Fill and Key

Reality is not only restricted to work with opaque video channels, but has the ability to also send or receive fill and key as separate channels with its engine. Fill and key are 2 separate channels of video in which signals are passed as live Fill source (color) that contains transparency (alpha channel) and live Key source that is the same graphics as Fill source but with just 2 tones (black and white), where black is transparent and white displays the fill source used as mask. It is a kind of a reverse keying output when you need to combine fill and key inputs together.

In a broadcast production environment, overlay graphics is one of the most essential requirements which demands fill and key channels for overlaying/superimpose graphics on top of other video program. Reality can manage this easily with its supported video I/O cards. Reality provides hardware synchronized Fill and Key signals from AJA card’s physical ports which allow possibilities to send Fill and Key video channels over independent SDI ports from Reality Engine, or accept Fill and Key channels from other CG systems to use as DSK over Reality's virtual studio composition.

Let us understand how to achieve fill and key with Reality. We have explained the connections of hardware and also settings which needs to be done in software is explained below in this article.

As a general rule, both sources should have the same video format for proper mixing, i.e., they should have the same frame rate and the same resolution.

Fill and Key Supported Hardware

Hardware	Support
Corvid 44 BNC	Yes
Corvid 88	Yes
Corvid 44-12G BNC	No
Kona5	No

As a general rule, both sources should have the same video format for proper mixing, i.e. they should have the same frame rate and the same resolution.