| Email To Air is an application which facilitates the display of e-mail messages on a character generator. It is a sophisticated system incorporating data acquisition, filtering, and graphics generation components, centered around a simple user interface.
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The Email To Air application conforms to our core engineering model, allowing tight integration with powerful plug-ins such as Tag Monitor and the generalized Text To Air module.
Email To Air is currently in use at MTV on Total Request Live (TRL), generating a lower-third ticker with squeezeback:
Email To Air on MTV's TRL |
CMT Canada uses Email to Air in lower third ticker format, in this case layered over program video:
Email To Air on CMT Canada |
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E-Mail / Text Data Acquisition Features |
- Acquire email from industry-standard POP3 e-mail servers
- Sort downloaded messages by date or author
- Delete unwanted messages
- Send, reply to, and forward e-mail to other recipients
- Import newline-delimited text files from local or network drives. Crawls can be created remotely and imported using this feature.
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Message Editing and Filtering Features |
- Edit crawl messages prior to approval for on-air display
- Filter objectionable content using optional SmutFilter plug-in
- Attach metadata to messages, such as the first name and home town of the sender
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Playout Features |
After editing the text of a message and its metadata (collectively called a display record) on the Pre-Production screen, it is submitted to the On-Air Playout screen and stored for use in a playout stack. From the On-Air Playout screen, the operator builds a playout stack from one or more available display records and can trigger playout of the stack to a character generator under manual or automatic (i.e. GPI) control.
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Pre-Production Mode |
In Pre-Production Mode, the application provides a familiar e-mail client interface through which the operator downloads, deleted, replies to, and forwards messages.
Pre-Production Mode: Downloading and Filtering Emails |
If Smut Filtering is enabled, the message is scanned for objectionable content (which are highlighted in red) and a "traffic light" indicates the severity. The metadata fields (First Name, Topic, City, State) are also filled in if possible.
Once the text of the message has been reviewed/edited by production personnel, the message and associated metadata is submitted to the On-Air Playout tab as a display record.
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On-Air Playout Mode |
The On-Air Playout tab provides a grid displaying all e-mail records available for display. Controls are provided to allow for the addition, deletion, or insertion of a selected record into the playout stack. All fields may be edited at the last minute (i.e. after pre-production) if necessary. In addition, metadata associated with the record can be edited directly using the data grid at the top of the screen.
On-Air Playout Mode: Creating a Display Stack |
Once a record has been accepted for on-air playout, it is inserted as a record into the Playout Stack, which is the list at the bottom of the On-Air Playout tab. Once the Playout Stack is constructed, the operator is able to trigger messages for playout either on a one-by-one basis, or as a group using pre-defined transitions (e.g. dwell for 5 seconds, then do 20 field dissolve to next record in stack).
A progress bar displays how much of the crawl data has been displayed. Crawls may be stopped at any time.
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Basic Block Diagram |
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