After researching different options on what to do with ULTRA, and discussing with lots of existing users, the decision was made to incorporate the keyer into Premiere Pro, rather than continue offering it in a separate application. The workflow with ULTRA in CS3 could be painful at times – export trimmed clips, import into ULTRA, Import backgrounds into ULTRA, render new files, import new files into Premiere. Plus, ULTRA could only read standard QuickTime and AVI clips. And, it was a Windows-only application, with the majority of the code being written using DirectX API calls. It wasn’t going to be a simple task to make it cross-platform.

As for the pre-made virtual sets that were part of ULTRA – well, those have gone away for the time being. They were all made at a resolution slightly higher than SD res, and as more and more users are in the HD world, they were looking a little long in the tooth. We did try to do some conversions for HD, but the file sizes spiraled quickly out of control. The existing SD library of sets was approaching 24GB, taking up multiple DVDs for installation. In the HD conversion tests, individual HD sets were reaching 10-16 GB in size, and the format for the tracking scenes was starting to require RAIDs for smooth playback. Again, we asked existing users if they were willing to deal with virtual sets at that size, and they overwhelmingly said no.

I would love to revisit the virtual sets at some point in the future. For now, if you are an owner of the virtual sets, it is possible to open up the Elements folder within each of the camera angles, and pull out the raw files used. For the static shots, it’s fairly easy to layer them on the Premiere Pro timeline, and recreate the sets. Plus, you can customize the graphics using Photoshop.

As for the “tubby” comment….I’m hurt.

WTF you tubby bastard ?

bring it back !

Richard