CG and DDR

[cybis]

Good day,

I am curious whether VT supports animated CG's. Is it safe to assume that the CG alone cannot include animated semi-transparent graphics? Is it possible to play a semi-transparent lowerthird and then use the CG on top of that? It is important that we can use sidebars/lower-thirds including animation, which seems to be very common on the larger news stations. Thanks!

Jeff

[SBowie]

Sure. You can't perform this using the CG alone, but there are several other ways.

[bbeanan]

I use Swish http://www.swishzone.com/ to do mine. It's real easy to get very cool effects... just export as a PNG seq. load it into a DDR and there you go, use it in the dsk.

Here is a sample I did...

http://www.n2itive.com/realaudio/SWiSHsample.wmv

[cybis]

Thanks for that sample, Brett.. I had never thought of transferring Flash files over. However, I'm still not sure whether I can do exactly what I'm looknig for. I'm really envisioning an MSNBC lower-third where they have the guy's name with a swirly motion graphic underneath. If we are using these as lower-thirds for a lot of speakers at a live show, we wouldn't be able to spend time creating standalone graphics in another program. In other words, I believe the motion effect needs to be independent from the text.

Your example shows how a clip can be semi-transparent when used as a DSK, but I guess the basic question is, is the CG a completely separate "dsk" that can be used in *addition* to the DDR/DSK? So, we have live video, an AVI or something, and the CG.

Thanks for your help!!

[bbeanan]

Yes the CG can be seperate with many DDRs open at once (one for the DSK and say 3 others for AVI playback ect.)

What I have done to create network style titles is to create the words in Flash, for the background I used Digital Juice Jucier to export a PNG seq. which I imported into Flash. The cool thing for titles is you create a text graphic for your name, title whatever, convert them to a graphic symbol (press F8). Create your animation and export... need another name no problem just change the text graphic symbol your animation is now updated with the new name.

I did an event which I created a title template for and it took me only like 3 min. per name to change and export... Once you get the work flow down it's very easy and quick just a bit longer then it takes you to re-type the name.

Granted I have not tried it but I think you can export out of Flash as a AVI file which is rumored to still have Alpha, throw that into a DSK DDR and there you go.

[bbeanan]

Oh FYI... the sample could have just as easily been a lower 3rd I just made it full frame to better show the effects.

If I have some time in the next day or two I will make a sample fully animated lower 3rd and time how long it takes me from start to DSK.

[bradl]

Jeff,

The answer to your specific question is no. You can't have two DSKs, one with a animated banner and one with a title. [edit- I was wrong... see post below]

You can arrange two keys at once, one DSK and one on the key bus but that ties up the entire switcher and you can't easily transistion in or out of that. We really need an ME bank which has been suggested many times and may be in the works for a future release. Two DSK's would also work and be very nice for Live shows.

You could try creating a VTEdit timeline with banner as overlay and CG as overlay, then open that in a DDR and place it in the DSK. Not sure how that would react to updates on the timeline. May have to del, reload the project in DDR each time. I've never done this but now I am curious so will try it Monday...

[bradl]

As alluded to by Steve and Brett, this is very easily created a variety of was and made ready for a DDR in the DSK. VTEdit would be the quickest and you can render out your banner in faster than real time now in VT3. You could even do it while your show is airing, but it might be a little risky.

One sweet feature is the DDR's ability to CUE so when you take it, it begins to play automatically. Not sure if that works with the DSK, but the other guys could answer that.

[SBowie]

Originally posted by bradl
The answer to your specific question is no. You can't have two DSKs, one with a animated banner and one with a title.

Snip...

You could try creating a VTEdit timeline with banner as overlay and CG as overlay, then open that in a DDR and place it in the DSK. Not sure how that would react to updates on the timeline. May have to del, reload the project in DDR each time. I've never done this but now I am curious so will try it Monday... It is correct that you cannot use the DSK to simultaneously overlay two different source DDR's (or any other two sources either). However, as you've speculated, you can achieve this end result in several ways, using either Aura or VT-Edit.

First, naturally you can quickly create the animated graphic easily in either of those. For example - drop a looping Digital Juice backdrop into VT-Edit, scale it down to a suitable size, turn it's alpha down a bit (to make it semi-transparent), use the new Positioner to smooth the edges. Now drop the title over it in VT-Edit, and turn on overlay for the clip.

Now you have three choices - you can save the rendered project as an RTV with alpha, or simply use VT-Edit as the DSK source, which allows you to update the title independantly of the backdrop at a moment when the DSK is offscreen ... or, my personal favorite: just save the VT-Edit project file, and drop it into a DDR, which can then be used in the normal fashion with the DSK. These loop nicely, as well :)

In connection with animated backdrops, it can also be useful to use Aura live, but it would take me more time than I have this morning to detail this, sorry. Basically, there are a variety of ways to use both frames and timeline layers in Aura as buffers for the DSK.

[bradl]

Just played around with this for the last hour. Don't have time to post it all right now, but you can have two clips in a DDR, both of them overlays, one keyed over the other in the DDR and then place the DDR in the DSK. Further, you can use the CUE function and both clips in the DDR will play as you bring the DSK on-line.

Very, Very COOL. Not sure if this is a new VT3 behavior or was available before. There are some tricks to making it work, I will add here later.

Brad

[SBowie]

Good one - actually I think I remember stumbling on this long ago in T[2], but had forgotten about it!

[bradl]

Instead of going through all the details again, I will paste my post from the Beta Site:
_________________________________________________
ME Bank Feature, sort of... Multiple DSKs
VT3 Betaforum - Posted: 08-03-2003 05:18 PM

From a VT2 forum thread I experimented and discovered something new, at least to me. It is not documented in the new VT3 DDR pdf manual.

I believe in VT2 if you put an overlay in a DDR and placed that in the DSK, you had to right click the clip and enable Overlay so it would key. Now overlays seem to automatically key in DSK even with overlay off. In fact you can't even determine the overlay status on the clip or still unless you bring it into VTEdit, as the context option is now gone. So far so good.

Now for the cool part.

Load a clip in a DDR, lets say an animated banner, overlay status off. It DSK's fine over PGM. Now drag in a clip (or still) that has Overlay status ON. It will key over the banner in the DDR (if it doesn't at first, drag it down below the banner in DDR) and both will key in the DSK. Two DSK's at once!

You can bring in more Overlays and stack theim up in the DDR. Priority is set by stacking order. You can tell they are keying and rolling all at once by looking closely at the Current Position Cursor. The cusor will show up on all the sources keyed at the same time, and the TC start time for each clip keyed will be the same (00:00:00:00).

If one of the clips does not have Overlay on it will still key, just will always be behind all others. This is a lot like an ME feature!

Use CUE and all the keys will roll at once as well!

Cool...

Brad

PS - In Preferences you may want to set DDR to 'High Resourse Usage' for multiple clips...
_________________________________________________

I played 4 animated clips, rolling on cue, keyed over input source with no problems...

[cybis]

Wow, Brad, that sounds pretty nice.... and hopefully the solution to my question. Now my only thought is, how much effort is required to add names for a lower-third with that animated background. In other words, can it be done with the CG? Or should another computer be networked to the Toaster and then save out a bunch of transparent PNG's? We have two challenges, first is a typical lower-third that can theoretically change on the fly, either by the switcher operator himself or a second person/computer.

The second challenge involves about 500 names as part of an awards ceremony. In the past, we've used PIP with Powerpoint. Powerpoint does a great job importing text files and creating hundreds of slides instantly (based on "header 1" and "header 2" styles). I almost think this will continue to be the way we create names for the awards ceremony because it really takes 100% of someone's concentration to ensure that the name being displayed is synchronized with the announcer and the actual person on-stage. But I thought I would throw this out there in case anyone has experience with something like this.

Thanks everyone!

[bradl]

If you need to create names on the fly as you are cutting your show, it would be best to have second person creating them on a second networked laptop computer and saving them to your file bin, so you could drag them in when needed. You could try using the CG module but unless you have the RS-8 it would be risky or impossible, I think. Once created, drag them to the timeline, hit Y (overlay on) then drop it below the animated banner in the DDR, double click stop, hit pause, then cue and it is ready to roll automatically when you bring in the DSK.

As far as your 500 names, I don't really know if Powerpoint could output L/3's with alpha (how have you keyed it in the past- luminance, VT internal or DSK external?). Photoshop would be a good choice, and you could automate some of the creation from text files using Actions and scripting, and got to love those one click layer styles. We use PS all the time and a 'save as' PNG will give you a file containing your current layer with alpha in place, i.e.- you don't need do the Cntl-Click, Save Selection, Channels, Alpha routine over and over, it is automatic, real time saver. Or use any titling package of your choice...

Brad

[cybis]

Brad,

I'm not sure if I mentioned it or not, but everything we're doing is using the Switcher for a live show, not VTEdit. Will your tips work during live switching?
As for Powerpoint, although I have heard of a component that allows one to key PPT, we simply run it on "B" and shrink down the live camera show "A" (picture-in-picture) so that we have a bar below and on the side. It's convenient but not quite as pretty. Photoshop actions might just work and is certainly worth looking into.

Jeff

[bradl]

Jeff,

I am just the opposite of you and use the VT in a post-production environment exculsively. So don't base any major decision on my advice alone. Steve has more experience in this area and knows people who do it everyday, like at major sporting events. Hopefully you can get in touch with one of them.

If you already own the VT go ahead and try the techniques then do a rehearsal and see if they will work for you during a live shoot. At the very least you should be able to line up a ton of CG pages for quick recall during live switching. This is done all the time, for instance, at church services where they key the words to the song over live video. There is a really good tutorial at Newtek on this exact technique. The tutorial uses a DDR stretched out tall with all pages (hundreds) loaded in and ready for instant keying.

Doing the dual keying technique I described would require a different approach as the dual key needs a few seconds of prep before on air. But unless the pace or pressure of your show is very high, it should be very do-able.

Good luck. Let us know how it turns out.