Posted on

Avid and Bannister Lake Enter Into Sales and Distribution Agreement

Las Vegas, NAB Show 2019. Bannister Lake announced today it has entered into a joint sales, marketing, and distribution agreement with Avid®. Avid will serve as a non-exclusive distributor of Bannister Lake’s Chameleon data aggregation and management solution. With integration between Chameleon and the Avid Maestro™ Graphics, Avid users will be able to easily aggregate, moderate, and populate data-driven graphics for news, sports, financial, and other productions. Chameleon will be available through Avid’s sales channels.

Chameleon provides a sophisticated and powerful link between data and graphics for broadcast, OTT, digital signage, HTML5, online, and mobile applications. The solution reads, ingests, and manages multiple diverse data feeds through an advanced web interface, providing users with full control over both incoming data and output formats. Customized data is imported into graphic templates directly or through Chameleon’s RESTful API for use in news, sports, elections, financial, and other content genres. Chameleon data can also be imported into augmented reality and virtual reality products as well as IP-based solutions. It has also become a popular solution in data-intensive scenarios such as eSports and sports wagering.

“We are excited about bringing Bannister Lake’s wealth of data knowledge and expertise into the Avid ecosystem,” said Ofir Benovici, Avid’s vice president of media enterprise. “As live and static data play an increasingly important role in the production process, our end-users will realize greater value through more efficient workflows, better storytelling, and the opportunity to secure new business.”

“Avid is a natural fit for our data aggregation solutions,” said Georg Hentsch, president of Bannister Lake. “Not only will Avid customers be able to do more with their graphics, they will have the opportunity to leverage data in all kinds of ways that were previously unavailable. We look forward to a long and innovative relationship with Avid.”

Bannister Lake was established in 1994 and provides the broadcast industry with a variety of innovative solutions to manage data and graphics. The company supplies products and software development services to customize, automate, and distribute data content to various end points. Bannister Lake solutions can be found in television stations, networks, and at mission-critical events where live data is an essential part of communicating with audiences.

Bannister Lake will be exhibiting at the 2019 NAB Show, Booth SL5616.

 

Posted on

Bannister Lake Raises the Bar on IP Video Production with Chameleon NDI® Player

Bannister Lake announced today that it is fully embracing the NDI® workflow with its powerful Chameleon data aggregation solution. For producers working within the NDI ecosystem, Chameleon provides a straightforward method to bring live data directly into their productions. Chameleon reads multiple data sources, including news, weather, sports, traffic, social media, and financial data content, allowing users to edit, moderate, and customize their data. Using Chameleon’s Query functionality, data can be parsed at a granular level, enabling producers to select subsets of data to target viewers. The solution automates the flow of data to endpoints, ensuring that content is consistently relevant and timely. In turn, using Chameleon’s RESTful API, data content can be reformatted for distribution to virtually any device or endpoint.

Chameleon also extends NDI well beyond broadcast as a data aggregation solution for eSports and digital signage, providing producers with new business opportunities. eSports events — broadcast, streamed, or in-venue — benefit from Chameleon’s ability to read and display important game-related data feeds and provide fans with score boards, player profiles, standings, and other key data. Live data is an integral part of digital signage, keeping viewers updated with the latest news and information.

“We are excited by the growing popularity of NDI-supported solutions and the significant number of downloads of the NDI SDK,” said Georg Hentsch, president, Bannister Lake. “Chameleon adds an entirely new level of NDI production professionalism by allowing users to manage and display highly relevant and timely data content that their audiences demand.”

In addition to managing traditional editorial data content, Chameleon provides an ideal solution for producers who require a way to display local and hyperlocal content, including election results, school closings, and event calendars. In addition, Chameleon’s custom data feature can ingest data from Google Sheets, providing an opportunity to integrate local sports data content.

To help the NDI community better understand the business, operational, and technical capabilities of Chameleon and data content in general, Alain Savoie, Bannister Lake’s creative and technical director, will present his co-authored technical paper, “New Methodologies in Real-Time Data Aggregation and Management for Broadcast Presentation and Distribution,” at the 2019 NAB Show. Along with Savoie, the paper was written by Hentsch and Bannister Lake’s Vernon Freedlander, who heads strategic partnerships. The presentation will take place on Wednesday, April 10, at 4 p.m. at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Room N260.

Bannister Lake will be at the 2019 NAB Show, Booth SL5616.

 

Posted on

Bannister Lake’s Chameleon Powers Waterloo Region District School Board Digital Signage Network

Bannister Lake today announced the implementation of a digital signage pilot project with the Waterloo Region District School Board in Southern Ontario. The project consists of a networked digital signage solution in 16 regional high schools located about an hour west of Toronto. The project is powered by Bannister Lake’s Chameleon data aggregation and management product. Chameleon captures data from a wide variety of incoming sources and allows student, faculty, and staff network operators to moderate, edit, schedule, and distribute content to various displays.

Students are actively involved in the programming of the network, which provides an innovative way to communicate with students, faculty, and staff. The network displays both highly localized content targeting individual schools as well as global content that originates with the Waterloo Region District School Board and is shown in all 16 high schools.

Using Chameleon’s data readers and management modules, operators can easily program and update content that includes high school sports scores, local weather, event calendars, and special announcements. The digital signage system is also programmed with student-produced content from YouTube and from Google Slides.

“Bannister Lake’s signage solution provided us with an easy way for staff and students to communicate about school and community events,” said Jane Mitchinson, head librarian, Glenview Park Secondary School, Waterloo Regional District School Board. “The visual nature of the medium and the immediacy of the messaging is very impactful and captures the attention of everyone in our buildings. We are especially impressed with Chameleon’s networking capabilities, which give the entire team the opportunity to collaborate on content. Bannister Lake walked us through the entire process, showed us ways to optimize the system, and are always there for support.”

Students who take part in programming the signage network gain valuable experience as content creators and receive academic credit for their participation. The system takes advantage of automation to repurpose existing content automatically and consistently keep the network fresh and up to date.

“Our pilot project with the Waterloo Region District School Board represents another exciting application of our Chameleon product,” said Danny Ljubisic, business development & project management, Bannister Lake. “The digital signage network within the high schools leverages our extensive data capabilities, while providing students with an exciting new medium to share important information digitally.”

The pilot project will continue to evolve and expand over the next few months and will eventually include expanded content from student newspapers and more extensive community news and events calendars.

Posted on

Bannister Lake Announces MAM Integration Into Its Zeus Digital Media Storage and Playout Solution

Bannister Lake announced today that its browser-based media storage and playout solution, Zeus, can be fully integrated with popular media asset management (MAM) systems. With minimal customization the Zeus solution can access content within a MAM and still take full advantage of Zeus’ impressive search features and its convenient drag and drop playlist and sequence building capabilities.

Zeus is an ideal solution for productions that require a high number of images and video clips that need to be turned around quickly in a fast-paced and unpredictable environment. Home shopping channels, and news, entertainment, and sports productions are typical use cases.

Zeus features a centralized asset management structure allowing multiple users to access the system simultaneously, while ensuring the overall system is consistently synchronized. This dramatically speeds up the production workflow providing the entire production team with access to the solution. Producers are able to use their web browsers to access Zeus and build shows or content sequences offline saving valuable studio production time. An intuitive UI lets users import folders and conveniently move assets into the appropriate output framebuffer.

“Productions that depend on a very large number of clips and images and need to access them extremely quickly require a solution that complements their workflows,” said Georg Hentsch, president, Bannister Lake. “Zeus has the functionality to achieve this and with MAM integration the product is even stronger.”

Zeus supports up to 4 SDI (HD/SD) channels as well as NDI and also supports the ability to record incoming video.

Visit Bannister Lake at the 2019 NAB Show, booth SL5616.

Posted on

Corus Entertainment: Driving New Business And Operational Efficiencies With Bannister Lake Software

Corus Entertainment is one of Canada’s largest media and content companies with assets in radio, television and online. The broadcast television side of the company is a mix of over-the-air broadcast stations and specialty cable channels. Like all media organizations, it is observing dramatic shifts in audience viewing habits and in the way advertising dollars are being designated. Corus is responding proactively to address the changing media marketplace, developing innovative technology and content solutions. It is a pioneer in Canada, creating consolidated news production facilities, building a national infrastructure with sophisticated content sharing capabilities and extending their various brands across multiple platforms. Corus also broke new ground in leveraging live data; both as a content source and as a driver of video and content to new platforms. Early on, Corus saw the value that data had as an editorial source that could be extended over its many media properties and as a powerful tool to strategically distribute content.

Data empowers Corus to accomplish two essential things: add significant editorial value to its multiple media properties and secondly, open new market opportunities driving untapped ad revenue. To meet these objectives and take full advantage of their data and content, Corus’ Global News division turned to Bannister Lake, a leading provider of professional video graphic display solutions for broadcast.

In working with Corus, Bannister Lake focused on three essential data-rich areas: elections, information tickers and creating new media products and services. Across Global News’ broadcast operations, Bannister Lake’s Elector election race software is being used to produce municipal, provincial and federal coverage. Elector allows editorial staff to quickly and effectively filter race results, identify important trends, make race calls and in turn populate and display dynamic election graphics on-air or online.

“Elector has become our go-to software solution for all our election coverage. It works great on municipal, provincial and federal races. Both our editorial and technical staff love its ease of use and quick implementation,” says Gerry Belec, director of news technology and operations at Corus Entertainment.

Across Global News, Bannister Lake powers L-Bars, tickers, and sponsor logos on all the local morning news programs. The key tool Global News uses to make all this possible is Bannister Lake’s Chameleon software. Chameleon provides Global News with a single data/graphics management solution that drives a wide variety of graphic playout devices across the entire Global News organization. By centralizing data through Chameleon, Corus not only realizes operational efficiencies, but also permits broadcast sales to create new media products and sell both national and local sponsorships on all its broadcast tickers. Editorially, Chameleon enables Global News to integrate the widest possible variety of data sources on-air, including social media feeds, financial data, sports scores, closings and atypical feeds such as community events calendars.

Corus foresees Chameleon playing an expanded and valuable role as the media company develops and launches multi-platform solutions, expands online, distributes more content via partnerships and explores innovative media opportunities.

Global News takes advantage of BLADE, Chameleon’s RESTful API feature, allowing them to manage and distribute specific portions of a data feed. With BLADE, Global News can effortlessly direct their content to various output channels including thousands of screens across digital signage networks in multiple cities across Canada. This has fostered new revenue and promotional opportunities for Corus and has dramatically improved brand recognition. BLADE allows Global News to target specific end points strategically with content designated for that output.

Corus and Global News further benefit from Bannister Lake’s development strategy that emphasizes multi-user, web-based solutions while still maintaining high levels of security. Teams from across the country can simultaneously access the solution, load content, query data and create and edit playlists, but only according to their user status. Should unusual operational issues emerge, Bannister Lake’s development team can write custom code resolving the issue.

“We look forward to a long and creative partnership with Corus. We are thrilled that our software and custom services can be plugged into so many aspects of their business”, says Georg Hentsch, Bannister Lake’s founder.

Also published in
TV Technology

Posted on

Bannister Lake’s Alain Savoie to Present at the 2019 NAB Show Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference (BEITC)

Bannister Lake announced today that Alain Savoie, the company’s creative and technical director, will be presenting his co-authored white paper, “New Methodologies in Real-Time Data Aggregation and Management for Broadcast Presentation and Distribution” at the 2019 NAB Show. Along with Savoie, the paper was written by Bannister Lake’s Vernon Freedlander who heads strategic partnerships and the company’s president, Georg Hentsch. The presentation takes place on Wednesday, April 10 at 4 p.m. at the Las Vegas Convention Center room N260.

Live data, its management and visualization, have become an integral part of the broadcast and visual communications workflow. Whether used in fast-moving, dynamic on-air presentations such as elections, news, sports, eSports, or finance, or to populate and control on-air branding, effective live-data aggregation and management drives efficiencies and creates new monetization possibilities. As broadcasters seek out new revenue streams, live data plays a key role both online and in developing new markets such as streaming and digital signage.

Savoie will be speaking on several important data-related topics that directly impact the broadcast industry. The presentation will focus on unique data-driven engineering and development methodologies, and how broadcasters can take advantage of the data aggregation and management tools and techniques these methodologies foster to create more efficient and automated production workflows. Savoie will also explore how broadcasters can utilize real-time data to create and distribute new revenue-generating products and services. Savoie will use examples from broadcast, eSports, and event signage to illustrate.

Savoie is an industry authority on live-data-driven graphics. He has worked on numerous high-profile broadcast projects integrating data into innovative graphic solutions. At Bannister Lake he is responsible for integrating data feed content into Bannister Lake’s data aggregation and management technology suite and in turn outputting data to on-air graphic systems throughout the broadcast and event ecosystem. Savoie works directly with engineers, designers, editorial teams, and event producers offering training, commissioning, graphic operations, and consultation to meet any data and technical requirement within the production and graphic display workflow.

At the 2019 NAB Show Bannister Lake will be highlighting its flagship data aggregation and graphics management solution, Chameleon. Chameleon provides networks and station groups with unparalleled data aggregation, graphics management, and visualization possibilities. Beyond broadcast, the Chameleon solution is used in multiple data applications: OTT, streaming, digital signage, HTML5, online, and mobile. Chameleon reads, ingests, and manages multiple, diverse data feeds through an advanced web interface, providing users with full control over incoming data. Users can edit, moderate, blend, and manage datasets to generate completely customizable and automated tickers, L-bars, full frame graphics, and branding elements.

Be sure to visit Bannister Lake at the 2019 NAB Show, Booth SL5616.

Posted on

Bannister Lake to Highlight New Feature Set and NDI Version of Chameleon Data Aggregation and Graphic Management Solution at 2019 NAB Show

Bannister Lake’s industry-leading data and graphics management solution, Chameleon, will be in the spotlight at the 2019 NAB Show with a focus on the product’s new election, sponsorship, and security functionality.

As broadcasters start planning for the 2020 presidential election, Chameleon boasts improvements to its election race modules, providing producers with more options to ingest and manage result data feeds, referendums, propositions, and acclaimed candidates.

The latest release highlights Chameleon’s ability to drive online, mobile, and social media election experiences by feeding data to web widgets and automatically sending out tweets based on Chameleon data conditions. These exciting features allow producers to utilize Chameleon data to visualize election results interactively, presenting innovative new storytelling possibilities.

A new and improved sponsor module tracks and connects campaigns to specific sponsors, making as-run logging clearer and better defined. Chameleon also includes enhanced security features aligned with NIST guidelines with improved password protection.

Bannister Lake has also focused a great deal of attention on social media, enhancing Chameleon’s Twitter search capabilities and improving the product’s media module, introducing bins for organizing content and the enablement of multi-file uploads.

Product demonstrations will feature projects focused on Bannister Lake’s recent work in elections, eSports, and event signage.

At NAB, Bannister Lake will also be introducing a new version of its Chameleon NDI player, providing NDI users with the ability to fully manage and visualize live data feeds. NDI users will be able to integrate, moderate, and customize multiple live data feeds into graphic templates and provide their audiences with real-time news, weather, sports, social media, financial, and customized data.

As part of NAB’s Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference (BEITC), Al Savoie, Bannister Lake’s creative and technical director, will be presenting his co-authored whitepaper “New Methodologies in Real-Time Data Aggregation and Management for Broadcast Presentation and Distribution.” The interactive session will explore Bannister Lake’s unique approach to data aggregation and feature production examples from both broadcast and eSports. Savoie’s presentation takes place on April 10 at 4 p.m. at the Las Vegas Convention Center room N260.

In addition, NAB attendees will have the opportunity to learn more about Bannister Lake’s Zeus media storage and playout solution. Perfect for image- and clip-intensive production environments, Zeus provides producers with easy and immediate access to content. It is an ideal solution for home shopping channels, entertainment programs, news, sports productions, and any situation where high volume, quick turnaround, and unpredictability of clip and image requirements must be carefully managed. With minimum custom development, Zeus can be fully integrated with popular MAM systems, providing broadcasters with access to vast libraries of clip and image content.

Be sure to visit Bannister Lake at the 2019 NAB Show, Booth SL5616.

Posted on

Bannister Lake’s Chameleon Delivers 4K Graphic Content Over IP

Bannister Lake announced today that its data aggregation and management solution, Chameleon, is now capable of outputting 4K UHD video over IP video networks. The solution was recently showcased at the InterBEE exhibition in Japan using Visionary Solutions’ PacketAV 4K DUET encoder and decoders.

Visionary Solutions’ PacketAV 4K video over IP encoders and decoders solve the transportation issues common with non-IP cabling solutions, allowing Chameleon graphics to play back smoothly on 4K monitors in any location.

“We are thrilled to see Chameleon successfully operational in a 4K over IP environment,” said Georg Hentsch, President, Bannister Lake. “This marks an important milestone as we continue to build on years of consistent innovation and presents a data and graphics management solution that performs exceptionally well in any resolution and in any broadcast environment.”

“I love how clients marvel at the simplicity and efficiency of this system,” said Doug Strable, sales representative for Bannister Lake and Visionary Solutions products in Japan. “Chameleon’s web-based interface allows a non-technical user to update the information on all platforms, and the PacketAV DUET 4K encoders and decoders allow content to be displayed through a standard LAN network. The combined system is easy to set up, easy to maintain and easy to update.”

Chameleon graphics rendered to HTML5 were transported over a standard 1 Gigabyte network to multiple 4K video monitors with native 4K image quality, while maintaining its industry-leading data management functionality.

As the international broadcast industry continues to experiment and migrate to 4K over IP workflows, it is vitally important that graphics technologies keep pace with developments and support the trend. Similarly, the production community requires solutions that allows data content to be quickly repurposed to find value in a 4K environment.

Bannister Lake is an industry leader in data and graphics management, providing software and services for a broad range of broadcast and digital signage projects, including real-time election results, social media integration, financial, sports, news, and eSports.

Posted on

Bannister Lake Releases Chameleon Version 10 Real-Time Data Aggregation and Graphics Management Solution

Chameleon, Bannister Lake’s data aggregation and graphics management solution is introducing dramatic new enhancements with a strong focus on election data. Within its election module, Chameleon Version 10 improves how election data is ingested and managed. The new release expands the ability to enter manual election results where data feeds may not be available. This is particularly useful in less populated districts or in jurisdictions where it is not practical to organize a real-time results feed. The new functionality also provides an important failsafe in situations where a data feed may have stopped working.

In addition, Chameleon Version 10 dramatically improves the management of referendum and proposition results, providing editorial staff with more options for displaying down-ballot data. The election module also features improved management and filtering for acclaimed candidates.

“We realize that elections are more than just national events. These new features help ensure that broadcasters covering races in remote locations or in smaller communities can use data on-air more effectively,” said Bannister Lake’s President, Georg Hentsch.

The new release highlights Chameleon’s ability to feed data to web widgets, allowing producers to visualize data interactively online or on mobile devices. This feature drives new storytelling opportunities not only for elections, but also for news, sports and financial data. Bannister Lake is also introducing support for automatically sending out tweets based on Chameleon data conditions, enriching live data experiences on social media.

Chameleon Version 10 also provides improved sponsorship management, allowing users to manage campaign and client data more efficiently. The new and improved sponsor module tracks and connects campaigns to specific sponsors, making as-run logging clearer and better defined.

The new version of the product also includes enhanced security features aligned with NIST guidelines with improved password protection. Chameleon now offers clients an upgraded password strength checker and warns users when they are changing their password to a common password based on a list of the 1,000,000 most used passwords.

Version 10 also boosts Chameleon’s query functionality, its ability to filter custom data, introduces media bins for organizing media into containers and additional support for the onboard HTML5 designer tool.

Chameleon Version 10 is now available. Bannister Lake is dedicated to releasing new features and functionality several times a year to improve the capabilities of its software products.

Posted on

Bannister Lake Successfully Concludes the FIA-Certified Gran Turismo Championships 2018 World Final in Monaco

Bannister Lake, the leading provider of professional broadcast data aggregation and visualization solutions, today announced that its Chameleon data aggregation and management software played an integral role in delivering editorial and graphic content for the FIA-Certified Gran Turismo Championships 2018 Series. The tournament has quickly become one of the world’s most popular eSports events featuring the best Gran Turismo drivers. Chameleon was used during the championships run-ups in Salzburg, Madrid, and Las Vegas leading up to the world finals in Monaco that took place Nov. 16-18. In all, the tournament covered four international regions over a three-month period, ultimately reducing the field of hundreds of contestants down to 30 finalists.

In partnership with Montreal’s The Boombox Group, Bannister Lake provided the event’s data management solution populating graphics both in-venue and for the tournament’s web broadcasts. Chameleon was used to filter data coming from Google Sheets and organize data for each of the competition’s races. Chameleon also provided the event with tournament standings based on points and finish position and its BLADE RESTful API was used to reformat data content to make it readily available to graphics engines for display.

Bannister Lake has worked on numerous eSports and high-profile sporting events including the recent FIFA eWorld Cup™ 2018 and the 2018 US Open Tennis Championships. Both events used Chameleon to aggregate a wide variety of data content, moderate and manage content, and distribute it to various output channels.

“The FIA-Certified Gran Turismo Championships had its own unique challenges, but we were able to take full advantage of our production experience,” said Al Savoie, Bannister Lake’s technical and creative director who supervised data graphics integration onsite. “A great example of this is our ability to trigger specific graphics directly from the switcher to sync driver cameras, with their corresponding lower thirds. This gave the technical director the ability to go to three boxes at any time and have the correct name, flag, and manufacture of each of the drivers.”

Bannister Lake’s Chameleon has quickly become a popular choice for eSports production, providing a more engaging experience for fans while creating new revenue opportunities for event organizers. By aggregating and displaying multiple real-time data sources, it enables fans to receive added editorial information while allowing sponsors to generate more impressions.