NAB 2024: Driving innovation on the show floor

As one of the most hotly anticipated events of the year, NAB 2024 checked every box. And this year we connected with customers and partners, alongside demonstrating a range of new solutions for education and enterprise to college sports, elections, and more.

From podcaster to broadcaster, our vision remains to be the go-to, all in one platform for every single professional storyteller, and this year’s NAB gave us the opportunity to connect with customers, partners, and colleagues on exactly that.

One of the biggest launches from Vizrt was NDI 6, which offers native HDR and 10+ bit color support. Showcased on the Vizrt booth was the world’s first NDI HDR remote production workflow in the cloud with TriCaster Vectar in collaboration with Comprimato. TriCaster Vectar performed video switching and its capabilities as integrated production system in full 10-bit HDR workflow with the contribution JPEG-XS feeds converted into NDI 6 HDR by Comprimato Live Transcoder. The native HDR via NDI 6 ensures lifelike video quality bringing a new level of quality to broadcast and live production.

Knowledge sharing for future success

In response to ever changing industry needs and demands, NAB saw us tap into a range of sectors via our solution pods. Showcasing the very best of both hardware and software, we took a deep-dive into the tools and technology transforming enterprise and education, live sports, the future of news, cloud-based production, and visual storytelling via immersive and HTML5 graphics.

Over at our enterprise and education pod, we demonstrated how TriCaster is transforming corporate and learning settings with the easy-to-use TriCaster Mini X, TriCaster Mini Go and the TriCaster Flex Dual Control panel. Our visitors saw first-hand how TriCaster is making professional video production accessible for all, offering corporate creators, educators and students the simplest video set up yet. And, with native NDI integration as standard, bridging the gap between creativity and control has never been easier.

Our very own Richard Evans even took to the stage to demonstrate TriCaster’s versatile production tools in action, placing cost savings, flexibility and efficiency at the forefront. Talking through aspects of our work with the European League of Football and SXSW, Richard illustrated how the unique combination of TriCaster and cloud is transforming productivity, resilience and agility for many types of production.

Bringing solutions alive

We love bringing stories alive, and at NAB we stuck true to our word – many of our colleagues took to the stage to demonstrate our tech in real life. But the action didn’t just start on the show floor. Our very own Chris Black arrived at the show in VR style of course!

Using Unreal Engine integrated with Viz Engine 5 we created a massive XR studio showing a photorealistic flight through Washington DC. Landing at the White House lawn Chris gets behind the presidential podio rendered using Viz Engine 5. We then go to the Oval Office where, using Viz AI we can interact with AR graphics.

In fact, it set the scene perfectly for our own #voteviz show, demonstrating the incredible potential of our election solutions for the 2024 ‘Super Election’ year and beyond. With a powerful combination of cloud based Viz Flowics and the combined capabilities of Viz Engine 5 and Unreal Engine 5, our show gave a peek at the software and hardware behind engaging real-time graphics, including vote counts, exit polls, and more all alongside interactive visuals such as live maps and charts to engage viewers.

But it wasn’t all politics. With Vizrt’s Austin Hinton, our guests also got a taste of the award-winning sports production technology transforming live sports with cloud-based remote set ups. Taking to the stage, Austin demonstrated how easy-to-use data driven graphics, data-driven analysis and efficient content management, delivered by cloud-based and on-prem setups, are enhancing sports coverage across various formats and venues.

Strengthening our partner community

Our partners play an important role in the success of Vizrt, and NAB was a great opportunity to connect in person. Over 20+ of our partners presented product integrations from Viz Flowics HTML5 graphics to Viz Pilot Edge for newsroom operations.

The AWS booth had NAB Live news programming via live cloud production utilizing TriCaster Vectar for switching and Viz Mosart for automation, running on AWS and NDI.

At the Verizon booth, visitors got the chance to explore an exciting use of Vizrt technology by the National Hockey League where TriCaster Vectar, Viz Trio and Viz Engine have been used to drive a seamless live cloud production to air for NHL Network’s linear channel all connected via NDI and 5G.

Everyone had a great time socializing in person too with our valued partners during the dedicated social hour where we made several exciting announcements (stay tuned), discussed the enhanced certification and training programs now on offer, and celebrated shared success at the Vizrt Partner Awards ceremony! Congratulations to all of our award-winners.

Speaking of awards…

We ended NAB with TWO award wins. One for our newest product, Viz Virtual Studio Go, which is democratizing augmented reality graphics creation, won an IT Pro Best of Show. AND our enterprise grade NDI 6 and HDR cloud switcher, TriCaster Vectar, which is revolutionizing live production, won an NAB Best of Show Award.

Thank you to our incredible R&D and product teams, as well as our customers and users driving demand for our innovations in the market, we wouldn’t be inspired to continue creating award-winning solutions without you.