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Overlaying Worship Lyrics with VT[5] LiveMatte.

A tutorial by Bill Mills

Many churches using a VT[5] for IMAG (Image MAGnification,) service recording or streaming* often use dedicated worship software such as EasyWorship, Sunday Plus, SongShow Plus or even Power Point to display song lyrics and scripture quotations. Using the VT's iVGA feature, the output of a worship presentation program can be made available as a feed on the VT switcher without requiring physical video input. IVGA client software simply encodes the worship presentation display as digital information and sends it to the VT through a local area network – either hardwired or WiFi.

After setting up an iVGA feed, the lyrics can be taken full-screen by selecting the iVGA feed on VT[5] switcher's Main bus, revealed with a compression DVE like the CMS Sqeezebox DVEs (shameless plug) or overlaid on camera views from other inputs. It is the last of these options that this tutorial will discuss.

As the iVGA feed does not have a way of bringing transparency information it cannot be simply overlaid with the VT's Downstream Keyer (DSK.) Instead, it will need to be keyed with the transparent areas defined by the background color provided by the worship software. To start, we need to make sure that all the pages of song lyrics have exactly the same color background, and that background color must not be used in any of the text, or its outlines.

VT[5] doesn't have the same Keyer interface as VT[4], where we would have set this up in the Keyer module or Keyer tab in the switcher, with the iVGA feed on Aux and Preview, and our camera selection on Main. Instead we will be using LiveMatte, part of the new keying system developed for NewTek's Live sets.

Instead of just one keyer, LiveMatte and LiveSet provide an individual effects controller for each of the switcher's 24 inputs. This means that the iVGA feed on the switcher gets its own private keyer, (which is distinctly different from one's own private Idaho.)

LiveMatte controls are available under the LiveMatte tab on the 8 or 16 input switcher interface. If using the 24 input or slim switcher skins, the Input Setup module will need to be used to access the same controls.

The LiveMatte tab on the switcher module always controls effects for the source selected on the preview bus. The Input Setup module, however has a little more flexibility. If the Follow Preview box is checked, it will also control effects for the source on the preview bus, or that box may be un-checked and another source may be selected by right clicking on the Input box in the upper right of the module's window.

For the purposes of this tutorial, we'll keep this simple, and just work in the 8 input switcher and the LiveMatte tab, and a couple of DDRs standing in for our camera input. We'll start by setting up the iVGA feed (if you don't know how to do that, take a side-trip to this tutorial.) and selecting the iVGA feed on the preview bus, where we can see our Lyrics generated in Easy Worship on a Preview bus Video Monitor Module. We'll also put one of our camera views (represented here by DDR1) on the Effects Bus.

What we see in the preview monitor is our lyrics from the worship software. First things first, we need to tell LiveMatte what color we want to replace with our video image. We can use a color picker, but it is much easier and faster to simply drag the eyedropper from the LiveMatte tab right over the green background showing up on the Preview Monitor. We let go of the eyedropper, and the color is set.

Now we just need to turn on the LiveMatte, by checking the Live Matte box – Viola! Unless someone's been monkeying with the Tolerance, and Smoothness controls, we should now see our lyrics keyed over camera 1 on the Preview Monitor. Some adjustment to Tolerance, Smoothness and Edges might be necessary, if so these are explained in the VT[5] manual, though they easily figured out, by simply adjusting each and watching the results. Spill suppression can be turned off, as it isn't needed for an electronic source (it compensates for light bouncing off a greenscreen onto a person.)

In our example here, EasyWorship is running on a computer with a wide-screen display, so iVGA fills in the extra space above and below with black, when formatting the image for VT[5] which is configured for 4:3 (switching to 16:9 is accomplished in the configuration menu.)

Normally we'd work with all sources in the same aspect ratio, but here it's a good excuse to learn about another LiveMatte feature – cropping. Turning on cropping, and adjusting the top and bottom crop dials, we can eliminate those black letterbox bars from the key, and see the full video image underneath.

Now that we are set up, we can use our overlaid lyrics to switch. It's important to note that we could have done all this set up while switching live, since we've only been working with the Preview and Effects buses.

All we need to do now is fade or switch iVGA onto the Main Bus, and we've got our lyrics live. To switch camera views while keeping the lyrics on screen, we do our switching by punching sources on the Effects bus.

When we are done with the lyrics, all we need to do is switch back to one of the cameras, or another source on the Main Bus and they are gone. If, later during the service we want to use iVGA to bring in a presentation slide full-screen, say for pastor's notes during a sermon, it's important to remember to switch LiveMatte off for iVGA, or we could end up with a funny key, if the presentation slide has the same color in it as the lyrics background.

We do face some switching limitations with this arrangement that are similar to those faced with VT[4]'s keyer in the good old days. When we are keying lyrics with LiveMatte, we can only switch camera views, we can't fade or DVE between them, because we are switching them as Effects sources, rather than on the Main Bus.

If we want to spice things up a little, we can use a wipe DVE, like Smoke from CMS Wipes Volume 1 (yes, that's another shameless plug there) to make our lyrics overlay appear or disappear. All we need to do is make sure that the camera we fade or wipe to or from is the same one that is selected on the Effects bus.

That's it. Now go key some lyrics!

* Note: Many churches utilize the services of Christian Copyright Licensing International, to obtain the rights to reproduce and display the lyrics to popular worship songs. CCLI's license program also includes limited recording and distribution rights, but does not provide rights to broadcast or distribute over the Internet, these must be obtained separately from the copyright holder. For more specific information about the CCLI licensing program, visit CCLI.com.