Sent to you by Jorge via Google Reader:
via PrepShootPost by noreply@blogger.com (Eric Escobar) on 5/27/08
Latest gig has me on a small green screen stage in The Mission. It's called The Producer's Loft and its very cool, convenient and laid-back. Vic Ferrer runs it with a steady professional hand, while maintaining a very mellow vibe that fosters a creative, collaborative environment.
The gig is shooting a bunch of actors and props (big and small), against a green cyc to be comped into both still and motion background plates. Because of the complex nature of the motion comps, number of actors, and choreography of the props (some of them are being hurled across the stage), its necessary to see how everything lines up in real-time.
So this means we need some way to see how our pre-shot prop elements, still image background plates, and live action actors all work together in the same frame at the same time. The options are as follows:
1) Shoot and capture footage in FCP, do quick & dirty comps, render, playback, rinse repeat until we get it right. A Non-Real-Time-Suck.
-or-
2) invest in some kind of real-time compositing system.
Hardware-based real-time compositing systems that work with an Uncompressed 10-bit 1080 4:2:2 like the one coming from the Sony EX1, starts at around $US20K, units like the Ultimatte 11. They really shouldn't.
Today's inexpensive HD-SDI capture cards, combined with GPU accelerated graphics cards are more than enough to handle that kind of work. All we need is 'some nerd' to write an app that does the compositing math on an incoming video stream. And, thankfully, there is Alex Lindsay at DV Garage, and his band of some-nerds. They made a really amazing compositing app called ConduitLive, and it does exactly what I'm asking for -- take an incoming live HD video stream and let me do lots of comping with it and still images and QT movies.
The UI is nodal, and very elegant at that. Conduit is so much more than a simple real-time keying system. It has all the tools you need to build sophisticated compositing operations in real-time, on your footage, both live streams from the camera and recorded footage.
Conduit also has a great set of built-in scopes so you can light your green screen, tweak your comp and know if you're getting it right.
And of course the nodes that you build in ConduitLive can be saved and applied in After Effects and FCP when you're ready to finish.
$20K of specialized hardware, or $199 and it runs on your existing gear?
Thanks Alex.
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