Bannister Lake Announces Partnership with Traffic Camera Data and Service Provider Vizzion

Bannister Lake is pleased to announce today it has entered into a partnership with Vancouver-based traffic camera data aggregator, Vizzion.  Vizzion is an industry-leading traffic camera data service featuring over 64,000 traffic cameras in 43 countries. Working with over 200 national and regional camera partners in more than 600 markets, Vizzion provides visual verification of traffic flow, traffic incidents, and weather-related road conditions. Through an exclusive partnership with one of North America’s largest internet-connected dashcam companies, Vizzion also supplies imagery from on-vehicle cameras across North America.

Bannister Lake has developed and implemented a data parser for Vizzion data that incorporates traffic camera feeds and mapping into its industry-leading Chameleon data aggregation and management solution. Using Chameleon, clients will be able to strategically isolate specific Vizzion camera feeds and add them to their on-air displays. Clients can also leverage Chameleon’s BLADE RESTful API to strategically distribute traffic cameras to a variety of endpoints including online, mobile, OTT, and web widgets.

Vizzion’s traffic camera content compliments Bannister Lake’s already existing real-time transit data feeds, creating a valuable transportation information solution for viewers. Chameleon clients can create and distribute a wide range of regional, local, and hyper-local information services by combining transportation information with editorial content such as local news, school closings and events calendars.

“Real-time traffic is an important content source and having access to Vizzion’s vast database of camera sources promotes a valuable editorial and business opportunity for Chameleon clients. We look forward to working with Vizzion as they continue to develop their products and services”, said Georg Hentsch, president, Bannister Lake.

“Bannister Lake’s Chameleon solution provides an innovative way to extend Vizzion’s reach to different platforms. The addition of our traffic camera database to Bannister Lake’s data sources will provide Chameleon users working in both broadcast and digital signage with a great way to connect with audiences and advertisers”, said Sean Beaudoin, Account Manager, Vizzion.

Bannister Lake is committed to creating software solutions that fully leverage real-time data. By fully utilizing its expertise in development, databases, APIs and applications, Bannister Lake creates solutions that engage audiences, attract advertising revenue and leverage automation.

Bannister Lake to Present Webinar Focusing on Streaming and Real-Time Data Aggregation and Management

Bannister Lake is pleased to announce today that it will be host a 30-minute product education webinar that will specifically look at real-time data and streaming. The webinar will take place on Tuesday, June 30 at 2 p.m. Eastern / 11 a.m. Pacific. The webinar will examine Chameleon’s unique capabilities and how they apply to the ever-expanding world of streaming media.  

Chameleon is a multi-module, web-based, real-time data management solution, popular in the broadcast, OTT, and signage sectors. As more and more broadcasters, content and event producers, venue managers and digital signage operators turn to streaming, the integration of real-time data has become a critical editorial component. Bannister Lake has developed a number of specific solutions that support HTML5, NDI and compliment Tricaster, OBS and Vmix workflows.

Webinar attendees will learn how Chameleon powers real-time tickers, full frame graphics, and branding elements for streaming applications incorporating up-to-the-second news and information content. To illustrate this, the webinar will examine a recent use case where Chameleon powers real-time graphic insertion into multiple OTT news channels simultaneously.  

Chameleon creates exciting new opportunities for streaming including the production of election coverage. Chameleon’s powerful election results capabilities allows web-based media organizations to track and analyze incoming results, and produce spectacular graphics populated with real-time data. The product’s RESTful API allows data to be redistributed to

social media channels, mobile applications, webpages or to on-set displays. Chameleon can also power fully automated streamed information channels containing news headlines, weather, financial data, emergency alerts and more. 

Real-time data provides producers, engineers, and management working in streaming media with unprecedented ways to tell stories, leverage automation, and expand their reach. Please join Bannister Lake to learn more about these exciting opportunities. To register for the webinar please visit https://bannisterlake.com/webinar-registration/

Bannister Lake’s Chameleon Powers Real-Time Data for Global News OTT Channels

Bannister Lake announced today that its Chameleon real-time data management product is being used to support the Global Television Network’s new OTT initiatives. Chameleon is used to control and customize a variety of news, weather, and financial data feeds as well as to manage advertising and promotional content. Global News has launched one national and four regional OTT streams providing viewers with live, 24/7 news and information.

Bannister Lake provided Global Television with a suite of software products, including its Chameleon Web Player, that renders national and localized ticker content for each channel. Also included is the Chameleon Branding Player that displays ads for each channel while generating as-run logs. The project represents revolutionary new approaches that are more efficient and cost-effective when rendering HTML5 graphics for overlay in streams. Instead of rendering graphics using traditional graphic engines, costing tens of thousands of dollars, rendering is performed by inexpensive Raspberry Pi 4 computers.

The Global Television Network is a long-time client of Bannister Lake and uses Chameleon in a wide variety of ways to extend its editorial and business reach. The product is used daily to control and populate data-driven graphics for local morning shows and as an aggregator and distributor of news content for the network’s digital signage initiatives. Bannister Lake also provides Global with an industry-leading election solution that allows producers to track real-time results, make race calls, build graphic playlists, and distribute custom election data to any endpoint.

“Having Bannister Lake contribute to our OTT project just made sense,” said Gerry Belec, national director, news technology and operations, Global News. “The Chameleon product has the flexibility and reliability we required to add real-time data to our streaming news channels.”

Bannister Lake’s Chameleon product is used extensively throughout the broadcast television market and is used by a handful of American OTT clients. The recent work with Global Television represents the company’s first move into the Canadian streaming sector. 

“We’re always excited to work with Global and explore new ways our solutions can be used to reach Canadians,” said Georg Hentsch, president, Bannister Lake. “Moving into Canadian OTT represents an important new market opportunity as the media landscape continues to evolve.”

Global Television’s OTT news channels are available through the network’s Global TV app and are currently available on Amazon Prime.

Bannister Lake Integrates MPEG-DASH Streaming Protocol Into Chameleon Data Aggregation Workflow

Bannister Lake announced today that MPEG dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH) video content is now fully supported through its flagship Chameleon data management product. Responding to high market demand for the integration of the popular streaming format, Bannister Lake has added DASH playback support in the Chameleon Web Server and has integrated the streaming standard as a media material within its design tool, Chameleon Designer. Utilizing Chameleon Designer, users can build sophisticated graphic templates that incorporate multiple real-time and static data sources.

The combination of DASH and Chameleon helps ensure that over-the-top (OTT) operators can take full advantage of the streaming standard’s ability to adapt to changing network conditions while providing superior quality playback and simultaneously displaying timely, real-time data content. As the broadcast industry moves toward streaming and new distribution models that include multiple devices, the incorporation of the DASH streaming protocol into television technology solutions has become an industry priority. DASH has quickly become a favored international standard and is widely supported on virtually all platforms.

“At Bannister Lake we see the integration of the DASH live streaming protocol as an important development milestone for our Chameleon product,” said Georg Hentsch, president, Bannister Lake. “Streaming content has become an important part of the broadcast business, and we are well positioned to support this growing market.”

OTT is quickly gaining traction with viewers, and by combining real-time and static data content with live streamed content, network operators can generate new storytelling and business opportunities. Using Chameleon, producers can create exciting news, financial, sports, and weather offerings that combine a highly advanced adaptive live streaming solution with best-in-class data management, aggregation, and visualization.

With the inclusion of DASH, Chameleon can support multiple concurrent streams of live or pre-recorded content, allowing OTT operators to switch between different streams. This feature provides enormous flexibility for media organizations to quickly and affordably launch multiple national, regional, and localized versions of streamed services.