Tutorial: Greenscreen and Virtual Sets with the NewTek TriCaster Mini
Here's a look at the greenscreen and virtual set capabilities of the NewTek TriCaster Mini, which make it look like you spent a fortune on your production, while costing a fraction of what you'd spend if you built out a studio, bought multiple cameras, and hired operators to use them.
Pulling the Key
To demonstrate how we get me from the office to the virtual set, we’ll reset the video (Figure 7, below) and start from scratch.
Figure 7. Resetting the video for CAMERA 1 in the Live Matte dialog box for CAMERA 1.
Looking at the greenscreen input in Figure 8 (below), you can see it needs some work.
Figure 8. The video reset with the greenscreen behind me.
Let’s adjust the incoming video first. I’m going to darken it a bit in the Input Settings dialog box for CAMERA 1 (Figure 9, below).
Figure 9. Adjusting Brightness in the Input Settings dialog box.
Now let’s apply the key. I click the eyedropper in the LiveMatte dialog box (Figure 10, below), and touch the greenscreen in the Preview window.
Figure 10. Selecting the Matte eyedropper for the key.
We still need to trim off the edges, as you can see in Figure 11 (below).
Figure 11. Edges need trimming to clean up the key.
I’ll do that in Edges field in the Positioning dialog box for M/E 1 (Figure 12, below). I’ll trim the left side, then the right, then the top, which is a bit obscured by my teleprompter.
Figure 12. Trimming edges in the Positioning dialog.
Positioning the Video in the Virtual Set
The key is looking pretty solid now, as you can see in Figure 13 (below), so we’ll adjust positioning next, using the Position, Rotation, and Scale controls (as needed) in the Positioning dialog box (Figure 12).
Figure 13. The key is clean, but needs repositioning with respect to the virtual desk.
The Position controls adjust horizontal and vertical position, the Rotation controls adjust rotation, and the Scale controls let me resize the image. If you want some help with positioning, you can use the guides available in the Media Browser (Figure 14, below).
Figure 14. Positioning guides provided by NewTek in the Media Browser. Click the image to see it at full size.
Once the image is repositioned and resized to our liking, we can reload the set (Figure 15, below) and make some final adjustments within the set itself, again using the Position controls in the Positioning dialog box.
Figure 15. Reloading the set. Click the image to see it at full size.