New virtual studio from Crystal Vision at BroadcastAsia

Crystal Vision will be showcasing its latest virtual studio at Broadcast Asia 2013, with the launch of its evaluations-winning chroma keyer Safire 3 in Asia, accompanied by a touchscreen control panel. The easy-to-drive Safire 3 chroma keyer uses an advanced algorithm and numerous key processing options to produce the best possible chroma key and also features built-in colour correction and video delay. Other new products on show will include a logo keyer with lots of new features including enhanced audio capabilities and a new range of feature-packed variable video delays offering up to 110 seconds of delay.

Along with the new Safire 3 chroma keyer, Crystal Vision will also be showing four new versions of its MultiLogo modular logo keyer, which provides three layers of keying from a variety of internal and external sources, including a 4 GB or 8 GB video store with DRAM and Flash memory which can hold up to 500 still or animated logos. Ideal for HD or SD station branding, the new MultiLogo V132, MultiLogo V132 8G, MultiLogo V432 and MultiLogo V432 8G retain all the existing features of the previous MultiLogos and add more. Extensive audio capabilities make this version of MultiLogo ideal for applications where both graphics and audio need to be added to a video signal, such as on the station output.

Also on show at Broadcast Asia will be Crystal Vision’s new version of one of its most successful specialist products: variable video delays. The ViViD 3G video delay is available in four versions to suit all applications and is ideal for matching any system delays, from virtual studio graphics to MPEG encoders and decoders. New features appearing on a Crystal Vision video delay for the first time include 3Gb/s support, integrated fibre input/output, video proc-amp and signal timing – with a framestore synchroniser on the ‘S’ versions making it possible to apply a long delay to a video path and lock the signal to a station reference using a neat single board solution. ViViD 3G and ViViD 3GS provide half a second of video delay in 3Gb/s, one second in HD and 5.5 seconds in SD. Where a longer delay is needed, ViViD 3G-20 and ViViD 3GS-20 give ten seconds in 3Gb/s, 20 seconds in HD and 110 seconds in SD. With the flexible adjustments available in increments of pixels, lines, frames and seconds, it is easy to set the exact delay required. ViViD 3G continues to save broadcast engineers rack space by being a 100mm x 266mm module, with up to 12 video delays fitting in a 2U frame.

The new Safire 3 real-time chroma keyer works with 3Gb/s, HD and SD sources and is ideal for all live virtual productions from studio to sport. The enhanced chroma keying uses an extremely sophisticated algorithm to determine how the key is derived, giving excellent results with minimal sensitivity to camera noise. Safire 3 makes it easy to quickly set up a chroma key, using multi-point sampling to automatically get the best possible default settings, with the option of selecting one, five or 12 sample points on the backdrop to set the range of colours to key on, as well as up to four points on the Foreground object to set areas where no chroma keying is required. The input can be frozen to make setup even easier.