress.
Then there's the Dalet Social Media
Pane, which brings us back where we
came in: a new tool to make publishing
on social channels easier than ever, as
well as providing a synthetic view of
all posts, including simple analytics to
understand quickly the engagement
and popularity each video clip is
garnering in real-time. The system
automatically publishes to YouTube,
Facebook or Twitter, or queues it for
later publication to be synchronised
with the on-air playout.
What the social platforms do with
the content once it is posted on them
might be a matter of increasing
concern, but newsroom systems are
certainly becoming ever more adept at
getting it there in the first place.

The Dalet Social Media Pane
http://www.inbroadcast.com https://www.vsn-tv.com/en/vsn-launches-we-based-editing-tool-vsn-wedit/ http://www.dalet.com/video-gallery/dalet-galaxy-social-media-workflows http://www.vizrt.com/products/viz_story/
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of In Broadcast - April 2018
