Chroma Key Live Guide

Supported Cameras

See the camera compatibility page for supported cameras and video input devices

Connecting Your Camera

Connect your camera to your computer and open Chroma Key Live. Open the “Video Input Settings” window and choose your camera from the device list.

Note that the list shows all the devices your system supports, even if they are not attached! For example, everyone with Final Cut will see DVCPROHD devices, even if they don’t own a compatible camera.

Choose a capture resolution that matches the format of your camera. The video window will change to match the resolution you select. If the window is larger than your monitor, choose the “half” or “quarter” window-size options on the main screen to shrink it down to size.

Background File Preparation

Chroma Key Live will scale your background image to match the current video dimensions. It’s best to prepare your backgrounds to match these dimensions. Later in your post-production software you will be able to load your backgrounds and achieve a familiar spatial match between your actors and your backgrounds, with no arbitrary scaling.

Like most editing software, the Chroma Key Live transport uses the J,K and L keys for backwards, pause, and forwards. You can also hit the spacebar anytime to play your video clip from the beginning. This is useful for cues where the actor needs to hit a mark on the background movie.

Preferences

All settings are saved automatically to an xml preferences file whenever you close Chroma Key Live. If you want to get really nerdy, you can edit the xml with any text editor (but Chroma Key Live doesn’t monitor changes in the xml while it’s running).

GPL License

Chroma Key Live is Copyright 2008 – 2011 by Zach Poff. It is Free Software, released under a GPL 3.0 license. You are free to copy it, modify it, and redistribute your changes provided that all derivative products remain GPL licensed. The source files are included in the download. (See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html for details about this license.)

There is a caveat: The software was developed in the (non-free) MAX5 visual programming environment ( http://www.cycling74.com ) which is required if you want to edit the source code. My application contains the MAX5 “Runtime” environment, which is not GPL, so my license pertains to my contributions only.

Change Log

Version 2011-11-08 (Nov 8, 2011)

Added: The live camera image can now be scaled and positioned. (Example 1: You compose your shot so an actor fills the frame. In Chroma Key Live you shrink the actor and position him to fit into a small doorway in your background elements. Your camera footage is full-frame so you can change your mind in post. Example 2: You are shooting with a Canon 5DmkII, feeding the HDMI signal into Chroma Key Live via a capture card. The 5D image doesn’t fill the entire frame but now you can scale it up using Chroma Key Live, to match 1080 background elements.)

Version 2010-12-03 (Dec 12, 2010)

Added: background movie can loop now

Version 2009-11-03 (Nov 11, 2009)

Changed to GPL 3.0 license
Fixed: In fullscreen mode, aspect ratio of video is preserved
Fixed: In fullscreen mode, menu bar is no longer displayed
Fixed: Video input menu redesigned and clarified
Added: GPU-accelerated, so frame-rate is much faster even at HD resolutions
Added: HD support
Added: background filename is now shown in main window
Removed: Title Safe / Action Safe Guides because it’s a pain to calculate them for each new resolution

Version 08-12-16 (Dec 16, 2008)

First Release