Grass Valley iTX Desktop v.2.6 - Manual (Page 24)

About iTX
About iTX
iTX is a playout automation system for television. You use it to prepare television schedules and
to play out the media content required by those schedules in one or more playout channels.
From each playout channel, iTX delivers an audio-visual output to a transmission system for
broadcasting.
Depending on its design, your iTX system may deliver the channel output through a
conventional television transmission system or over the internet. It can display video content at
an aspect ratio of 16x9 or 4x3, and at either SD (standard-definition) or HD (high-definition)
resolution.
In delivering each channel output, iTX can play out video either from media files that it holds on
its own storage device (known as a Media Store) or from a live feed; the media files may be in
various storage formats. iTX can play files from some broadcast video servers, including some
files that are held in a special way – i.e. within "wrappers".
In a playout schedule, you can mix video, audio and other items (such as CGs, logos, animated
images, still images and live events). For live events, an SD channel requires the live event to be
at SD resolution; and an HD channel requires the live event to be at HD resolution.
iTX has video and audio mixing functionality for producing an output that includes image
overlays, video transitions, wipes, two-dimensional DVEs (digital video effects), audio
transitions and voiceovers.
Media acquisition features enable you to ingest media onto a storage device in the iTX system.
You may do this either by copying existing files over a network or from a local drive; or by
recording digital video sources. This media is then available for use in playout schedules.
If you have media files on an external storage device that iTX can access, you can register these
in the iTX system and then use them in schedules.
Grass Valley client-server technology
iTX is based on Grass Valley client-server network technology. Running in the background on a
group of server machines, a number of iTX system services interact to provide functionality to
any number of iTX Desktops.
An iTX Desktop is an application that runs on an operator workstation. It provides the user
interface through which you use the functionality of the services. Multiple iTX Desktops can
access the services at the same time.
March 2015 iTX Desktop: Operator Manual 4