Broadcast Pix put on the market a couple of months ago a portable version of Slate, its production system for "live" applications. Slate Portable has been designed to minimize assembly times – in fact it is enough with a flat surface and a few cables to be able to put to work a system that includes an SD/HD switcher with audio-follow-video mixer, a multiviewer, a storage and playback system of graphics and video clips, a Harris Inscriber CG character generator, an automation package, and a set of hardware capable of handling all types of SD/HD conversions.
Slate Portable has the potential to replace a wheeled rack with a compact 20kg package, and includes eight SDI inputs capable of handling SD/HD signals; it also has the possibility of handling analog signals, in addition to 14 internal inputs for video clips, or graphics with alpha channel previously stored. The switcher has three keyers as standard equipment, and can optionally be equipped with three additional ones.
Each keyer operates as a DVE channel and can handle any of the internal or external sources. Five of the internal channels can access thousands of static graphics stored on the computer, whether imported material or "pages" generated by InscriberCG – and the audio/video playback system can handle up to 200 hours of HD footage stored in QuickTime format using H.264 or ProRes codecs , with a much higher capacity for SD material in DV25, for example.
In addition to emulating the behavior of the hardware that we normally find in a flypack or "fixed position", Slate Portable includes an automation solution called Fluent Watch Folders, which makes it possible for the import operations of video clips or finished graphics to occur as a background task while the team attends a "live" production.
