McCG
Features and Specifications

Message Channel Character Generator

• Resolution • 256 Levels Antialiased characters with an effective resolution of better than 1 nanosecond.
• Colors • 16,777,216 colors with 256 levels of transparency and 256 levels of background video. Color can be selected by adjusting RGB or HLS levels. For some interesting effects, try blending colors, background video, and transparency in color gradients.
• Color Spread • create a smooth color spread between any 2 colors in the Characters, Edges, Shadows, and Background Color Boxes.
• Advanced Color Gradient Builder • Color gradients can be applied to the Character, Edges, Shadows, and Background Color Boxes.
  • · Linear Color Gradients with up to 16 color points can be rotated up to 90° in either direction,
  • · Area Gradients with up to 5 points.
• Textures • Characters, edge, and shadows can be drawn with user definable textures (marble, wood grain, etc). As many as 16 different textures can be used on each page.
• Background Color Boxes • Up to 32 Background Color Boxes. Each Background Color Box can be set to either a solid color, semi-transparent color, background video, a Color Spread, a Color Gradient, or a Texture.
• Full Logo Colors • As many as 16 full color logos can be added to each page. These can be fine positioned,overlapped, etc. just like characters. Once a Logo is loaded, it can be sized within the Title Composer.
• Geometric Shapes • Rectangles, Circles, and Elipses can be placed on the page. The roundness can be adjusted from 0-100%. 0% roundness creates square corners, 100% roundness create circles and elipses. A roundness between 1% and 99% create a box that has rounded corners. The shapes can be edged, colored, sized, italicized, and rotated just like a character.
• 1000 Independent Layers • Text, Logos, and Shapes can be placed on multiple layers. Each layer is independent of the other layers. Changing something on one layer will not effect the other layers. Layers can be named, swapped, or even hidden.
• Backgrounds • Background Video, Full screen graphics (BMP, JPG, GIF, TIFF, TGA, and PCX). 32 User defined background color boxes.
• Spell Checker • Finds your spelling errors before your client does.
• 1000 Levels of undo • All done in such a way that it doesn't hog all of your system resources.
• Text Positioning
  • Freeform - characters, words, and rows can be moved around in single scanline/pixel increments.
  • Center - Horizontal and vertical.
  • Justify - Right, left, and both margins.
• Lower Third Mode
• User defined defaults
• Adjustable Safetitle margins
• Tabs • 16 Tabs per page, can be positioned in single pixel increments.

All Character, Edge, and Shadow attributes
are selectable character by character.

• Unlimited Text Styles
  Every character, of every page can have a different sytle.
• User defined Text Style Gallery
  One button access to your 64 most used text styles.
• Typefaces
  25 typefaces per page, each page can use up to 25 different typefaces. Can load Truetype typefaces directly. Typefaces can be loaded directly from a CD-Rom. Typefaces can be previewed before they are loaded.
• Character Height
  -600 to +600 scanlines in 1 scanline increments. A negative height makes the character appear inverted.
• Character Width
  10% - 500% of normal in 1% steps.
• Italics Angle
  -45° to + 45° in 1 degree steps.
• Rotation Angle
  -360° to 360° in 1 degree increments.
• Character and Edge Blur
  Variable from 2 (sharpest) to 12 (very fuzzy). Character and edge blur can be set independently of each other.
• Character, Edge, and Shadow Colors • Characters, Edges, and Shadows can be set to any of the 16,777,216 colors with 256 levels of transparency and 256 levels of background video. They can be either a solid color, or contain a smooth color gradient within the character, edge and shadow. They can also be drawn with user definable textures (marble, wood grain, etc.).
• 2 Independent Edges
  5 types (No Edge, Full Surround, Extruded, Hilited, and Offset). Extruded, Hilited, and Offset edges can be set to 8 different directions. Depth is adjustable from 0-99 scanlines in single scanline increments.
• Shadows
  3 independent shadows per character, can be positioned left-right, up-down, up to 99 pixels in single pixels increments. Each can be set to same shape as character or edge.
• Page Templates
  Page Templates can be created with the desired page style with "Template Fields" at various positions on the page. When a Page Template is opened, a window appears prompting the user to enter the text for each field. Once the text is entered, the page is automatically created using the style of the Template and the text that was entered.

• Uses Third Party Display Cards
  Drivers are available for the following Display Cards:
  • AJA Xena
  • Black Magic Design's Decklink
  • Standard VGA Cards (Single and Dual Head)
  • With More Being Added All The Time. (SDK available)
  
  
• Automatic On Air operations - Displays the Message Pages Automatically
  
  • The system automatically displays the pages specified by a Display List.
    
    
• Manual On Air operation - You control when the next page appears.
  • Random Access
    • Prior Planning not needed
    • Pages can be chosen from a catalog or anywhere on the disk
    • Gives total flexibilty for those "unscripted" events
    
    
  • Sequential Access
    • Display Sequence is determined ahead of time.
    • Reduces On Air operation to a One Button process.
    • Reduces the chance of On Air errors.
    • Still have random access to pages (even though using a Display List).
    
    
  • On Air Preview
    • Each page is Previewed before going to Air
    • Reduces the chance of On Air errors.
    • Gives you a confidence check so you don't air the wrong or inappropriate message
    
    
• Graphical Display List Editor
  Display Lists can include either of the following:
  • Message pages - Created by the Title Composer
  • Graphic Images - GIF, TIFF, TGA, BMP, JPG, and PCX
  Can be combined in any order.
  
  
• Media Catalogs - Divided into 2 Categories:
  • Message Pages
  • Graphic Images - Select which directories/folders to include
    
    

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