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VDS Adds Graphics To TVOntario
By Laura DiBenedetto
April 02, 2002 08:25 AM PST
As the province's official educational broadcaster and provider of in
educational children's broadcasting, TVOntario is paving the way in
instructive and enlightening programming for the next generation on its
two networks, TVO for its English speaking viewers and TFO for its
French viewers. The graphics department at TVOntario has the
challenging task of taking a great mix of shows, hosts, facts and
lessons, and adding the colorful graphics that keep their audiences
hooked. This task has now been simplified by Video Design Software's
Liberty Studio V8.
"Liberty was the only way to go," says Heward Lee, a senior graphics
artist for TVOntario. "I was involved in a broadcast graphics department
in Toronto, Canada that assisted in the beta testing of earlier versions
of the Liberty software in the early 90s. When I left my old job and came
to TVOntario two years ago, I was thrilled to see that we had Liberty.
Having the overall ability to start or design an image from scratch, stay
within the same software and be able to function in paint and animation
mode along with the ability to import and export is more than enough to
sell me on Liberty."
With television graphics traditionally being a labor-intensive mix of live
action and graphic work, Liberty has proved successful for the quick
turnarounds and combination work demanded in bumper and promo work
with tight TV deadlines. "I recently built and rendered an animation
script for an artwall animation that is part of a show opening," explains
Lee. "It uses several different layers of animation and we are grabbing
about 155 still images from camera. Liberty lets me bring in the images
quickly, immediately edit and clean them up in the paint function, and
then build an animation script that allows me to fly in all of these
elements separately. The trouble with the competition's software is that
you are constantly switching back and forth between programs and
functions. Liberty is seamless.
"Liberty does it all," concludes Lee. "You can import pictures you have
drawn on paper, or scanned and manipulated as well as from slides, or
videotape. You can also import moving pictures frame by frame. You can
manipulate it, run it through filters to give it a different effect; you can
squeeze it into a box or put it slow motion; draw from scratch in the
paint package, animate anything and everything. In TV, problems need
to be solved in two to three hours because of the upcoming broadcast.
VDS has been by our side to immediately walk us through any issues.
Liberty has the functionality every other major paint package should
have, with the animation features and the right technical team behind it
to back it up."
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