Television character generator
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Television character generators are graphics computers that are specialized in particular ways for use in television production. Computer programs like Photoshop and Illustrator can create computer graphics with fonts, however character generators have hardware to provide a key signal, or an alpha channel, which is essential for integrating the graphics into the other equipment used in television production. (The key signal indicates which part of the graphic is to be transparent, otherwise it would fill the whole TV screen, covering up the video signal underneath.) Also, character generators are typically set up so that the operator can quickly change font color and size, and to be able to quickly call up stored graphics. This is accomplished by hotkeys, rather than using a mouse.
There are various television character generators, the industry standard at the moment is the Chyron Infinit, Max, or Maxine, or other Chyron machines. These machines run on 68000-based hardware. Chyron also manufactures Duet and Aprisa, that run on Windows NT machines.
Another system is the Inscriber, which runs on Windows machines.
Dayang and Panda are character generators used for Chinese language applications.
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