VIRTUAL SOLUTIONS
Regrading the Virtual Solutions, we offer Ross Video through a range of Virtual Solutions that enable media production organizations to tell better stories, gain viewership, increase revenue, and reduce costs through the use of Augmented Reality and Virtual Sets, with a focus on blended environments that combine the best of traditional physical design and virtual design.
Ross can implement virtual solutions for limited budgets as well as for the most demanding of production applications. This includes the most complete product portfolio in the industry with diverse third party component integration, and comprehensive virtual design services.
1. Why Use Virtual Sets and Augmented Reality?
Tell Better Stories
- Meet viewer’s expectations for a more sophisticated presentation
- Extend the story telling tool set with multiple virtual monitors, floating augmented reality elements, and customizable virtual sets
- Use augmented reality and virtual sets to exceed the limitations of traditional studio environments
- Create more polished productions for applications such as weather, sports, news, elections, talk and variety shows, sponsorship, and more.
Retain and Increase Viewership
- Present information in new and innovative ways to captivate and inform audiences
- Get viewers to tune in longer showing segments with content such as augmented reality weather
Realize Sponsorship Opportunities
- Gain new income sources through sponsorship of specific virtual elements
- Add a sponsor logo designed into a virtual monitor or have logos spray painted in a virtual manner on a virtual wall to deliver in-show sponsorships
- Apply advertising and sponsorship in the same manner for a variety of programming such as weather, traffic, sports, talk, and variety on an annual, daily, or show by show basis
Lower Set Costs
- Utilize “blended” environments that combine the best of traditional physical design and virtual design to eliminate the need for video walls and on-set monitors
- Deploy virtual sets at a fraction of the cost of traditional physical sets
- Secure capital investment with complete solutions that offer superb system integration, enhance revenue streams, and lower operational costs
Reduce Real Estate Requirements
- Operate and deploy virtual solutions in small spaces that require substantially less facility costs
- Save on the reduced size of studios
- Use less storage space due to needing fewer physical set pieces
Increase Staff Flexibility
- Implement augmented reality and virtual set solutions that combine robotic cameras, production switchers, motion graphics, and automated production control systems that are intuitive and effective to use without the need for complicated technical knowledge
- Easily move staff resources around and use them for a variety of tasks and program production rather than having to be dedicated for single tasks
- Utilize agile production teams that are more efficient and contribute to lower overall operational costs
2. Virtual Production Systems
Trackless Vs. Tracked
Different approaches to implementing a virtual solution depending on requirements and budgets.
With Ross Video products and systems, you can create the highest quality virtual productions that can scale to suit your organizational needs – all with solutions from a single reliable supplier.
But how do you create virtual productions? There are two primary methods of combining virtual and physical elements when operating in virtual environments: Trackless and Tracked.
The core difference between Trackless and Tracked systems lies in the requirements for how the elements need to interact. In a trackless system the talent remains mostly stationary and the virtual world is built around them. In a fully tracked system, talent can move around in the set and tracking keeps them properly aligned to the changes in the physical and virtual world. Of course the two methods have different set, hardware, and software requirements.
Trackless
Trackless virtual systems are all-in-one engines that require no external action on the part of the camera in order to create movement. They use a stationary physical camera, with all the camera movement being done within the graphics engine. This eliminates the need for physical tracking equipment.
This is an exciting new avenue for low cost virtual productions. Ross is proud to offer its own cutting edge version of this tool.
- Motion cameras
- Virtual camera movement
- Single render engine
- Low cost
- Great for smaller cost constrained studios
Tracked
Traditional tracked virtual systems rely on some sort of camera tracking to manage the movement of the cameras and talent in the set. This requires data encoders, infrastructure, and a tracking management system to track the camera’s movement and position. The coordinates of the cameras are then identified as 3D-coordinates for the graphics rendering engine in the virtual space.
For this purpose Ross offers the UX Virtual Tracking System as a system that covers the three needs of tracking, keying, and rendering for virtual production.
With UX, users integrate the tracking capabilities of Ross Furio and CamBot Robotics, to create some truly stunning productions. This can be combined with OverDrive Automated Production Control to combine complex virtual and camera moves into one button events. This is an environment designed for non-engineering users with a very accessible ease-of-use.