For David Ross, “there’s really nothing like the adrenaline hit of live television,” and to prove it his company is staging a live ‘news’ production on its IBC stand. Every 30 minutes at IBC Ross Video will showcase its single operator virtual set and augmented reality product that combines the Furio Robotics system it acquired late last year from Belgium’s FX-Motion with the XPression graphics platform and Inception, a new system for publishing stories from the newsroom to Twitter and Facebook or video hosting sites like Brightcove. “Tighter integration of the web and social media into the traditional broadcast production environment is a big challenge for broadcasters,” said Jeff Moore, EVP & CMO. According to Moore, Furio is a unique rail based system that has taken motion control technology from the film industry and applied it to variety shows like the Eurovision Song Content and Dancing with the Stars and now into news production. The BBC is deploying a dozen Furio Robotics systems for its news production that goes live from the studios at Broadcasting House later this year. “The system is able to take digital information from the lens and use that to drive a graphics system, either ours or a third parties, with very precise positioning,” Moore said. “It’s ideal for virtual sets and augmented reality to create more immersive graphical look.” Inception is a beta software in test at Rogers Media in Canada and able to hook into iNews and ENPS news systems. It helps automate the process of promoting live or upcoming stories on social media sites. “Users can promote newscasts just before they go live or tweet about interviews as they are going out live or time tweets to coincide with the running order of stories,” explained Moore. “There have been a number of high profile mis-Tweets recently so there is a built in editorial quality assurance check to prevent that happening.” Inception also ties in with QuickTurn, a new media workflow option for Ross’ automated production system Overdrive, which segments content for publishing to Brightcove and other video hosting platforms. Ross has been active in the market buying companies like CamBot and FX-Motion and doesn’t rule out future growth in this direction. “We go looking for trouble,” joked Moore. “There are a lot of companies for sale and have been for the last couple years. We are looking for a company to which we can add value and that has people who we value and who want to stay on board to develop the technology. I’m giving no hints though.” Of the live production demo at IBC Moore commented: “In addition to providing a great way to show the capabilities of our technology, pulling off a complicated production like this ensures that we directly experience the same kind of process that our clients go through.” www.rossvideo.com By Adrian Pennington
