At the 2023 IBC Show, Sept. 15-18 in Amsterdam, CueScript will showcase a range of tools to help broadcasters more easily produce content in the field.

The company will demo its newest product CueTALK Cloud, which is designed to allow CueScripts’ prompting software CueiT- and CueTALK-enabled devices, which feature the latest in IP connectivity, to communicate over WiFi. It allows controllers and prompt devices to be accessible via the cloud using standard public internet connection. It is also designed to align CueiT to be more user-friendly and easily set up between local and remote applications.

 CueTALK Cloud serves as a VPN replacement solution and brings an enhanced level of flexibility to users working on remote locations. By doing so, this allows for accurate teleprompting anywhere there is an Internet connection and is great for prompting on-the-go, the company said.

CueScript will also highlight SayiT, its first voice-activated solution for its CueiT prompting software. SayiT software application receives a talent microphone input and allows those using the CueiT teleprompting software to be able to have the script automatically scroll in accordance to what they are saying, matching what is displayed on the output of the teleprompter and eliminating the need to manually scroll the prompter script. SayiT can also be used as a main or back-up option for stations with no or few operators, or for stations looking to automate talent scrolling their own script. 

OnTime, a WiFi enabled clock device that can be easily configured to the local time zone, will also be highlighted at its booth. Designed for broadcast teams that require an accurate timing device on the road—especially for those that are traveling to multiple locations—OnTime provides NTP to clocks and is connected via WiFi.

“CueTALK Cloud, SayiT and OnTime are all designed to provide ease of operation for broadcasters across multiple production applications and workflows,” says Michael Accardi, President, CueScript. “By employing these solutions, broadcast teams can work smarter with more reliability, anywhere in the world. CueScript is dedicated to delivering state-of-the-art prompting for in-studio and remote broadcasting workflows.”

CueScript will be in Stand 11.D10. To register for IBC, visit show.ibc.org/registration

SEATTLE—The COVID-19 pandemic has forced TV stations to re-assess and re-invent many elements of the production chain as well as the tools they use to deliver the news and forcing news anchors to set a good example by socially distancing and working from home. Teleprompters were among those important elements that did not go untouched.

Demand for more systems increased as soon as the pandemic broke in mid-March, according to Chris O’Brien, president of Telescript International. “We got calls from some of the networks that were familiar with our equipment and they said ‘we need to get stuff so we can anchor from all over. Can you get us as many systems as possible?’“

‘CONTACT-FREE’

After the initial scramble, O’Brien and his staff immediately noticed problems with remote anchoring. “We saw the quality wasn’t that good,” he said. “So we asked ourselves, ‘how do we get this good for prompting? How do we get it good for production?”

But it wasn’t just the news stations that had issues. For corporate clients using prompters to communicate to their associates, the scripts may contain proprietary secrets, so a certain amount of security was needed, he added.

Using existing web technologies along with Telescript’s hardware and software, “we created this whole system we call ‘Contact Free Recording with Prompting,’” dubbed “CFR,” he said. Not only does CFR provide high quality prompting, it enables a high quality video and audio recording of the camera output so that later repackaging of the content can edit from the best quality source material.

The CFR kit is designed for non-technical users, O’Brien added. “All the talent has to do is connect to the internet. Once that happens, the prompter operator—or it could be a video technician, whoever it might be—can actually take full control and get that back to the station.” 

NETWORK PROMPTING

According to John Veenstra, president and chief engineer for Tekskil Industries, prompting solves only one part of the information puzzle inherent in remote anchoring. “The loneliest people on TV are the guys in front of the camera,” he said. “Everybody on a show knows what’s going on except them. So any help you can give them is huge.”

In 2019, the Vancouver, B.C.-based company introduced the network-based “Floor Manager” that includes a prompter for a PTZ camera, talent monitor, three different digital clocks, three levels of tally, and camera ID. Finally there’s “ad hoc messaging,” where text messages can be sent to the anchor.

Currently very little “true network prompting,” exists, Veenstra said. “Some vendors will tell you they’re doing network prompting, but what they’re doing is sending the video down the CAT cable,” he said. “They’re streaming the video down the CAT cable. That’s not network prompting. Network prompting is when you send the data down the cable, and then you compose the video on the prompter monitor itself.”

The kit was developed to “support the talent on the other end,” Veenstra said. “We’ve integrated the platform with the PTZ cameras as well. We’ve got a product called ‘the hub’ that sits on a server or a laptop, or a desktop, whatever you want. And the application can control all of that stuff, including the Floor Manager.”

NO VIDEO, JUST TEXT PLEASE

Vitec Production Solutions, parent company of long-time prompter providers Autoscript and Autocue, also received some panicked phone calls asking about remote prompting during the early days of the lockdown, according to Aaron Brady, technical sales manager.

“We had engineers who needed to get prompters in the field that day,” he said. “Often they would look to have a solution later that week, but we were able to deliver it that same day. That was a shock to many an engineer.”

Several years ago Autoscript updated its WinPlus-IP software to include an iPad interface license.

“That allows us to prompt directly to an iPad,” he said. “We’re not going to be streaming video, we’re just sending text to the iPad, and the iPad generates its own video,” he said. “The specific advantage there is that we don’t have to wait for all the bits to arrive and be assembled into an image.”

Three versions of iPad mounting configurations are provided by Autocue and include the camera plate and the iPad mounting hardware itself, Brady said.

“The most common deployment is one that allows you to read straight off the iPad, with the camera mounted just below the monitor,” he said. “The other two are through-the-glass configuration, with beam splitter glass, so the talent can be looking directly into the camera while they’re reading the iPad. We have them for both small camera deployments, and for full-sized ENG camera deployments. Most people are going in with small camera deployments or PTZ cameras.”

QUALITY, EVEN FROM A BASEMENT

Cuescript President Michael Accardi said he never thought he’d be selling teleprompters for use in anchors’ basements, but that’s been a big part of their business right now.

“With social separation, you still need a prompter,” he said. “The funny part is you’d think they’re going to put a cheap prompter in the house. Well, just because you’re in somebody’s house it doesn’t mean the anchor’s eyes are going to get any better. In some cases you can go smaller because the distances are shorter, but you still need a decent quality unit that has the brightness, the contrast and scrolling smoothness to it.”

In hindsight, Cuescript’s introduction of its CueTALK network prompting system at the 2019 IBC Show proved timely, providing seamless operation through standard CAT5/6 IT infrastructure.

“A lot of people didn’t know that they already had that capability with our equipment. CueTALK, which provides IP capability, was something we had already added to the standard product line,” Accardi said. “So that was really a winner for us.”

He added that, with the company’s CueMe tablet application, users can take an iPad and preview their scripts. “You can be anywhere you want and you’re getting the rundown from the studio, they’re constantly updating, letting the talent keep fresh and ready for what’s about to happen.”

PAN-TILT-ZOOM

JT Meidl, owner of Mirror Image Teleprompters, said his company saw a little uptick in small prompter sales for anchoring from home. “But to be honest, the bulk of people went cheap and didn’t put a mirror in front of it, just a camera clipped on top of a monitor. It hasn’t been a super big influence.” Overall prompter sales started off well in 2020, he said, until school budgets got slashed.

One of Mirror Image’s most popular sellers is the PT-160 OS, a camera prompter specifically designed for the new all-in-one robotic pan-tilt-zoom cameras manufactured by Sony, Panasonic and others. HD wide-angle glass beam splitter mirror allows for maximum camera movement. “People who try them really like them.” Meidl said.

Home, however, is not always where the news reports originate. One variant from anchoring from the house is a show anchored from a van parked on the street each morning. The talent hops out of his Washington, D.C. home and into the van complete with background, lighting, camera and audio, cellular modem for connectivity and of course a prompter.

If and when COVID-19 eventually gets tamed, there’s little thought that anchoring from home will disappear along with it. People are getting too used to it.

FLOWER MOUND, Texas—RUSHWORKS is unwrapping a new platform for broadcasters to add to their production kits, the RUSHPROMPTER teleprompting software.

RUSHPROMPTER is a Windows-based software that can either be downloaded as a stand-alone service from www.RUSHWORKS.tv or integrated with the company’s VNEWS TV news production hardware/software system.

Among the features offered by RUSHPROMPTER are RTF and TXT creation, export and import, find and replace, real-time font-size adjustment, variable line spacing and individual character control of bold, Italics, underline, colorize and highlighting.

RUSHWORKS also created a lightweight prompting stand that supports up to two 12-inch 16:9 monitors for displaying the promoter text, as well as any video switcher Program output.

RUSHPROMPTER is available for $99, but RUSHWORKS is offering a free trial period with download.

SEATTLE—Dating back to the 1960s, teleprompters have been must-have equipment for newscasts as well as politicians, even as the early models were Rube Goldberg-ish contraptions that scrolled typewritten scrolls just off the camera lens. Later, scripts rode a conveyor belt in front of chintzy black and white cameras, with the script displayed on CRT monitors that appeared in front of the camera lens through use of half-silvered mirrors. Computer-rendered text later replaced the scrolling paper scripts, and that’s where things have been for 40 or so years.

That’s not to say that nothing’s changed in prompting. There are a number of technology changes currently going on, with more just around the corner.

TIGHT SPACES

Michael Accardi, president of CueScript, said he’s seeing a number of news studios needing to work in tight spaces. That’s creating a lot of interest in his company’s PTZ prompter. “What we thought would be a small usage prompter has become outstanding for us.”

The trick to the PTZ prompter is getting the camera inside the hood, which allows proper positioning of the lens. “Being able to pan 90 degrees with a PTZ, being small enough to get it close to a wall in a newsroom, or for use in an office space; they get into places where people normally couldn’t get a prompter,” he said.

Accardi said studios are also considering IP-based prompters as part of an overall migration to an IP infrastructure. “We started doing IP from day-one, when we introduced our software in 2014,” he said. “Our approach has always been that you can go IP end to end, at all cost, if you so wish. But we don’t force it on you.”

CueScript’s prompter monitors, video boxes and controllers have IP network jacks on them, but the monitors and video boxes have SDI and composite inputs, and the controllers also provide USB and CAN bus (Controller Area Network) ports. “You get to pick and choose what you want,” Accardi said. “We don’t dictate to you.” But when the customer wants to go to IP, it’s there waiting to be implemented.

GETTING RID OF THE BOX

Robin Brown, prompting product manager for Autoscript and Autocue, said he’s also finding customer interest in IP prompting. In response the company launched their IP range in 2017, which gives customers the option to go between an IP and standard baseband video workflow.

“We understand that customers are still apprehensive or nervous about doing a complete switchover [to IP], so we provide a solution that has both different variances,” he said. “But the rate of uptake to an IP workflow does seem to be growing quite rapidly.”

Brown pointed to one of the big advantages to an IP prompting infrastructure: “The basic element is that it reduces the amount of hardware that you require,” he said. “Traditionally you would have a box that produces composite video or HDI video, which is connected to your PC via a USB cable or serial cable, or however it’s connected.”

IP can eliminate that box. “We’re not sending video over IP, decompressing video and then recompressing it,” Brown said. “We’re just sending data, and the rendering is done by the PC that is inside the monitor itself. It means that we’re sending tiny bits of data. Even if you have a relatively slow internet speed, you can send data. It also means that those on-camera prompter screens can be anywhere.”

BRIDGING STANDARDS

Mike Burdick, sales manager at Mirror Image in Oshkosh, Wis., said that as prompter users have been updating the PCs that drive their prompting systems, they’re finding those PCs don’t have analog VGA ports, but digital HDMI ports instead. It’s part of an overall studio infrastructure trend.

“As the majority of cameras and studios are being upgraded and updated, or built from scratch, they are going to more of the digital formats that are sweeping through the industry right now,” Burdick said. “At the larger studios, SDI is common with the cameras, so it’s easy to kind of loop everything together through camera and feed the teleprompter.”

As customers upgrade their prompting monitors, they aren’t always ready to move to digital, according to Burdick. “Everything from our lower entry-level equipment, up to the full-sized studio equipment that utilize a monitor from 12-inch to 19-inch size has both HDMI and SDI as well as the more traditional VGA and composite inputs,” he said. “We’ve just had a handful of our customers in the past month here that have upgraded just the monitor on their older teleprompters so they could retrofit into the new studio.” When they do upgrade their prompting PCs, it’s just a matter of changing out the cabling.

SMART[PHONE] PROMPTING

Josh Apter, founder and CEO of Padcaster in New York, said that while his company’s DSLR-compatible smartphone-based prompter is convenient for professional production use, his company originally discovered a large market for a sub-$100 Parrot Prompter in schools.

“There were so many schools doing student broadcasts, morning announcements and things, and they were using a piece of paper that had them looking off to the side, or looking down at something,” he said. “That obviously works, but when you give them something like our prompter that’s so easy to use, it changes the entire thing.”

Instead of something bulky and hard to configure, the Parrot Prompter is a bundled kit which easily screws onto the lens threading, allowing the user to attach a smartphone to the assembly.

The Parrot Teleprompter includes Bluetooth remote and comes with 12 different-sized mounting rings comprising the most common lens diameters, 37mm–82mm, as well as a cleaning kit.

In the works is a Parrot prompter that doesn’t require lens threads for mounting.

LAS VEGAS--At the 2018 NAB Show, CueScript announced that its teleprompting systems now offer a choice of connectivity, including IP, and wired and wireless scroll controls.

Users can now connect their desk, hand and foot controllers by USB locally to the computer, by Ethernet within the network infrastructure, or by CAN bus using standard coaxial cable, resulting in greater flexibility across the product range.

CueScript offers four IP-capable controls, including the CSSC desktop scroll control, and CSSCW wireless hand-held scroll control, which gives users freedom of movement while maintaining prompter control.

The CSFSC foot scroll control, which can be used standing or seated, gives users control over the speed that the text will roll. And, the CSFSCW wireless version of the CueScript CSFSC foot control can be used when presenting from multiple positions or where a cable-free floor space is preferred.

Both the wireless hand and foot scroll controls have a 915 MHz version for the USA and an 868 MHz version for ROW, with no channel crossover, interference, or limit to the number of units that can be used within a facility.

FAIRFIELD, CONN.—Lyndon State College recently upgraded its Vermont Center for Community Journalism broadcast facility to digital HD production. As part of the upgrade, Lyndon brought in CueScript’s EMC17 17-inch teleprompter monitors and CSTM19 19-inch prompter talent monitors.

The VCCJ is a student-operated production facility, where students can learn and train in different aspects of news production. The EMC17 and CSTM are designed for educational and corporate purposes.

In addition to the CueScript products, Lyndon also equipped the VCCJ with two new Ikegami HC-HD300 cameras, which the EMC and CSTM monitors are attached to.