Chameleon Branding Key Concepts

Owned by Carrie Warner (Unlicensed)
Last updated: May 29, 2017 by Alain Savoie
3 min read

 

 

ConceptDescription
Resource Schedule

Resources that have been added to the database using Gears are available to be scheduled.

Resource Tags

A scene can have objects (textboxes and materials) which are dynamic and either get set based on the program schedule, other sources (clock for example) or explicitly from flow when scheduling a resource. There is a strict naming convention which tells Chameleon Branding how to substitute.

Resources

When a scene is properly named with a Chameleon Branding prefix it becomes a Chameleon Branding resource.

Chameleon Branding resources are recognized by Gears and are added to Flow for resource scheduling.

A scene without a Chameleon Branding prefix is just an XPression scene and is ignored by Gears and Chameleon Branding.

An XPression project contains one or more scenes.

Resources include bugs, bumpers, next boards, snipes and switcher scenes.

Resource Scenes

A scene is any named layout within an XPression project.

A properly named scene using a defined Chameleon Branding prefix becomes a resource scene.

Note: Your XPression projects can contain as many scenes as required for design purposes, but only scenes that use official Chameleon Branding Scene Prefixes and names will be read in Gears and added to Chameleon Branding Content for scheduling and broadcast.

Scenes

Scenes refer to the scenes that get defined in XPression and become resources in Chameleon Branding when using Chameleon Branding's naming convention.

XPression Project

XPression projects are used by Chameleon Branding to contain all the scenes which are made available as resources for a channel. Each channel has one channel project which matches the channel name. Additional scenes can be housed in shared projects. Shared projects allow scenes to be made available to multiple channels.

Shared ProjectShared projects are XPression projects which can be shared by multiple channels.They are stored in the shared project directory. When making scenes available to Chameleon Branding using Gears, shared projects must be selected for the channel.|
Project Server

Chameleon Branding optionally uses Ross’ Project Server software to synchronize projects between the Creation Stations, and Channel Systems.

Whenever changes are made to the XPression project on the Creation Station, the changes need to be published to the Project Server from XPression Studio. Once published to Project Server and run through Gears, the channels are flagged for deployment of new graphics in the Player and Switcher.

Channel System

Channel Systems are the production XPression systems which output graphics to air. These systems can be any XPression flavour which supports the XPression api. Chameleon Branding supports single and multiple channel systems. Chameleon Branding has support for preview channels which makes dual channel systems attractive.

Chameleon Branding Player

The Brando Player is the main software application that runs on the Channel System. The Player reads the Chameleon Branding database for schedule information.

Through the use of Triggers and Timecode, the Chameleon Branding Player determines when and what to output.

Creation Stations

A Creation Station is an XPression Studio system (online or offline) used by the graphics team to prepare graphics for Chameleon Branding, and to populate the Chameleon Branding resources to the content database through the use of the Chameleon Branding Gears application.

Switcher

The Switcher is an application that can be run on any PC. It is used to check and set the state of one or more Channel Systems. Resources such as next, bumpers and snipes can be triggered and previewed from the switcher. The switcher can also be used to show special switcher scenes for trouble slides, amber alerts and any other message.

Chameleon Branding Server

The Chameleon Branding server is a web and database server. It hosts all scheduling and resource data as well as functions as a platform for Flow for Chameleon Branding.

Chameleon Branding uses a MySQL database running on Windows Server. This server acts both as database & web server using the built-in server component, IIS 7.

Flow for Chameleon Branding

Flow for Chameleon Branding is a web-based interface used to schedule resources and administer the Chameleon Branding system. It is the content management interface of Chameleon Branding, and it can be accessed using any web browser on any system within the same network as the Chameleon Branding solution.

Each user is assigned user sign in credentials, including a User Name and Password, and that user is part of a security group granting them specific privileges in the system based on their job function or role.

Flow is a Microsoft ASP.Net solution using AJAX-enabled controls and requires cookies to be enabled in the user’s browser.

DManDMan is a Windows Service which performs several database specific tasks for Chameleon Branding including replication of the database to a backup and deleting old database data.