Atem 1 M/E Chroma Key Switching

Hi all, first timer so please be gently.

So, the set up.

1 Camera shooting green screen with a still in media player 1 as background. So far so good. Have the key set up and all seems fine.

Second source is an incoming video server via sdi play a clip.

My problem is I cant seem to be able to do two thing.

1) when I switch to view my video feed in the preview monitor it doesn't see to load. All I get is the media player 1 in preview all the time.

2) I cant seem to cleanly cut from the keyed source and background to the video source... I can swap the background, from media player to the video source, and then switch the key off but this is not clean.

Only unpacked Atem 1 today so please be gentle but help very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance...

Alan.

Check your next transition area. Make sure both background and the keyer your chroma key is on are selected.

[Darrell Sim]

Hi Alan,

Please do pardon me if you might not understand some of the technical jargons.

1. You should be selecting the chroma key on 'Key 1' and 'BKGD' as Media Player 1. Make sure you don't have 'PREV TRANS' hot. Then, you would have to punch 'BKGD' and 'Key 1' together to able to see your video feed in Preview. The reason why you are seeing only Media Player 1 is that you have 'Key 1' punched on without 'BKGD' and Media Player 1 is the source selected for 'Key 1'. Keyers on the ATEM are like layers which are able to be superimposed and where the canvas is the 'BKGD'. So in chronological order, the key priority on the ATEM 1 is:

DSK 2=>DSK1=>Key 4=>Key 3=>Key 2=>Key 1=>BKGD

2. I reckon that you might not have done any clipping of the chroma (CSO). 1 easy way which is taught here in Singapore is to use colour bars. The steps are as follows:
a. Select colour bars on PGM and PVW.
b. Punch your chroma key source say 'Key 1' and 'BKGD'.
c. Do a half wipe, press 'WIPE', select the option on the top left corner, use the T-bar to mix the image halfway. Find a intersecting point where you can see the colour bars and a little bit of the CSO.
d. Adjust your Hue, Gain, Y Suppress and only using Lift to clean up the image. Try to match the colour bars. So what it means if the intersecting point is Pink, try to match the CSO Pink to the colour bar Pink. Check for noise or overclipping. Noise would be you are able to see a little bit of colour bars for example on a chrome spectacle frame. Overclipping happens when you see something like a halo around the CSO image.
e. Once match, lose the half wipe, select your 'BKGD' source Media Player 1 and clean up the image slightly.
There's many different schools of thought when it comes to chroma keying, so do try to search around for other viable chroma keying techniques if mine is not suitable. Ultimately, it comes down to how well the chroma key lighting is done. If there's a lot of shadows on the background and uneven lighting, you would struggle just to do a good chroma keying on the switcher.