SuiteCG is excited to announce release 0.5.41 that includes a new feature: Clock Cameras. This new feature will allow users to point a camera (or two if needed) at the arena scoreboard and/or secondary clock display for the purpose of cropping the clocks and inserting them in to the scorebug and/or other graphics where the clock is desired.

Clock signals must be available as an NDI feed, which would require either a capture card or USB capture dongle and the free Newtek Connect program to convert the camera feed in to NDI. As opposed to performing a clock overlay inside of your production software, and then removing the overlay prior to displaying over graphics, these embedded clock feeds are a part of the graphics and will animate in and out along with the graphic of which they are a part. This new feature eliminates the need to track the clock manually, freeing up the operator for other tasks. While it lacks the more polished look of a pure digital text field, it has proven a more reliable method of clock insertion over OCR applications where cloudy skies and changing brightness and contrast can fool the OCR in to resolving digits incorrectly. While we are exploring external data solutions, like OCR and scoreboard data feeds, we believe live camera feeds are a fast, safe, and reliable method of providing your viewers with an accurate clock for your sports productions.

This new release is now available to download from the website or through the SuiteCG License Manager for anyone who has downloaded an earlier version of the program. Basketball, football (American), and football (soccer) graphics packages have been updated to support the clock camera feeds.

We have also added a Tutorial Video to the Knowledge Base explaining how to configure Clock Cameras.

A full list of SuiteCG updates can be found in the Changelog.

A special thanks to the University of Northwestern- St. Paul for their cooperation in recording scoreboard footage.