Viz Engine™ is one of today’s most powerful rendering engines and real-time compositors of graphics and video. It renders animated 2D and 3D scenes in real-time, producing high-end animations in SD, HD and 4k. And did we mention it even supports stereoscopy out of the box?

Key Features

Designed with openness in mind

From the beginning, Viz Engine has been developed with flexibility in mind. This allows customers to integrate their own proprietary control software with ease. In addition, a powerful scripting language supports easy manipulation of graphics objects, as well as the creation of user-specific plug-ins.

The Viz Engine application is built on top of OpenGL. This makes it one of the few 3D systems that can run the same graphics content on multiple hardware platforms and operating systems. Furthermore, Viz Engine runs on off-the-shelf, rack-mountable Windows PCs with a standard graphics card, as well as specialized Panasonic PC platforms.

Easy communication

The Viz Engine components and Viz Artist GUI run on the same machine and communicate via TCP sockets. The communication protocol between the GUI and the kernel is consistent and easy to understand. All the commands are similar in structure, which includes the object name or address, the command or function name, the function argument and additional data when necessary. The protocol also includes a full set of query commands to the engine, which allows it to receive a detailed a detailed description of the status of the graphic content.

This makes it easy to write external applications to control the Viz Engine kernel in runtime. Vizrt offers several external command protocol products that are specific to the broadcast industry, including Viz Content Pilot, Viz Trio, and Viz Media Sequencer Engine. Third party developers can create their own specific applications within, and on top of, Viz Engine.

Flexible hardware support

The combination of the powerful plug-in API, together with a simple ASCII communication protocol, gives a very flexible foundation for various applications. Given the availability of competitive high-performance graphics hardware in the market today, Viz Engine can be used as the complete graphics layer for applications requiring high-fidelity graphic content and interactivity.

Viz Engine on the PC platform can be configured with an optional Matrox X.mio™ video board that will further enhance its capabilities. With a Matrox board, Viz Engine supports real-time video output both in HD and SD, as well as in PAL and NTSC. The Engine can then handle two independent SD/HD video inputs in RGB, or one RGBA input used for background or live video textures. With a Matrox board, Viz Engine supports clip playback in a variety of formats: DVCPRO 25Mbit, 50Mbit, and MPEG2, and IMX.

Configured with just a graphics card, Viz Engine can render with DVI output, render to disk or take streaming video content in and out. The Viz Engine renders real-time content and outputs the IP stream so the video can then be easily distributed to the web, mobile devices or even converted to a video signal for on-air purposes.

With integrationto the DVS SpycerBox, the need for a local cache can be eliminated. SpycerBox streams video content from a SAN (Storage Area Network) directly to Viz Engine.

Full support for stereoscopy

Viz Engine has always been a real 3D system. Even though graphics have so far mostly been played out on conventional 2D screen the graphics themselves have always been in real 3D. That's why Viz Engine was one of the world's first systems to support stereoscopy right out of the box. By simply syncing two Viz Engines broadcasters can create real-time stereoscopic graphics just as easy as they until now created their 2D graphics.

Product extensions

Viz Video Wall allows you to create unique installations that surround the viewer and go far beyond the capacity of traditional video-wall setups. Viz Video Wall ER has a wide range of purposes in addition to regular studio broadcasting: It is perfectly suited for entertainment and educational productions, as well as interactivity in live broadcasting. Viz Video Wall ER can even be used in outdoor environments. The solution integrates seamlessly with other Vizrt solutions without requiring changes in the workflow. Read more

 

Workflow diagram