TriCaster is a very flexible portable presentation system with many possibilities. While TriCaster offers a keyer for the video switcher, there is a second keyer available for the Projector output. This keyer is designed to overlay graphics coming in from external computers via the iVGA client. A popular use of this tool is to project PowerPoint® song lyrics over existing cameras.

For this tutorial, you need the following:

• connect an external computer to TriCaster via ethernet or crossover cable
  
• Any text page with a single color or black background on the external computer (or download and use this one.
  
• Connect TriCaster to a second monitor or projector via the DVI connection (see the quick-start manual for more information on connecting equipment to TriCaster).
  
• A live camera or clip loaded into VCR

Let’s get started by connecting the DVI plug on the back of TriCaster to either a second monitor or, preferably, a projector. This is an XGA output (1024x768). Now, power up or re-start TriCaster, so this additional output is detected.

• At the bottom of the Live Production tab, navigate to the VGA tab, where we have access to our projector output.
  
• To use the keyer, we must click on the Send to VGA Out button. This bypasses the integrated scan converter, sending the XGA signal instead through the scaler for highest quality image output.
  
• With iVGA running on the external computer and selected as the external VGA source, let’s remove the color background and replace it with another source.

The easiest way to select the exact color is to click on the Custom color in the projector’s keying controls

Right-click inside the color swatch, so the color-picker eyedrop icon appears

Continue holding down the right mouse button, and drag the eyedropper up to the VGA panel, so the background color is selected

Now, the text is overlaid on top of whatever source TriCaster displays on the Live row. With multiple sources, such as two cameras, or even the VCR and the Color Background, you can now use transitions while the keyed text remains clearly projected.

This flexibility integrated in TriCaster provides excellent presentation support for combining external graphics and live sources. Note that this projector output is independent of the video that can be recorded to the hard drive. If this needs to be saved as part of the video, then the same general steps would be used, except you would utilize the Keyer tab to chroma key across the video channels.