Graphic Overlays allows you to manage station identification “bugs”, scrolling “tickers” across the screen, “snipes” for additional on-screen information, “clocks” for showing the current time on-air, and “program guides” for showing on-air program guides. The Graphic Overlays feature is standard on all HyperCaster AIO models, and is available as an optional add-on for TelVue ProVue decoders and HyperCaster SDI or HyperCaster Analog models.
A “Ticker” is a text crawl overlay that can be used to run a message across the television screen during a broadcast. A “Bug” is a graphic, usually the station logo, which can be placed anywhere on the screen, but is usually placed discreetly in one corner. A “Snipe” is an automated on-screen message that is most commonly used to promote a now playing or upcoming program on a TV channel, but can be used to display other forms of information as well. A “Clock” is graphic overlay that displays the current time. A “Program Guide” is a graphic overlay that displays a list of multiple upcoming programs with their start time.
To manage graphics, go to the “Overlays” section under the Config tab of the HyperCaster interface. From this tab you can:
- Turn an overlay on or off
- Duplicate, Edit or Delete an existing overlay
- Create a new overlay
- Schedule an overlay
- Click the Rules link to manage Overlay Rules
On the following pages are more detailed instructions for creating:
Simulcast Overlays
The edit pages for Graphic Overlays have tabs for different resolutions, if you are simulcasting in different resolutions / formats, such as HD and SD.
While saving an overlay, if you want your changes to apply to every resolution version, be sure to check on the Save For All Resolutions checkbox in the general properties section. This will automatically scale changes to the size and resolution of the different output displays. Otherwise saving will only update for the resolution on which you are actively work.
You can choose a default resolution tab by going to Config–> Overlays –> Config, and then choosing your preferred resolution. This feature is particularly useful for stations that are not using multicast.
If you want to customize for each channel, you can fill out each resolution tab manually. But manually specifying any value on a resolution tab will prevent that resolution from being automatically scaled and populated. So if you update one tab, those changes do not automatically carry over to the other versions. If you do update your graphics, you will have to manually re-start the overlay on each channel for the changes to take effect.
