Re: CasparCG

Hey Chuck, sorry for the delayed response to your inquiry.

I have been talking with the developers and they are very gracious, yet very PAL oriented. Some of them work for Swedish broadcast and understandably they aren't "that" concerned with our legacy NTSC issues. The new build is not a future project, but one they are working on now and I did express to them that there is a demand for their product on the West coast of the Atlantic.

As far as working through the code, their stance is that if the new build is buggy, we can help fix the open source through testing, because they don't really have NTSC plant-based equipment to test it like we do. By the way, I hate code and want nothing to do with it - I have my hands full with video engineering.

I'd suggest downloading their free client to see if the interface and capabilities are what you'd look for in a CG. Even if it soon supports NTSC, it is basic. It supports playlist serving of pre-made video/graphics, but honestly our old Abekus A72 has more capabilities than this software. At this point, outside of running pre-made playlists, if we have a dedicated SDI signal off a PC like a Blackmagic card, we can just use an NLE like FCP or Premiere to serve things out in the same manner and have more control, just not completely live, and no I haven't tested its live switching ability with playlists.

But I take my hat off to them for making something free and open-source and striving to make it better.

Chad Brewer
Senior Broadcast Videotape Operator
TeleVersions, LLC