Digital media and broadcasting company VICE Media has invested in Octopus 8 newsroom software for its headquarters in Brooklyn, New York City.
Digital media and broadcasting company VICE Media has invested in Octopus 8 Newsroom software for its headquarters in Brooklyn, New York City. Octopus 8 is being used by journalists producing newscasts for transmission over the Home Box Office (HBO) cable and satellite television network in the US and on VICELAND internationally.
Commenting on the deployment, Octopus Newsroom Sales Director Gabriel Jankó, said: “VICE content will be sourced from news facilities in the USA, China and the Middle East. Octopus 8 is being operated in tandem with Vizrt’s Viz Pilot graphics and Viz One asset manager. This combination enables editors to select video material from Viz One and add graphics from Viz Pilot, all via a single interface. Commands from a Viz Mosart are already preconfigured in Octopus story templates and story elements so there is no need to call any plugin or select anything from the media library.”
VICE originated as a magazine and is now a hugely diverse multimedia company,” added Lucy Paynter, real-time graphics art director at VICE.
“In October, we debuted a live news programme, VICE News Tonight, which airs weeknights on HBO. Our aim is to provide a fresh perspective on what is happening in the world and to present it in a way that is engaging and up to the production standards of VICE and HBO.
“It’s been challenging to combine a flexible and intuitive control-room based workflow with traditional documentary post-production and our methods are constantly evolving. Viz Mosart automation allows us to set up a playout environment that is predictable and perfectly timed, but it’s really Octopus that drives the front end of the show. By making use of custom fields and scripts within Octopus, we’ve been able to give the user the ability to select content-driven transitions and define the overall pace. The result, we hope, is a complete 20 to 30 minute programme in which the individual elements are blended seamlessly and are imperceptible to the viewer.”
Available for Apple OS X, Linux and Microsoft Windows operating systems, Octopus 8 gives newsroom staff the ability to ingest all incoming audio, video and still-image files, news agency wires, RSS feeds, emails, SMS messages and even faxes. All content relating to a specific task can be seen in a single view. Octopus 8 is fully MOS compliant system so can be integrated into any environment or workflow that supports the MOS protocol. The system can easily integrate with existing and new MOS devices. It fully supports the placeholder workflow, thumbnails and proxy preview, item status, channel assignments and many other commands.
Established in 1999, Octopus Newsroom is a producer of standalone newsroom computer systems. Octopus Newsroom advocates an open ecosystem using the MOS protocol which enables customers to choose freely among high-quality providers of graphics, playout, MAM, prompters, traffic-handing and advertising solutions.
