Softron OnTheAir CG 3 Software

Softron OnTheAir CG 3 Software

The Softron OnTheAir CG 3 Software is a Mac-based standalone character generator that can fully integrate with OnTheAir Video to overlay text and graphics. It is a client-server solution suite of three applications ”OnTheAir CG, OnTheAir Server, and OnTheAir Controller. Info is sent from client to server through Ethernet. OnTheAir CG also fully integrates with OnTheAir Live and OnTheAir Manager.

OnTheAir CG 3 overlays video with crawls, text in multiple fonts and sizes and languages, digital or analog clocks, shapes and images with transitions, and animated bugs and smiles. Shapes can be created within OnTheAir CG 3, and they can be made colored or transparent. Images can be imported and resized, and animations made in external programs can be imported and settings applied to them.

Animations

OnTheAir CG 3 supports bugs and smiles. Larger ones can be dropped as clips into OnTheAir Video playlists.

Bugs are processed as sequential TGAfiles.

Smiles use the same amount of memory as bugs, but are dynamically resized to fit the chosen ticker height. Smiles can be TGAbut could also be the smaller PNG.

Animation Settings

The animations in OnTheAir CG 3 can have one of four settings:

Push ”moves the animation up, down, left or right

Alpha-blend ”fades the animation in and out using the alpha channel

Expand ”expands the animation at the beginning and shrinks it at the end. This setting is not available for text

Text ”a typewriter-style setting that types out a text from side to side

Tickers

OnTheAir CG 3 tickers display text in crawls. Text can be entered manually or automatically through RSS feeds. Ticker height gets defined upon the selection of the font size used in the ticker.

With the use of OnTheAir Controller, text can be automatically fed into tickers from selected URLs at designated time intervals through RSS feeds.

The feeds get dropped into the tickers and also into the folders that the tickers are linked to. Once the text is displayed, the folders automatically get emptied.

Scripts

OnTheAir Controller has a feature with which scripts can be made in AppleScript and exported for use as actions triggered from within OnTheAir Video.

Hardware Requirements

OnTheAir CG 3 requires a MacPro equipped with a strong graphics card and a supported video card.

The Mac should have OS x 10.9.5 or higher and at least 8 GB of internal memory.

The graphics card should be at least as strong as the nVidea 7300 for SD and as the Radeon HD 2600 XT for HD.

Blackmagic Design has a number of compatible Decklink video cards. OnTheAir CG 3 uses the Livekey function so only those Decklink cards that have Livekey are compatible.

The three OnTheAir CG 3 applications can all run on the same workstation or on separate workstations. In integrating with OnTheAir Video, OnTheAir CG 3 can run in the same Mac with OnTheAir Video, or it can also run in another Mac and communicate to OnTheAir Video via TCP/IP.

Additional Features & Functions

OnTheAir CG 3 supports multiple-layered projects, internal and external keying, and PAL and NTSC, and SD and HD.

Its package includes a dongle as part of its authentication procedure and operation.

CG 3 saves projects as xml files with .cg extensions.