Shoot Review — Broadcast Pix Studio

Complete broadcast studio for the price of a switcher.

I'll always remember the very first time I walked into a television control room (WWJ-TV 4 in Detroit) many years ago. It resembled something between a combat control center and Grand Central Station. After a few months recording satellite feeds and doing some basic editing, I got to try my hand at operating one of the station's switchers (a Grass Valley) during the offline recording of a local public affairs show. I spent a week memorizing all the buttons and during live news broadcasts watched the technical director shout, “Ready on one, TAKE ONE! Ready number three, slow dissolve to three, TAKE THREE!” When my big break came, the TD yelled and I pushed…the wrong button. Not once, but several times. In my defense, the buttons were difficult to discern.

Designed to be a live TV studio in a workstation, Broadcast Pix Studio has a hard and a soft control panel for redundancy as well as CG, DVE, dual-channel DDR, and still store.

A short time later I decided, with the help of the station manager, that a career in live TV, at least on that side of the camera, was not for me. Had there been a product like the new Broadcast Pix system from the Massachusetts company of the same name, maybe things would have turned out differently.

The Broadcast Pix Studio (now in version 2) is a computer-based studio-in-a-workstation that provides razor-sharp 10-bit video output and a great hardware switcher with a software control panel that insures zero downtime. A Leitch Panacea router with serial/network control and re-clocking of video sources is included, as is everything but monitors and sources.

It's designed specifically for live broadcast operations, and at around $20,000 is about one-third the cost of a similar system — if you could piece one together. Another cost savings is that it allows one operator to do the work of two or three. Broadcast Pix Studio performs switching, title creation and generation (CG), B-roll device control via an included digital disk recorder (DDR), and digital video effects (DVE) via the Pinnacle Targa board or 3D option. It's a completely integrated control room in one product. By utilizing a serial digital interface (SDI) vs. analog, the Broadcast Pix system is also fully ready for the future.

The Broadcast Pix Studio in version 2 adds 3D animation, chroma key, 16:9 support, a second channel for the DDR, and an enhanced version of the PixButton GUI.

Testing 1, 2, 3

Although the shipping unit is rack-mountable, the unit I tested was in a standard PC tower. Running Windows XP Professional with an Intel Server board, Xeon 2.6GHz CPU with 1024MB of RAM, and Pinnacle Targa 3200 board, the system has lots of power and never crashed despite repeated attempts to make it do so. A 30GB system drive and 80GBvideo drive came standard on the test system, and in addition to the custom Broadcast Pix Show Management software, Inscriber TitleMotion software (version 4.3) was included. My test unit lacked the Leitch router that comes standard, but because it was a simple project we used digital/analog converters, which allow for maximum input and output flexibility. The Pinnacle Targa 3200 pumps out a pristine SDI signal, which is great for the future, but if you don't have a Digi Betacam VTR or camera, you'll need some converters. We used a D10A component (YUV) to/from SDI converter from AJA Video, a DA-Portal Pro from SP Communications. that converts FireWire (IEEE 1394) to and from SDI, along with some SDI-to-composite PicoLink converters from Miranda Technologies.

My mission was very straightforward. We needed to shoot a few bands at a live music venue in San Francisco to pitch a new cable TV show. I had three cameras — two hooked up to the switcher and one roving for cutaways to be added later in postproduction or via the DDR. We rolled out to a DV master. I had preproduced an opener and closer for the show with NewTek's LightWave 3D animation software and had it played back from the DDR. Best of all, we took advantage of the over 150 transitions included with the Broadcast Pix unit, and all of the transitions were of network caliber with no jaggies or stuttering.

The well-lit and color-coded buttons of the Broadcast Pix switcher make switching easy. PixButtons each display a small graphic representation of the effects.

The well-lit and color-coded buttons of the switcher also proved to be a godsend in the darkly lit club. Called PixButtons, each one has a small picture or graphic to show what you're doing and what source is selected. The T-bar switcher is laid out just like others in the industry so there's an almost zero learning curve. To my knowledge no switcher has ever had push-buttons that show you exactly what content you'll get when you press it. Very nice, but where was this 20 years ago when I needed it?

It's hard to find shortcomings with the Broadcast Pix system. There's two of just about everything, including the option for two power supplies should one go out. If the hardware goes down, the software can allow the show to continue. Also, the hardware switcher is directly connected to the Leitch router, ensuring continuous operation even if the workstation goes down.

A system can be custom-configured at the dealer level to meet your individual needs. However, I'd like to see the inclusion of a component YUV I/O (or at least continue to provide an analog version) as standard because most small and medium market TV stations and departments are still using older Betacam SP cameras, which lack SDI. Perhaps Broadcast Pix could work out a bundle with a major converter manufacturer so users could purchase the standard SDI version or a YUV version — or even at the low end a FireWire (IEEE 1394) or Y/C and composite version. One can never have too many options.

The only real negative for me was that I found the workstation fan to be very loud (no overheating here, though) and because of that the unit needs to be housed in a machine room or in a soundproof enclosure. I'd also like to see some basic audio support as standard equipment (it's offered as an option). Despite this, the switcher is easy to use and the video that the system puts out is nothing less than stellar.

Take Two

Broadcast Pix version 2 is scheduled to ship with new software features including: 16:9 support, remote camera control, 3D animation, chroma key, a second channel for the DDR with up to 4 hours of uncompressed video, and an enhanced version of the PixButton GUI. Some of these enhancements are free, some are not. For example, version 2 camera control software and the ProPack for the DDR each run $1,500, and the Pinnacle 3D DVE add-on with 4:4:4:4 processing costs a little under $5,000.

One of the most promising sounding new features is the free ShowBuilder software. This allows users to preproduce shows offline to try out new things before going live. It's a great training tool. Best of all, according to the manufacturer, you will be able run ShowBuilder on other computers so you don't tie up the control room. In addition, the company has announced the availability of an API (application programming interface) so that third-party programmers can create cool new add-ons for the system.

Like it or not, all of today's broadcasters will need to go digital in the not-too-distant future, and the Broadcast Pix switcher and live TV production system can be an easy way to help you do that in short order. With a switcher that's one of the easiest to operate and video quality that's some of the best I've ever seen, this might be the solution for your smaller-market TV station or video department. If you can afford it, the Broadcast Pix studio system can bring you into the digital future and provide you with network-caliber results with redundancy that will never leave your TV show off the air.