Hi all.
I am the alleged "talent" who is also the purchaser at this point.

I am sorry to say this, but I have a TriCaster Mini which I hate (because it is not really stable, and their technical support reminds me of a really bad army motor pool I once knew), but it offers me LiveMatte chromakey (which I need, because it plays well with my frizzy beard).

I love vMix, because it does everything I need, and seems rock stable (which my TriCaster isn't). And it is a whole lot less expensive. Only, I can't use vMix for chromakey work, because vMix's chroma does not play well with my frizzy beard.

If I could get LiveMatte on vMix, I would probably forget about TriCaster altogether. This would be important for me, because I am looking at purchasing one or two new systems soon. I would vastly prefer to go vMix (for stability), but I need the LiveMatte if I do chroma (and my editors are all pushing for chroma...).

Is it possible to get LiveMatte on vMix for less than it costs to buy a TriCaster? Or how can I get this capability within vMix? Because I love vMix's stability--I just really need LiveMatte.
Thanks.

There are many chroma plugins out there. I wonder if there's a way to pass a source into such a thing and return it to vMix via NDI?

Like VST for video?

FWIW, early in my career I spent a lot of time using Ultimatte and the SpectraKey built-into Ampex switchers. It irks me how bad most chroma keys are these days, when they should be fantastic. We could key glass, smoke, and transparent liquids in the 90s. It just took time to light and really dial-in the keyer, paying attention to the edge quality. Now people seem to be happy just to cut a hole.

MJGraves, thanks! When you say plugins, are you talking hardware or software? (I will need to do some research...)

Searching for Chromakey on B&H turns up a few different possibilities.

https://www.bhphotovideo...chromakeyer.html/reviews

https://www.bhphotovideo...1_ultimatte_11_blue.html

https://www.bhphotovideo...mkey12_ultimatte_12.html

There may be others. I need to check out SpectraKey and Ampex.

Obviously I would prefer to go with an affordable solution if the quality is good. But even if it costs more, what I really need is a rock-stable system for broadcast--and as far as I am concerned, TriCaster isn't it.

I know I would appreciate it. What all is involved with that?

I checked these hardware keyers. They are all HDMI / SDI. B&H did not know of any NDI hardware keyers. I have a couple of Canon HF-S10 cameras that send a real pretty HDMI signal out the side, I could probably use one of them with one of these keyers, and then convert the output either to USB, or back to NDI / Ethernet, and then bring it into the PC and vMix. That would be a lot less expensive than a TriCaster (and probably a lot more stable, also).

Upon reflection, you might consider the new ATEM Mini from Black Magic Design. For $400 it has a lot to offer, including a Chroma Keyer. Since BMD owns Ultimatte, they know a thing or two about chroma keying.

You would using this upstream of your vMix host. You can load a still background image and key yourself over that, or another of its inputs. The completed composite would be passed to vMix.

Connecting via USB-C, it would appear to your vMix host as a webcam.

Definitely worth a try. Probably the most cost effective way to have an outboard keyer.

I would not expect much or well qualified comment from that crowd. The ATEM Mini is very new, but YouTube reviews are starting to show up. Some go beyond unboxing. I saw one that went into the use of the keyer in some detail.

I would think that, if it should prove unsatisfactory, you could resell it for only a small loss. That's what I would do.

BTW - the actual price seem to be $299. The higher price was only shown as Amazon before they were shipping.

B and H Photo video in NYC still has it listed as a pre-order item. Not yet shipping. At $299 it's cheaper than even just the interfaces necessary to connect up an SDI device.

For $299, I'd be inclined to try the ATEM Mini for myself. It's dirt cheap for what it does. Cheaper than ever the hardware necessary to interface to an external SDI device.

While I don't doubt what Mr Seidman* says, my expectation/experience is perhaps very different from his. Much about what can be achieved is determined by your approach. Many people are very simplistic in how they use a chroma keyer.

I doubt the Datavideo device does any better. They're not known for such things.

Perhaps in a month or two I might be able to purchase one myself. I'd like to do a comparison between it and the vMix internal keyer.

*I find that guy annoying. There's just something about his tone. I'm twice his age, spend literally decades working on real productions, which makes me want to see for myself.

May be it is, but it's $1800 for the device, plus adapters to get in/out of your vmix system.

I think that the ATEM Mini could be as good, for $299. But it's a multi-function device that's brand new. Noone has yet made a video that shows in detail how the chroma keyer works. I'd want to get hands-on and see for myself.

For $299, I will likely buy one, play with it for a few months, the resell it if it doesn't fill a gap in my toolset. Even if I lose $100 in the process, I consider that a good investment.

To be clear, I worked with several generations of Ultimatte devices, which are the very best hardware keyers ever created. We keyed fluids, ice, glass, smoke...all in the process of making commercials.

All of this brings to mind a little story from early in my career. In about 1988 I was the post-production supervisor for the in-house ad agency owned by Canada's largest supermarket. We always chroma keyed the company President over extreme closeups of products. We used Ultimatte in everything.

Our post-prod was initially handled at a place (long defunct) called VTR Productions, one of the largest facilities in the country.

They won a bid to do the post prod on The Henson Hour, essentially the last gasp of The Muppet Show. It was a big, multi-camera shoot on a massive green screen stage. I was invited to watch one time.

All the cameras were Sony Betacam SP camcorders. After the shoot, every BetaSP reel was carefully processed through the one available Ultimatte device to make a matched matte reel on 1" tape.

In editing, every Beta SP deck had an accompanying Ampex VPR-3 1" deck for the matte reel. Each VPR-3 had a Zeus TBC that allowed the tape operators to exactly match the H/V position of the camera foreground reel.

The editing had to happen on the weekend because it used up so much of the facilities technical resources. They cascaded two large Ampex Century switchers to get enough key layers. Effectively using one large edit suite as the upstream feed into a second large edit suite.

The editor would sync roll up to a dozen VTRs (6x fill, 6x mattes) to create a complex scene, with a couple of different perspectives. It was tremendously impressive to see in action. Took some serious skill on the part of everyone involved. It gave me motivation to go into online editing myself.

This is the environment where I learned to do green screens.

Now, one person would do it all in Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve.

MJGraves, I appreciate all of your advice very much. Just to follow up, the ATEM Mini came in last week, and my administrator took it home for the weekend, to play with it.

We set the ATEM Mini and the Datavideo DVK-300HD up side by side for a test today, and the Datavideo clearly won. (We did not take any screen shots, but the Datavideo key was clearly much better.)

That said, I am very happy to have the Mini. I think it may work if I have a tall-backed chair, and the push-button functionality is definitely great.

The Datavideo definitely has some glitchy setup software. We called tech support, and they didn't have an answer. Actually, they said to return it (we're not planning to, because once you have it set up, you can close the setup software, and just use the device).

One thing I did not understand was that the Sapphire (Acer Predator Helios 500) recognized the ATEM Mini via USB3, but the Ruby does not recognize it. I am not even sure how to begin solutioning that. Any ideas?