TV station in a Mac

There has been very interesting development lately for broadcasters around Mac and Quartz Composer technology. VJ softwares such as VDMX has been doing incredible things in realtime for years without any special hardware but those hasn't been frame accurate or reliable enough for 24/7 broadcasters.

Now Austrian company called ToolsOnAir is building Composition Suite. Total broadcast playout solution based completely on Mac. I registered to their site and tried beta versions of softwares and I must say I'am impressed. I was able to play SD video with quite complex realtime Quartz Composer graphics (bug, lower third, ticker, clock) through AJA Kona LHe SDI output without any drop frames. I sure will be following their development with big interest.


ToolsOnAir Composition Player beta running in my edit. Video coming to AJA Kona LHe from digibeta (SDI), Composition Player overlaying Quartz Composer graphics in realtime and outputting to AJA Kona LHe SDI output (frame accurately). Impressive.