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Audience vs. Scala

Audience vs. Scala Designer 3
Competitive advantages

In today’s highly competitive market, retaining viewer’s attention has become a real challenge. Viewers are accustomed to a sophisticated broadcast look. Audience is all about making your channel look great and delivering appealing content. It’s also about simplifying the maintenance of your channel so anyone can contribute and update content.

At $5,495, we feel that the Audience offers much better value for your money and significant benefits over Scala Designer 3 in four important areas:

True broadcast channel look

More complete and powerful design tools

Ease of operation and maintenance

Better video integration

Channel creation

	Audience	Scala Designer 3
Designed for broadcast operation	Yes – From the ground up!	No – Designed for VGA output
Live video integration (video pass through)	Yes – Seamless integration	Afterthought. Requires a VGA to video scan converter
Video scaling for picture-in-picture	Yes – Built-in and high quality	No – Requires an external broadcast switcher
Text and graphic overlay	Truly professional, with multiple levels of transparency	Poor results because of hard edges. Requires a special scan converter.
Pre-designed broadcast templates	Sophisticated styles	Background elements only
Seasonal look change in no time	Yes – Very easy	No – Cumbersome
Easy to create multiple zones of information	Yes	No
Antialiasing on text	Yes	Yes
Support for all True-Type fonts	Yes	Yes
Multiple layers of text	Yes	Yes
Text rotation	Yes	Yes
Text on curve	Yes	No
Soft shadows	Yes	No
Design primitives	Yes – Any shape, any style!	Yes – Basic shapes only
Large selection of sophisticated effects (such as blur)	Yes	No
Automatic time and date display	Yes – Continuous update in dedicated zone	Yes – Must be manually integrated in every page
Data feed service	Yes	Yes
Multiple, simultaneous, text rolls and crawls	Yes – Super smooth	Yes – But may stutter
Sophisticated 3D effects and transitions	Yes	No – Basic only
Conclusion	Only Audience combines ease of use and advanced visual tools to create dynamic, high- impact channel presentations that will retain viewer’s attention.

Designed for broadcast operation

From hardware to software, Audience was designed from the ground up for professional broadcast operation. It’s an integrated solution that accepts a video input and delivers a crisp and clean video signal that is ready to be broadcast.

On the other hand, Scala deals with video as an afterthought. Much like Microsoft Power Point, (which has no real understanding of broadcast video), Scala relies on an external video scan converter to turn your computer’s VGA output into a "broadcast" video signal. This conversion process deteriorates video quality, eliminates details, and introduces tearing problems with motion sequences that seriously compromise the look of your channel.

Video overlay

Audience integrates video seamlessly. Whether your video comes from an analog (or digital) tape or a DVD quality MPEG-2 digital file, Audience will scale your video so it fits perfectly inside one of the zones (picture-in-picture) while letting you overlay additional graphics elements. Graphic elements can contain up to 256 levels of transparency for professional overlay results.

Scala lets you integrate external video sources only through an external scan converter or broadcast switcher. The more expensive scan converters supports an overlay mode that allows a rough overlay of your text and graphic elements over a full screen video background. Scala doesn’t let you scale incoming video so it fits in a zone. The incoming video is always full screen. An expensive broadcast switcher is required to create a picture-in-picture. Only multimedia files, playing back on the VGA screen can be scaled and positioned anywhere on the screen, but in this case, video will suffer the conversion problems discussed above.

Pre-designed broadcast templates

Audience comes with hundreds of high-quality, broadcast-ready templates. You don’t need to worry about finding matching colors anymore! Enjoy the peace of mind that comes with not having to worry about who’s creating content anymore because you know it will always look right! Of course, if you have graphic artists on staff, they will be able to create and customize sophisticated templates that will give your channel the exact look you need. Templates ensure a consistent look across multiple zones and pages.

While Audience draws a clear distinction between "channel look" and "content", the Scala interface amalgamates the two. The look of your page is therefore defined as you enter new content. Each page is created with the "flavour of the day", based on the artistic mood of whoever entered that content. Scala doesn’t offer any templates. Scala only offers a selection of backgrounds and elements that YOU must figure out how to combine in an elegant way.

Seasonal look change in no time

The best way to ensure viewers come back often is to give them a fresh look and fresh content. Thanks to its powerful template model, Audience lets you refresh your entire channel look in no time. Simply load a new template, or create your own "Christmas" look, to revamp your entire site in minutes.

With Scala, if you want to refresh your entire channel, you will need to edit every single page you have previously created. This can prove to be very time consuming in addition to being a very frustrating experience.

Easy to create multiple zones of information

Your viewers want to get the maximum amount of information in the shortest possible time. Audience gives you the ability to run multiple zones of information, each having their own playlist of content. Time, weather, sponsors, daily events, promos, and video feed can all coexist on the same screen. This makes your channel a lot more attractive while remaining very easy to maintain!

Unless you are prepared to do heavy-duty computer programming, Scala can only run one playlist at a time. So let’s say you want to promote a sponsor, you need to either put his logo on a page and intersperse it here and there in the play list or include his logo on every pages. The first scenario takes a lot of time and effort, while the second one is virtually impossible to manage. Neither scenario makes it easy to create and deliver a lot of information simultaneously.

Comprehensive design tools

Our artists have already created many great templates for you, but if you want to create a completely custom look, Audience gives you all the tools to do that too. While Scala software only includes rudimentary design tools, Audience builds on the acclaimed CorelDRAW10 Graphics Suite to let you create a high-end look with text attributes such as soft shadows and writing on curves.

Automatic time and date display

Audience lets you easily define a special zone that can be dedicated to your channel branding and that includes system time and date information automatically Scala lets you integrate system time and date as well, but it requires a lot of work as you can only do this through the use of variables that you must integrate on every individual page. Because it is so awkward, most people end up creating special pages interspersed here and there to remind people of the time.

Data feed service

Capital Networks Limited can provide high-quality local feeds for weather, lottery, and sports for a competitive monthly fee.

Sophisticated 3D effects and transitions

Scala supports only basic transitions and relies solely on the CPU power of your computer. If your computer is not fast enough, you will experience stutters and glitches.

Audience builds on the award winning Matrox Flex 3D technology to deliver high-impact, broadcast quality transitions and effects never thought possible at this price point: page curls, fades, wipes, 3D flips, and many more will add a professional touch to your channel.

Channel management

	Audience	Scala Designer 3
Comprehensive scheduling capabilities	Yes	Yes
Play out logs for billing purposes	Yes	Yes
Drag & drop playlist	Yes	Yes(?)
Independent playlist for each zone	Yes	N/A
Contribute to channel content via the internet	Yes – with Audience.billboard	No
Remote channel administration via internet	Yes – with Audience.billboard	Yes – with Enterprise Edition
Conclusion	Audience gives you complete channel management flexibility -- Do it from the office or from the comfort of your home over the internet!

Comprehensive scheduling capabilities

Audience offers all the powerful scheduling tools that you need to manage your channel efficiently. As an example of the scheduling flexibility of Audience, a given page could be scheduled to be aired between the months of July and August of 2002, on Mondays and Thursdays only, between 9:00PM and 12:00PM. Playout reports are available for billing purposes.

Drag-and- drop playlist

Audience allows easy drag-and-drop of pages into playlists. Sequencing and ordering of the various pages within each zone is achieved by moving pages up or down the playlist.

Contribute to channel content via the internet

The Audience.billboard software module for Audience allows any number of individuals to contribute to the page creation process, remotely, over an intranet or the internet. Various level of trust can be established with the users so content from some can be aired directly while content from others will be sent for review and approval prior to going live.

Remote channel administration via internet

The Audience.billboard software module also allows the channel manager to administer his channel remotely via the internet. With Scala, only the expensive Enterprise Edition of the network manager allows for remote maintenance but it does not allow remote content creation.

Channel distribution

	Audience	Scala Designer 3
Broadcast-ready analog or digital video output	Yes	No
Update channel content live while "on air"	Yes – Very simple!	Complex – Need two separate PCs, network, load of cables, and software
Web delivery	Yes –With Audience.web	Yes – Downloadable
Conclusion	Audience helps you deliver a pristine image quality, on television and on the web.

Broadcast-ready analog or digital video output

Audience delivers a true broadcast compliant video signal that is ready to be distributed or aired. You get a crisp, clean and sharp video output praised by broadcasters around the world. Genlock capabilities further simplify integration in a broadcast environment.

Because the Scala product relies exclusively on a scan converter to transcode the computer’s VGA signal into a "broadcast" video signal, quality is compromised.

Update channel content while live "on air"

Audience lets you continue creating and managing channel content even while it is live and "on air". With Scala you need to use two PCs running different software, connected via network (in addition to the scan converter). Their way is much more complex to setup, maintain and operate.

Web delivery

While Scala claims web publishing, what they really mean is that they can encode their entire playlist into a file that can be accessed over the web using a custom player, that must first be downloaded and installed on the viewer’s browser.

Only Audience, with the Audience.web module, provides a true web channel that is accessible to anyone, using a standard browser. Audience will automatically encode any video signal into a Windows Media streaming format so that even the incoming live video feed can be delivered and viewed without additional fuss.

Conclusion

We believe that the Audience platform gives you better value for your money. It will give your channel a radically more professional broadcast look. It offers more complete and powerful design tools. It provides seamless video integration. And, it is easier to maintain and operate. Buy Audience today and throw that scan converter away!

Important: The information provided by this document is believed to be accurate and reliable based on information available at the time of printing. However, no responsibility is assumed by Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd. for its use. Results may change depending on hardware modifications and software releases.

Printed in Canada 05-18-02

Audience vs. Scala