Overview¶

Fusion Designer provides a user interface for creating and managing bricks. In addition, it can be used to manage all the elements that make up bricks or are related to them. These include:

• brick types (e.g. moderation, VTR, opening, etc.)
• show types (e.g. news)
• directives (rules/contents of bricks)
• multimedia objects (e.g. clip, insert, camera, etc.)
• playback locations (studio devices to be used)
• visual entries/exits (transitions between stories, allowing validation of the brick order)
• templates and packages (single or multiple instructions combined into packages to control a studio automation).

Among the other functions of Fusion Designer is the so-called "re-bricking", which refers to exchanging the brick that is assigned to a story.

Terminology and concepts¶

Brick¶

A brick essentially represents a collection of rules (directives) that define which devices or elements of a studio automation are available in the NRCS as part of a story. For users, this makes it clear what must be defined in terms of studio automation in the story, what is forbidden or, for example, what the current working position should basically look like (represented in the Fusion user interfaces by a corresponding icon image). For studios and live scenes it mainly describes which camera and microphone will be used for the studio scene.

Bricks are created using Fusion Designer and are then assigned to a story using Fusion Editor. A brick can contain either a single or multiple templates to control the studio automation. In addition, a brick contains other information, such as assignment to a brick type and to a show type.

Brick type¶

In addition to the general categorization of bricks, brick types serve the following functions:

1. They provide general information about the design type of a story.
2. They allow filtering of brick definitions that might be relevant for a story.

Compared to the story types commonly used in an NRCS, the brick type is more precise and better categorizes the technical context of the story.

The following brick types are predefined by default in Fusion:

• External source - when using external sources
• VTR - for classic contributions (incl. voice-over)
• Break - everything that has to do with jingles, opening credits, closing credits, etc.
• Studio - complex studio situations such as guest, VB graphics, wall animations or tracking shots
• Moderation - for classic on and off moderation (with or without background)

The list of existing brick types can be modified and extended.

Show type¶

The show type defines the type of a show from the point of view of the show design or technical design. For bricking, the show type is the first criteria of filtering to categorize the different brick definitions.

Multimedia object¶

Users can use multimedia objects to select which types of media they need for each position or directive. A multimedia object can be assigned to a brick as part of a directive.

Fusion distinguishes between the following categories and types of multimedia objects:

Playback location¶

A playback location defines on which studio device a multimedia object should be played out. Playback locations can be freely defined for each brick. For each multimedia object in a story, a playback location must be specified in Fusion Editor.

Typical examples for playback locations could be:

• C1, C2, C3 - for using a camera
• Wall/VR - for playing clips on the video wall in the background
• Insert - for displaying overlay graphics
• Fullscreen - for playing clips in full screen

The exact playback locations are set per multimedia object type in Fusion Designer during the creation of the brick definitions.

Default playback locations for the media must be defined in the definition of a brick. These default playback locations will be used first by Fusion when a multimedia object is re-linked in the story in the NRCS. For example, it can be defined that linked clips appear by default on the wall or in the VB.

Inserting a DON'T (a combination of forbidden media and playback location) will result in the insertion of the default playback location of the brick for the media type. If no default playback location is defined for the media type, the playback location ignore is inserted.

Directive¶

Directives are rules that define which devices or elements of a studio automation are available within a brick and how the corresponding studio devices are to be controlled. They essentially consist of:

• priority - which elements can, must or must not be used
• multimedia object type
• playback location
• package - one or more templates to control the corresponding studio devices

Must/Can/Don't¶

The rules in a brick that are defined by a directive always apply to the combination of a selected multimedia object and a playback location. The following types can be distinguished:

• DON'T - which multimedia objects are not allowed at the selected playback location
• MUST - which multimedia objects must be used at the selected playback location
• CAN - which multimedia objects can optionally be used at the selected playback location

Bricks are intended to protect against application errors. For this reason it is possible to define elements in a brick that must be used (the "MUSTs") and which elements must not be used (the "DON'Ts"). Usually, however, only the MUSTs and the CANs are specified in the brick definitions. Everything that is defined as neither MUST nor CAN is basically forbidden by the system and is considered a DON'T.

An example definition for a "News moderation" brick might include the following directives:

• MUSTs: one graphic media wall
• CANs: inserts and clip to media wall and other graphic(s) to media wall
• DON'Ts: anything not defined as CAN, so especially graphics VB or clip VB

Placeholder¶

When a brick is added to a story, the bricking process puts all MUSTs as placeholders into the story (in Fusion Editor). MUSTs always consist of a combination of multimedia object type and playback location and have the following properties:

• They cannot be deleted. The system always recreates them automatically unless a combination of multimedia object and playback location has been entered that matches the MUST definition.
• They usually have their own multimedia object type and can therefore use different symbols and automation templates than the elements by which they are replaced. For example, a MUST in a "Moderation in front of media wall" brick may be defined as a placeholder for either a clip or a graphic on the wall. The placeholder is neither of type "clip" nor of type "graphic", so it has its own icon and can use automation templates that show a neutral on the wall.
• As soon as there is a combination of multimedia object and playback location in the story that matches the MUST, the MUST placeholder is no longer displayed by the bricking.
• Inserting a DON'T (combination of forbidden multimedia object and playback location) will result in inserting the default playback location of the brick for the multimedia object type. If no default playback location has been defined for the multimedia object, the playback location x_ignore is inserted.

The following restrictions apply to the use of placeholders:

1. Placeholders should be created in Fusion Designer as separate directives (separate multimedia objects).
2. Placeholders may only be used in a MUST group.
3. Each MUST group may have exactly one placeholder, which is marked as such via the corresponding flag in Fusion Designer.
4. A MUST group may only be created if it contains at least one directive.
5. The placeholder flag in Fusion Designer may only be applied to directives.
6. If the brick rule within a MUST group is fulfilled by a real multimedia object (clip or graphic), then the placeholder is ignored during the bricking process but returned to the NRCS with the playback location ignore.
7. If the brick rule within a MUST group is fulfilled by a directive, then the placeholder is ignored during bricking and is not returned to the NRCS.

Visual entry/exit¶

The transition checker is used to check the compatibility of the visual transitions between the stories in a show. This process can be triggered via the connected NRCS and returns the information for each transition as to whether the respective transition is compatible or not.

Transitions between stories can be defined per brick via the "visual entry" and "visual exit" options.

Re-bricking¶

"Re-bricking" refers to replacing the brick that is assigned to a story and can be done in the following ways:

• by manually changing the brick field in the story header
• by changing the story's brick type (in this case the default brick of the new brick type is used)
• by changing the show type of a playlist (in this case all stories of the show must be "re-bricked")

The re-bricking process includes:

• Inserting MUSTs
• Neutralizing DON'Ts
• Applying background information (visual entry and exit points) of the new brick

Template¶

A (Mosart) template contains instructions for the studio automation, which can be used to control studio devices such as cameras, video mixers or video servers.

Package¶

Several templates can be grouped together in a package. One or more packages can be assigned to each brick via directives.