Tag: Chameleon

November 15, 2017November 28, 2017

US Democratic Senate – In-House Channel

The United States Democratic Senate broadcasts an in-house channel of the floor proceedings and required a reliable display solution to include upcoming vote information, bills in discussion, and general information on proceedings and schedules. The Bannister Lake BLFlow solution provided a simple web interface for input of new items, schedules and control over the broadcast output.

Printable Version

Staff Runners need to quickly input or update information on upcoming bills, votes and general proceedings from various sources (email, web, printed documents and hand written notes).
Runners do not have direct access to broadcast systems or have graphical knowledge/training to modify templates.
Graphic changes based on triggers that are operator driven through BLFlow.
Votes are triggered externally via GPI from the Senate floor clock.
All user and content changes or modifications are logged providing a complete audit of the entire system.
User groups allow administrator to control which groups have access rights to add or change different types of information.

November 15, 2017November 9, 2019

BL Elector – 2011 and 2014 Ontario Provincial Election

TVO required a comprehensive ‘real-time’ turnkey election package to manage their Election results for the Agenda’s coverage of the 2011 and 2014 Ontario Provincial Elections. Bannister Lake Elector on RossVideo’s XPression BlueBox provided TVO with a superior level of editorial and graphic control for their entire election telecast.

Printable Version

Reliable connection to Consortium Feed with full support for automated and manually entered results.
Flow, BL Elector’s web based content management dashboard, provided a centralized hub for TVO talent, producers and political analysts to the “real time” election data. Data included, candidate and riding context, scenarios and alerts that assisted in highlighting close and tight races.
Elector’s standardized graphics specification allowed TVO unlimited graphic design freedom without programming modifications.
Flow’s candidate management module allowed easy addition of candidate head shots for on air broadcast.
Main and Backup Elector Players output to 2 Channel RossVideo XPression BlueBox.

November 15, 2017November 21, 2017

Rogers Media Television – BL Brando

Rogers Media required an intuitive and scalable HD on air branding solution for their broadcast properties across Canada. Bannister Lake Brando provided Rogers staff at Lakeshore in Toronto with the ability to schedule lower-thirds, next ups, bugs, bumpers, voice overs and ticker for hubs in Toronto and Calgary with initial support for 18 Brando Players/channels.

Printable Version

High quality HD broadcast output with infinite graphic layers using RossVideo Xpression BlueBox with tight integration with XPression scenes.
Supports Bugs, Tickers, Bumpers, Next Ups, Voice Overs, Lower 3rds and Program embedded promos.
Multi-channel support all in one user interface with a flexible and secure web interface for content management and scheduling.
Master Control player status and graphics override with scene preview from Brando Switcher module.
Deploy graphics to Brando Players simply using Xpression Project Server and Brando Gears.
Streamlined work flow from graphic design to content scheduling and last minute boards or tickers.
Flexible scene tags provide a way to create templates with program information, temperature, time, captions and sponsor clips.

November 14, 2017June 22, 2018

Chameleon Support in Telestream’s Wirecast

With the growing trend of live streaming, producers are searching for various tools available to make their production switching workflow as smooth as possible. Bannister Lake’s focus is its flagship product, Chameleon, our data and graphics platform. Chameleon allows aggregation, moderation and distributing of any data type from news, elections, sports scores, traffic, weather, closings, alerts, etc… and distribute it back through an API or using it’s own graphics rendering engine.

At this years IBC, we discovered key features in Wirecast Pro that make the two platforms work together with very little effort.

Chameleon HTML5 render isn’t restricted to any dimension or style. The conventional means of using 16×9 isn’t necessary in the world of web, and therefore, custom graphics created using Chameleon’s rendering engine allow users to create graphics in whatever size they want. This becomes useful in Wirecast’s production environment, where using their Web Display tool as a source, you can specify the dimensions of your graphics. And an even more impressive feature, Wirecast supports HTML5’s alpha channel.

With Chameleon, users have a full on solution for tickers and branding. Chameleon’s powerful branding tool can allow larger productions to schedule bugs, snipes and promo/sponsorship material during their broadcast. And for 24/7 users of Wirecast, producers can integrate their programming lineup in Chameleon and have support for displaying upcoming content. On the data side, Wirecast users of Chameleon, can display everything from social media content, news, elections and sports scores results in an automated continuous cycle, enhancing information for your viewers. Essentially, Chameleon is an enhanced CG ticker/branding solution that works out of the box with Wirecast.

For commercial companies, looking for a package to distribute data while broadcasting their content, Chameleon and Wirecast is the ideal solution.

To view a sample of the html5 rendering, visit blcloud.net/chameleon

For information on Chameleon, contact sales@bannisterlake.com

October 17, 2017May 17, 2018

Bannister Lake, ForA and Varto Technologies at NAB NY 2017

Bannister Lake Partners with For-A America and Varto Technologies

CAMBRIDGE ON 10-17-2017 The Canadian company is showcasing Chameleon with ClassX CG and Chameleon NDI with NewTek TC1 at NAB New York 2017, October 18th and 19th.

Chameleon will be implemented into ClassX CastaliaCG platform, one of the company’s most popular graphics packages offering aggregated and managed data such as social media, news, weather, sports score data amongst other, to their vast array of customers, enhancing Castalia CG’s data ability.

Varto Technologies will be bundling Chameleon with their extensive sales services, providing booth demonstrations at NAB NY. Chameleon fully supports NewTek’s NDI protocol. Chameleon’s integrated CG combines graphics and data as a source for any customers looking for a ticker or branding solution.

Chameleon Ticker with ClassX Castalia CG and LiveBoard at For-A America, Booth N224 and Chameleon NDI with NewTek TC1 at Varto Technologies, Booth N939.

Stop by and see the awesome capabilities of Chameleon.

About Bannister Lake Inc.

Bannister Lake is a leading provider of professional video graphic display solutions for broadcast television, cable, satellite, audio/visual and information presentation applications worldwide. Our solutions integrate seamlessly with your existing infrastructure while automating the integration and display of external data sources, improving the productivity of your organization. Visit us online at www.bannisterlake.com sales@bannisterlake.com

September 29, 2017August 23, 2018

The Web Widgets are Coming!

Our customers store a ton of important information in their Chameleon databases. Adding to that wealth of data is all the useful information available on Community. Community has a wealth of weather, sports, news, financial information and more. And with our soon to be released eventful support, calendars can be stuffed with local events.

While tickers are the ultimate way to show data for broadcasts whether for digital signage or traditional broadcast, it’s not the only way to utilize all that useful data. That’s why from the beginning we included BLADE, our RESTful api, for retrieving data from our database. We support all the standard formats like xml, json, rss, csv and others. We even created a UI in Flow, our web interface to Chameleon, to help customers discover the correct BLADE url for the data they need.

However, to use raw BLADE data, there is a technical requirement. Software developers would have no trouble turning a json file into html using PHP. Character Generators and Digital Signage players are also adept at utilizing BLADE standard formats as is. But how to make use of BLADE for the non-technical user? How can a web master insert data much like they insert Google Maps?

Well, the answer is to follow Google’s lead and create web widgets with our data. So, instead of raw json, xml or csv from BLADE, what if that url did more? How’s this for an example:

The above isn’t a screenshot. It’s a mini-app on this page. Click the arrows, the league dropdown or the logo and they’re all active. Also, leave this web widget up and you’ll see refreshes of the scores automatically. And these are real scores coming from live Community data. No smoke and mirrors!

The web widgets we’re adding will be more than just static data. For example, this scores web widget has lots of flexibility with colours, branding (logos/links), size, leagues, refresh rate and much more. For example, looking at what we have above, there’s a league drop down allowing changing of the league. This is optional since the league can be fixed but the important point is that the web widgets are mini-apps that are easily placed on any web page much like Google has done with Google Maps.

The above scores web widget comes to us courtesy of our Community instance of Chameleon. We expect to expand our web widgets over the next few months to include all of our data types. And by default, all Chameleon customers get this support. It’s not an option. It’s just an expansion of our BLADE support.

September 13, 2017May 17, 2018

New Included Data Feeds with Bannister Lake’s Chameleon

CAMBRIDGE 09-13-2017 – Bannister Lake announces data feeds are now included with the powerful Chameleon platform, the software company’s latest broadcast and media Cloud, NDI and SDI compatible graphics and ticker solution.

Data includes weather, financial, sports scores and US National Weather Alerts at no additional cost for Chameleon customers. This is in addition to the already available content modules such as alerts, events, closings, Twitter/Facebook, elections and NEWS.

“Free data, what’s not to love?” states Georg Hentsch, “That’s the inherent value to any company who relies on vasts amounts of published information. Currently we have North American sports (NHL, NBA, NFL, MLB) and finance data includes currencies, indices, commodities and Dow Jones. More leagues and finance options are available on demand. As for weather cities, we currently have all the world capitals, along with major cities in the US and Canada. Again, more can be added as requested. “

In addition to the included data provided, Chameleon has many data source plugins at no additional cost. Plugin sources include Calendar (ical), Google Sheets, Inrix, Barchart, Stats, WSI, and Weather Underground no name a few. Custom readers can be created at a minimal cost or can be built by 3rd parties/customers using Chameleon’s open data model.

At IBC meet the team at Ontario booth in hall 2A .

About Chameleon and Bannister Lake

The all-In-one solution for branding and news content delivery is an adaptable media graphics solution for NDI, SDI and Digital online applications, containing the company’s best branding and ticker elements that media organizations expect in an increasingly on-demand broadcast environment. Recently used at NDI Central NewTek booth and Broadcast Beat’s production at the NAB show, the versatile software system, blends seamlessly with other tech solutions. Bannister Lake has partnered with leaders in the broadcast industry such as Imagine Communications, Grass Valley, Broadstream, AJA Video and Ross Video

September 11, 2017May 17, 2018

Pebble Beach Systems Features Chameleon with Dolphin Automation

CAMBRIDGE ON 9-11-2107 – Bannister Lake Chameleon, the data and graphics broadcast platform will be on display with Pebble Beach systems, Stand 8, B68.

“The Chameleon integration with Pebble Beach requires no additional 3rd party graphic editors”, says Georg Hentsch, “Chameleon is a comprehensive ‘all in one’ graphic playout solution that addresses data, branding, and graphic playout.

Customers of Pebble Beach systems’ Dolphin product, now have an option to produce an advanced ticker and branding solution using Chameleon’s HTML5 graphics engine. No need for an additional graphic CG systems.

IBC 2017 attendees can see the products and request further information from each company. Bannister Lake at the Ontario, Canada Pavilion in Stand 2.A46 and Pebble Beach, Stand 8 B68.

About Chameleon and Bannister Lake

About Pebble Beach and Dolphin

Pebble Beach Systems is a leading developer and supplier of automation, channel in a box and content management solutions for TV broadcasters, service providers, and cable and satellite operators. Products are flexible, reliable and scalable, and designed to cater for all channel types. Our innovative solutions manage acquisition, file-based workflows, archiving and multi-channel playout at large and small installations worldwide.

July 27, 2017May 17, 2018

CTV News Channel

Super Ticker and Brando Provide Workflow + Data Solution at CTV News Channel

CAMBRIDGE, ON – 07-27-2017 – CTV recently launched a new national look for CTV News Channel, the Canadian company’s 24 hour station, completing phase one of a two phase reconfiguration of data workflow for the popular Canadian broadcast news network. Successfully utilizing two components of Bannister Lake’s Chameleon platform, Super Ticker and Brando.

Super Ticker and Brando were created for data publishing and for scalable multi-channel branding for media companies that depend upon a heavy flow of real-time information. “The next phase is to add sponsorship support”, adds George Hentsch, “That will be taken care of by Brando and we will be delivering CTV sponsorship capability in the next few weeks.”

CTV News Channel is a leading broadcast news service in Canada. Owned by Bell Media, the giant programming network purchased Super Ticker and Brando Enterprise in 2013. News Channel is a new installation of their existing enterprise license.

CTV News Channel celebrates 20 years on the air this September.

PR and Communications Contact:

Stephanie Daye

Twitter: @bannisterlake

Email: stephanie@bannisterlake.com

Mobile: 902 877 0975

About Bannister Lake Inc.

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