Crystal Vision has become an official member of the Singular partner program as a Certified Technology Partner.
With employees across Asia, Europe and the USA, Singular is the award-winning pioneer of revolutionary cloud-based technology for template-based live graphic overlays. Crystal Vision’s M-WEBKEY web page keyer provides Singular users with a simple, compact and affordable broadcast-grade solution for keying the graphics on to uncompressed SDI or IP video, and offers them broadcast industry features such as full control and monitoring by web GUI, SNMP or JSON API.
The Singular Partner Program is designed for companies who use Singular products, extend the Singular technology, provide services or build solutions that directly influence the use of Singular products and technologies as part of their business. The cloud-based Singular.live platform provides a full suite of customizable broadcast quality graphic overlays and allows broadcasters to create dynamic graphics using web technologies such as HTML, CSS3 and Javascript. These web graphics can be accessed from anywhere via a web browser-enabled device or web render function embedded in another cloud service, software application or hardware device.
One such hardware device is the M-WEBKEY web page keyer – a software app that runs on Crystal Vision’s MARBLE-V1 media processor card – which can key a web page onto an uncompressed SDI or IP video stream.
It allows the video input or a matte color to be set as the background source, with the specified web page providing the overlaid foreground source as well as the key signal which defines the graphic’s location and transparency. The M-WEBKEY will render the web page at the correct resolution and frame rate for the video signal and then key the graphic on to the video. The M-WEBKEY can be used with IP (SMPTE ST 2022 and ST 2110 video), with SDI or with both IP and SDI at the same time. Useful features in addition to its broadcast standard control options include the ability to fade the key up and down, crop to force areas of background or foreground, a framestore synchronizer, ten frames of video delay and signal status monitoring.
Using the M-WEBKEY with Singular.live is simple. The M-WEBKEY makes it easy to key external web server content by allowing up to two DNS server addresses to be entered, which can be accessed using the 10GbE network interface ports. Singular.live generates a URL for the created graphics and provides a button to copy the URL to the computer’s clipboard. This can then be pasted directly into the ‘Web server URL’ box on the M-WEBKEY’s web browser-based VisionWeb Control.
Combining Singular.live and the M-WEBKEY offers users a straightforward, compact and cost-effective broadcast-grade solution for keying graphics onto SDI or IP video. The alternative solution would be to use a dedicated PC containing an SDI card, which is cumbersome to set up and operate, takes up more space and power and does not have broadcast industry features.
Explained Crystal Vision’s Managing Director, Philip Scofield: “This partnership brings Singular’s web derived graphics into live broadcast production. It also shows the strength of the Crystal Vision MARBLE platform to work as both a powerful media processing computer and a real-time synchronizing keyer/video processor.”
The M-WEBKEY is ideal for use with Singular.live and with other graphics platforms that use web technologies.
Based at Whittlesford near Cambridge in the UK and with an office in the USA, Crystal Vision provides a full range of interface and keyers and helps people transition through a range of technologies – from SD to HD, from HD to IP and from IP to IP.
