Creative Communities of the World Forums

The peer to peer support community for media production professionals.

Activity Forums Blackmagic Design Is there a manual on how to use live key??

  • Is there a manual on how to use live key??

    Posted by Mark Thompson on February 2, 2012 at 6:48 pm

    The new 9.1 desktop video manual has nothing about it. What little I’ve read on the forums hasn’t been helpful. Making a simple text line in photoshop and saving it in every format it offers, I usually get an error format not supported. So what format does LiveKey support?

    Cian O’carroll replied 14 years, 5 months ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Cian O’carroll

    February 13, 2012 at 12:07 pm

    I am in a similar position. I have installed the board onto the same machine as Photoshop (which i did not want to do – I’ll take it out when I’m finished) and installed the BMD software so I have the export option in Photoshop. Now, I can select the Export -> Blackmagic Image Export and the system does nothing. The first time I did it, it asked me the Video format, but now it doesn’t even do that. I would expect it to ask me for a file format and a location to save to but no.

    For the moment I’m off to find a photoshop tutorial on doing a save with Alpha channel, but I’m not sure of the layer format that I need to use. Trial and error I suppose …

  • Mark Thompson

    February 13, 2012 at 3:33 pm

    Blackmagic as a company needs to quit using the marketing dept write their manuals and get someone that can explain how to use all this neat equipment. All this cool stuff and I can’t figure out how to make it work.
    Quit telling me what it can do and tell me HOW to do it.

  • Cian O’carroll

    February 13, 2012 at 4:16 pm

    I had to restrain myself earlier, but your post sums it up nicely.

    I have made progress on the Photoshop front. I have CS3 (Photoshop 10) so I don’t know which other versions have it, but here is my quick beginners guide to putting in an on-screen graphic. (In my case I wanted a full page “Stream will commence shortly” holding page and a “Live” + Logo superimposed over the live video.) You do not need the black magic plugin installed for this to work.

    1. Create a new file with the correct video resolution (720×576/480). If you don’t have the correct res, it won’t import the graphic.
    2. Design the overlay that you want.
    3. Make sure that anything you want is visible and anything you do not is not using the “eye” on the layer toolbox.
    4. Select Window -> Actions. Open the Video Actions folder.
    5. Click on “Alpha Channel from Visible Layers”
    6. Press the “Play” button on the bottom of the actions window.
    7. Press Continue, OK, OK.

    If you select Channels you will see the alpha channel that you want.

    Then save as a Targa file making sure that “Alpha Channels” is selected.

    Select “Internal Key” on LiveKey and load up your graphic.

    Hope this helps someone.

    C.

We use anonymous cookies to give you the best experience we can.
Our Privacy policy | GDPR Policy