Ultimatte AdvantEdge (PhotoShop,AfterEffects,Premiere)
Adobe PhotoShop, After Effects, and Premiere
Apple Shake
Avid Symphony, Media Composer, Xpress, and Xpress DV
Discreet Combustion
Eyeon Software Digital Fusion
In an era of alpha channels and flawless digital edges, chroma-key effects are a holdover from our noisy analog past. But they remain a necessary visual effects technology, and as long as there are budgets, there will be corners to cut and the blue- and greenscreen plates that are a compositor\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s nightmare. This is good news for rotoscope artists, bad news for producers. But help is on the way for both. Ultimatte\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s AdvantEdge is the first really big overhaul of the premier keying software in a very long time — and the version the desktop community has been waiting for.
Until AdvantEdge, Ultimatte\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s years of R&D were embodied in an inordinately complex and arcane interface that gave sophisticated control to every aspect of a chroma-key plate. This was acceptable to video engineers of the early \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'90s, but not to the huge user base of After Effects artists who grew up with the computer and have their own ideas of what a GUI should look like. Meanwhile, some very good keyers have challenged Ultimatte\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s hegemony over the past five years. The main competition has come from Primatte, which gives world-class results with a half-dozen exceptionally simple tools and some unique algorithms. It was time for an Ultimatte facelift.
AdvantEdge presents Ultimatte\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s highly refined tools within a much-simplified interface. Ultimatte has largely succeeded in making this product easy to use without shortchanging the power users. The solution was to offer cascading levels of control, beginning with the simplest automated toolset and revealing an expanded suite of controls as needed.
AdvantEdge is compatible with Photoshop, Premiere, Combustion, Avid AVX, Final Cut Pro, Apple Shake, and Digital Fusion on the desktop. High-end systems include those from Discreet: Flame, Inferno, Fire, Smoke, and Flint. Linux, SGI, Mac (OS X and 9), and Windows are supported. For this review, I -*test*-('")ed AdvantEdge on my G4 Mac as a plug-in for After Effects 5.5.
The -*test*-('") project in AE was an HD 24p greenscreen shot with an unevenly lit screen. The foreground edges included a fur hat and a white ground plane that picked up quite a lot of spill. I selected Ultimatte from the plug-in menu and clicked on the AdvantEdge name in the filter palette. When my screen went completely gray for a few seconds, it looked as though the G4 had crashed. But then the AdvantEdge interface appeared and took over the entire screen. Since AdvantEdge has very good previewing modes and a timeline with VCR-type controls, temporarily losing the After Effects interface is tolerable. However, with HD footage, not having access to RAM preview is a bit annoying.
Footage appears in the middle of the screen, and the controls are underneath in a dashboard-style layout. Drop-down menus and pop-ups all appear in this area. The main elements of the interface, beginning on the left, are a layout option for single- or split-screen presentation of the footage, zoom and hand tools, input and output settings, and interlace display options. Skipping the middle section for a moment, on the far right of the dashboard we see Foreground, Overlay, Matte, and Comp chips that show the footage. Running along the bottom of the dashboard is a status and info bar telling what tool or palette you have selected, RGB values of the pixels selected by the pointer, etc.
The core tools for pulling a matte are in the middle of the dashboard. These are the eyedropper tool and erasure tool for selecting and deselecting areas of the image to which image processing will be applied. But these tools change as you step through the keying process. A pop-up menu lets you select the footage mode: Screen, Matte, Spill, and Color.
The basic process of pulling a key is as follows: Select a range of pixels in the background. AdvantEdge takes a few seconds to process the footage, and the result should be that most of your key color is gone (transparent). Areas that are not keyed can be scrubbed (eyedropper selected), and after a few passes only your foreground image should remain.
Next, go to Set Matte Density Controls and hit the Matte image chip to view the alpha of your footage. Now you remove the areas of the subject that have inadvertently been removed or made slightly transparent. Unwanted gray pixels (that are not intentionally transparent areas) are scrubbed with the selection tool.
Unless the footage is a disaster, you now have fairly consistent areas of total black and total white. At this point you get to the real business of keying — tuning the edges. Select either Matte Density, Clean Up, Spill Suppression, or Shadows as part of the foreground/background and edge-tweaking process. AdvantEdge has a MORE button that reveals additional slider controls for the various selection and edge-tweaking tools. For most footage you will not need these power tools.
It required about 10 minutes of experimentation to get rid of noise around the edge and to soften the hair of the subject so that it would blend with the background. When I went too far at one point by choking the matte, I was able to use the history palette to step back in time to recover the most recent usable step. The split screen is useful to look at screen and matte modes, although an After Effects-style snapshot feature would also be useful for comparing edges. Still, I was able to achieve an overall key with well-blended edges in about 15 minutes. There are hotkeys for nine of the main functions, and I expect with practice the process will become even faster.
AdvantEdge is not merely an interface overhaul. Ultimatte has added several new features:
Video Chroma Correction. With the proliferation of DV and Digi Beta sources, AdvantEdge has algorithms to compensate for compression artifacts in 4:2:2, 4:2:0, and 4:1:1. With the DV function enabled, it auto-detected that the HD was compressed RGB. This feature, while not necessary for my HD footage, would be very handy when pulling a key from material shot in DV.
Separate Shadow Matte Tools and Output. AdvantEdge has one great, well, advantage over Primatte, and that\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s its Shadow Matte tools. The tools are used to select and exclude a certain range of pixels from those being rendered transparent. The Noise Reduction tool also can be used to remove unwanted shadows.
Roto-Screen Correction. This is a way to create a virtual clean plate. Ultimatte introduced Difference mattes, which present a way of determining what should and should not be keyed in a shot by comparing the background and the subject together to a clean plate without the subject. However, in real production clean plates are not always very clean. AdvantEdge uses interpolation and a little user selection effort to create a good, clean plate.
Color Conformance. These are fairly straightforward controls to match the black, white, and gamma settings of keyed elements to the backplate.
Load/Save Settings. This is useful for processing similar footage when bulk chroma-key work is done for one project. Since a properly tweaked shot may take an hour to complete, it makes sense to save your work. The AdvantEdge Settings file can be shared across platforms and software.
AdvantEdge pulls a reasonably difficult key easily, and the tool layout is comfortable and logical. The dashboard vs. floating tool palettes question is a matter of personal preference. With a dedicated task such as keying, having all your tools on a toolbar makes sense to me. It\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s very difficult to compare algorithms, but I\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'ve used the same HD -*test*-('") footage with several keying products — and AdvantEdge and Primatte are the clear winners. Each handles edges and noise within the alpha a bit differently, but I was able to achieve and control the results easily with both products. For footage with complex shadows or compression artifacts, AdvantEdge might be the better tool because Primatte does not have specific ways of dealing with these problems.
Compared to other keyers, AdvantEdge has a few additional choices and levels of control that might seem unfamiliar. For less seasoned compositors, these tools will probably remain unused. The reason? While the documentation on the supplied PDF provides a reasonable overview of the tools, there is little detailed information on how to use them. Certainly, an in-depth tutorial would be a help. This is particularly the case because the new simplified interface will encourage novice compositors to try the software.
This is excellent software that offers many extras. Now all that\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s needed are the definitive chroma-key tutorials to teach high-end skills. That way, AdvantEdge\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s target audience of up-and-coming desktop artists will know what they\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'ve been missing.
PLUG-INS for Windows NT/2000/XP Professional (includes plug-ins for all of the following host applications in the same package)
download:
http://rapidshare.de/files/5179575/Ultimat...sts.CR.exe.htmlor
http://rapidshare.de/files/9444702/UAE161.rar.htmlor
_http://www.ultimatte.com/uploads/downloads/AdvantedgeSetupPHO.exe
Serial number **Fix -*test*-('")ed on Photoshop Elements 3**
http://s18.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1PPVU3J...ZX3U62SYBJM2O0NDownload .zip extract WkWin32.dll to your C:/WINDOWS/System32/
Does require you to have QuickTime installed
