User Manual

P a g e | 99
These powerful effects can include full color
overlays, backgrounds, matte layers for ‘keyhole’
effects, and shadows.
You can freely scale, position and rotate various
Switcher sources, add custom borders, overlays,
shadows, and so-on, over custom backgrounds or
even live or animated sources – all without special
skills or resorting to Virtual Set Editor.
In addition to hundreds of supplied borders, you
can easily create elaborate custom effects using
Photoshop
®
. You need merely define a Photoshop™ format file with
three (rasterized) layers. The uppermost layer contains foreground elements (such as a bezel). The next
layer is treated as a mask based on opacity and defines the part of the source image that will appear in the
result. The ‘bottom’ layer supplies a background to appear behind transparent parts of the source (as, for
example, when LiveMatte is applied to a source).
A template PSD file is supplied to assist you to do this. You will find the multi-layer Photoshop™ file in the
Borders folder at C:\ProgramData\NewTek\(TriCaster)\Effects\Borders.
Hint: Since the opacity of the mask layer can vary between fully opaque and fully transparent, you can easily
prepare soft-edged effects such as vignettes. Also, as foreground and background layers can optionally be
empty, a simple opaque shape in the mask layer can serve a variety of imaginative purposes.
TRANSPARENCY
Sources assigned to DSKs are often partially transparent. This might be because they are drawn from a Media
Player (DDR) file that includes an embedded alpha channel, or because LiveMatte or Crop options are enabled
for the source, or perhaps because a Network source includes an alpha channel, or even all of these factors
operating together.
In all of these cases, DSK layers automatically respect transparency when supplied by the source. The BKGD
layer and all visible content in lower-numbered DSKs will appear through or around sources with
transparency as appropriate.
Important Note: It’s best to use files with straight (a.k.a. “non-premultiplied”) alpha channels in VMC1’s Media
Players. Premultiplied files will generally not yield correct results when overlaid on other imagery.
FIGURE 109