Ross’ NAB Show booth will include a new virtual set area.
IROQUOIS, ONTARIO—It’s one thing to try and imagine how a piece of gear might fit into a production puzzle. It’s a different thing altogether to view an entire production facility on the convention floor to see exactly how it all comes together.
That is the goal of Ross Video, who will come to NAB to show how its umbrella of solutions can be used to bring a production studio all together.
“We’re going to tailor our production demonstrations for a live production,” said Jeff Moore, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Ross. The company has planned out a set of solutions-oriented demos, and will tailor them to news or sports, or whatever needs are brought by the person walking into the booth. “We have [equipment] that all fits under one umbrella,” Moore said. “If I’m in sports, I’ll want something different than news or a house of worship.”
The products in that lineup will include several new solutions, including a new virtual set area that will present a triumvirate of virtual solutions: a hard virtual set, augmented reality tech and bag of virtual reality objects. A hard set built by the Philadelphia firm Erector Set will be attached to a traditional green screen, creating a continuous studio. Combined with a virtual environment as well, “it makes it look like the studio is five or six times larger than it is,” Moore said. “For a lot of broadcasters, that’s interesting because they can build an environment that has the best of both worlds and have them work seamlessly together.”
The set is run by virtually all of Ross’ product lines: robotic cameras, graphics, production switchers and servers, with the whole thing wrapped up neatly with automation, Moore said.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Holding up this environment will be products like the Carbonite series of control panels, as well as the Vision series of production switchers and MC1 master control system.
The company has also been wading into social media, with last year’s introduction of its Inception social media management module, which offers a single tool to create and publish content into live broadcast productions.
Ross will also showcase the workflow advantages of its XPression motion graphics system. “Broadcast groups and networks need to be able to efficiently create and get graphics where you need them,” Moore said. New features include a new effects engine and enhanced data integration known as “DataLinq.”
For behind-the-scenes work, Ross will also introduce a new Nielsen rating encoder, the NWE-TS, that acts as a baseband encoder and compressed domain encoder, as well as new openGear signal processing solutions and the NK series of routers. The company is also showing v14.0 of its OverDrive automated production control system, which now has a re-engineered newsroom plug-in to streamline the prep process.
After the company’s acquisition of two robotics firms last year, the company will come to the show with its Furio track-based system and CamBot robotic pedestal system. The company has more to celebrate, too, after the founder of the company, John Ross, was awarded the Order of Canada, the highest civilian honor in the nation for his achievements in engineering.
Ross Video will be in Booth N3808 in the North Hall.
