Month: August 2016

CAMBRIDGE, ON, Canada, August 11, 2016 – Bannister Lake Software is proud to introduce Super Ticker Chameleon, the most significant expansion to date of the company’s widely-deployed Super Ticker family of data aggregation and display solutions. Building on Super Ticker’s hallmark efficiency, scalability and flexibility, Chameleon extends the core Super Ticker application into a comprehensive data presentation, management and playout system for use either on its own or in conjunction with any third-party broadcast CG system.

The preferred choice of numerous top-tier media companies for creating data-rich broadcasts and displays, Super Ticker continues to enable users to easily aggregate and manage automated data feeds from premium third-party providers, and combine them with community-submitted information and locally-created content.  Chameleon augments this proven data aggregation power with new graphics creation tools and hybrid playout capabilities, forming a tightly-integrated graphics and data engine for distribution targets ranging from television news channels to digital signage and websites.

While Super Ticker’s content management and control capabilities are closely integrated with select partner solutions such as Ross Video Xpression Tick-It, historically most third-party info display and broadcast CG systems have interfaced with Super Ticker by accessing data through its BLADE (Bannister Lake Active Data Exchange) API. Chameleon’s platform-agnostic approach brings the deeper features and advantages of Super Ticker to a wider array of CG solutions, while its integrated graphics editing and playout capabilities make Super Ticker accessible to a broader customer base without third-party tools.

“Chameleon is designed to work seamlessly with any broadcast CG platform, bringing integrated Super Ticker features such as scheduling and rundowns to many third-party CG systems for the first time,” said Randy MacCarthy, lead software engineer at Bannister Lake. “At the other end of the spectrum, some media enterprises such as smaller TV and Internet broadcasters can benefit from Super Ticker’s rich data aggregation abilities, but don’t need the advanced functionality of a traditional, dedicated broadcast CG.  Chameleon offers these customers a complete data and graphics solution in an efficient, fully-integrated package, while scaling easily to meet the needs of larger broadcasters and station groups.”

Chameleon’s new graphics editor lets users design visually compelling scene layouts and link them directly to Super Ticker’s advanced data management tools. An unlimited number of zones within each scene can be independently defined for presentation of data types including sports scores, stock quotes, weather, news bulletins, election results, social media posts and more. Rundowns enable precise control of the content played out in each zone, while integrated scheduling enables channels to be fully automated across multiple layouts.

Chameleon’s new hybrid player module complements Super Ticker’s existing native and BLADE-based, third-party CG integrations, enabling baseband SDI, IP and web-based outputs. Support for NewTek’s Network Device Interface (NDI™) IP technology for live production workflows enables real-time graphic and alpha channel playout from Chameleon to other NDI-enabled systems over an IP network, while WebGL support allows rendering of the player’s output directly within HTML5 web pages.

Chameleon is slated for release in Q4 of this year, and will be offered as an add-on option for existing Super Ticker users or bundled with Super Ticker for new customers. A live, working demo of Chameleon output is currently available on the Bannister Lake website.

Super Ticker Chameleon, Super Ticker and other Bannister Lake Software solutions will be highlighted at the upcoming IBC2016 Conference and Exhibition, taking place September 9-13 in Amsterdam. Bannister Lake will exhibit at IBC2016 with partners including BroadStream Solutions (stand #8.B35) and Imagine Communications (stand #4.A01). Ross Video Tick-It and Brand-It, powered by Bannister Lake technology, will be showcased at the Ross Video booth (stand #11.C10).