TrkMATTES are becoming increasingly important because of all of the additional functionality added in the way of video input as well as non-DMX operation of Catalyst (opens up Catalyst to more video operators who would rather use Midi or the program itself to cue)Originally Posted by Spam Butterfly
Just to remind everyone, Trackmattes or travelmattes are two separate files, one commonly refered to as "the Key file" and the other "The fill", played concurrently to achieve transparancy where ever one wants it. The biggest application of this is in titling and lower thirds such as scorestrips and VTPB intros.
In the corporate world and award show world this is needed desparately in order for Catalyst to completely handle all tasks within the video production.
The Corporate world is very important because you constantly have "Powerpoint" type of presentation where the presenter is onscreen with a screen capture demonstrating the latest way to build trackmattes in After Effects and on a certain word or phrase you are cued to bring in a piece of video that arcs in from the top and settles towads the lower third that says "AE7 Pro Trackmates, a title for the masses".
The Awards show world can benefit during an award sequence in which you are presented with the situation where you have one live video input of the candidates as the announcer is anouncing the prospective winners and a trackmatte that elegantly fades in with that persons name.
It's very important that Trans White or Trans Black is extremely limited and just doesn't cut it in professional situations. I've seen Catalyst so brilliantly evolve from it's infancy to this really unique and incredible program that rivals the most expensive of arcaic ENIACesque video servers you see at NAB however it is missing this one extremely important feature that those arcaic video servers all have put a priority on as a feature.
BTW, in Xcode 2.2.1 QC has a p called "mask to alpha" that I've been playing with along with color matrix and over blend mode on a billboard. Not sure what Catalyst uses besides elegantly written cocoa or C++ code, but I've been able to get the result I was looking for after some noodling.
Just my 4c
Thanks,
Christian Choi
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