NewTek Virtual Set Editor - Manual (Page 39)

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INPUT LAYERS, PROXIES, AND OPACITY
In the assumption that Input A is most often used for greenscreen shots, imported Input A layers display the
‘phantom’ One Person proxy on the Canvas by default (and in the icon for the resulting LiveSet). You can
select a different proxy image for the layer from the Style menu if you wish.
As mentioned earlier, VSE infers a full screen input when an input layer is completely empty. Otherwise,
opaque pixels are replaced by input source pixels in one manner or another.
Note that support for 16 bit PSD files was added in version 2 to support distortion and warping, as
discussed previously. In these high dynamic range files, replacement of layer pixels by input pixels in the
final LiveSet is always governed by the UV color values for each pixel in the input layer.
Also as explained in the previous section, however, pixel colors in input layers of 8bit files are irrelevant.
Only pixel opacity is important to VSE in this case. (You can still achieve perspective effects with 8 bit PSDs
by using VSE’s Position and Scale tools.)
KEYING
If the Keyable switch is set in VSE for an input source, when the resulting LiveSet is displayed in TriCaster’s
Live Desktop, the background behind it in the LiveSet will be seen (Figure 47) when LiveMatte is correctly
configured and applied.
FIGURE 46 FIGURE 47
The video source will obscure the background when LiveMatte is disabled, just as you would expect.
Important Note :
If your design calls for two video inputs in your project to overlap, special care must be taken to avoid
distortion and other problems in the final LiveSet. Really it’s best to avoid the potential problem altogether,
whether by techniques like cropping and positioning of input layer content, or perhaps by adding elements like
monitor ‘bezels’, etc. to the set design to create adequate separation. In any case, you must ensure that two
‘same type’ input layers never overlap. (‘Same type’ input layers are defined as those tagged as a) ‘keyable’, or
b) not marked ‘keyable’.)
This may require more separation than you’d expect, since antialiasing often causes hard-to-detect blending of
what may seem to be merely ‘neighboring’ pixels. In general, if an input layer must overlap another, best
practice calls for marking the foremost one as keyable, and the input layer behind it as non-keyable.