i will see if i can come up with a simple way to do this.
Developer
i will see if i can come up with a simple way to do this.
Expert
Travel Mattes would be cool. They're simple to do in After Effects.
Hugh
Expert
Remember that the matte and the subsequent layer move with eachother.
This is my most needed feature. Most broadcast logo work is packaged as with a travel matte so that the logo can be layered on any background.
You could do it as a luma matte instead of alpha if alpha is still troubling you.
Christian Choi
Expert
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
Expert
I don't know, but from what you are describing, it sounds just like you would just need alpha in your video and key that over your current video. From what I am used to working with as a travel matte, you have three files, not two. Two video files and one Matte, you set the matte to be a travel matte and tell which video file to replace which part of the matte. You can then move the matte around without affecting the video layers' scale rotation, etc.
Developer
travel mattes are cool.
as are things like chromakey - but keying anything - with compressed footage - just opens up a huge can of worms that end-users wont expect or understand.
i dont think many people understand the minimum requirements for getting a real and usable key off digital video....
i wish i could wave a magic wand that would not get people into trouble.
but keying is such a lot of trouble....if you dont start with very good quality footage - dv isnt anywhere near good enough...
to make keying work - like the professionals - you have to work with uncompressed footage. and you have to shoot on something that has proper colour sampling.
as an effect its possible to make something that is ok, but if endusers want it to look like the pro-s - they are going to be dissapointed.
Expert
Richard,
I hate to be the devils advocqate here, especially to you but:
http://www.globalstreams.com/ You're right, keying with DV sucks. I've done it both in DV and using a camera that shoots uncompressed video. I would take the tape and bring it into FCP, then AE or Shake and use Keylight to key out the greenscreen and bluescreens that I setup. I then layer this footage over other content so I could get the artists layered into the content and play it onscreen via one layer in Catalyst.
I would do things like use this cycore filter in AE called dots (I think) where I could take my artist keys and disintegrate them into this matrix of dots that would fly off the screen, all sorts of cool stuff.
Here are some tips to chromakey succesfully.
1. Light your blue or green screen 1 stop brighter than your foreground image.
2. If you can at all avoid it, don't use a dv cam, you need something that will record 4:2:2 uncompresed video. There are some fairly cheap to rent xd cameras out there.
3. If using keylight or primatte make sure you look at your key through all the different status veiws and understand what they are for. Most of the time when I'm keying out a b/g scrn subject, I'm looking only at black, grey, and white pixels, each color representing the amount of transparancy.
4. A slight feather can soften the key edge just enough
5. dilate erode is a great macro in shake that will eat away or expand your matte in subpixel resolutions. This can be very useful.
As richard pointed out, if you are just doing some wacky effect type stuff, a good DV camera will work fine. Just know and master Keylight and Primatte.
The globecaster Live and 6000 will key live. You could take the output and feed it into catalysts input. reflecmedia.com is a very cool concept for live key situations. I forsee this technology coming more into play in the future. They are even working on a keyable cloth that has matchmove markings embeded invisibly within the grey key material.
BTW: This should be in a different topic. Key and Fill titling technique has nothing to do with chromakey. Sorry if I confused anyone. I could see how it could sound like that's what I'm talking about.
Also, Catalyst with live Keying would be over the top awesome. Let's do it Richard!
Kindly,
Christian
Expert
Cristian,
Have you experimented with Xserve RAIDs at all? I have been able to get very good results with one. I can get quite a lot done with one serving 8 Catalyst servers doing SD. I'm sure if you were to use serve less catalysts off of one, and used the correct codecs this might be possible to do (of course there still lies the limitation of the color modes). An xserve RAID serving a catalyst built around a Quad G5 should have the horsepower to pull something like this off. I have not tried it just yet, but if you could get one layer to work using the animation codec, which supports Alpha channels, and one using either DVntsc (if they are giving you a Beta meant for broadcast anyways you wont be losing anthingin your colorspace) or perhaps PhotoJpeg you might be able to do this. I know these are more expensive pieces of gear, but it is still probably cheaper than Profile, while being a little more versatile.
What do you think Richard?
Jason
Expert
Hi Jason,
Sorry for the misunderstandin, I do mean 3 layers it's just that I often supply the first layer myself. In short, I build the content for the first layer and for shows such as the Superbowl or Rock and roll hall of fame induction ceremony the Avid editors usualy hand me two digibetas, 1 matte file and one fill file with the titling on it. After importing them from tape to QT, I need a way to play back these files in sync with eachother over my 1st layer so that I can have a title without an NTSC rectangle around it.
Usually the titling tapes go to an EVS system or Profile and dealt with on digibeta or HD, sometimes they are brought in digitaly.
Since I can't Sync 2 files on the same machine without them drifting, the point is mute.
Christian
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