Big price reduction for Crystal Vision's flagship chroma keyer

Crystal Vision has significantly reduced the price of its Safire 3 chroma keyer, making it now the lowest cost of the industry's best real-time chroma keyers and with the price drop bringing benefits to both large and small broadcasters.

With its advantages including Crystal Vision's responsive technical support and five year warranty, the Safire 3 modular chroma keyer is ideal for real-time applications from weather to immersive virtual studios, with a simple intuitive workflow for setting up a key, support for resolutions from SD to 1080p and features such as lighting compensation, color correction and video delay to help solve common real world issues. Enhancements over the last year include new color spill processing, as well as improved live operation following changes made to the VisionPanel control panel.

Explained Crystal Vision's Managing Director, Philip Scofield: "Safire 3’s high quality chroma keying will add realism to any virtual set. Not only does Safire 3 provide the best quality keying for some of the most prestigious broadcasters in the world, the new pricing means that it can now be used as a significant upgrade to systems that rely on the lower quality chroma keyers provided with some switchers."

Safire 3 is used by many major broadcasters and the price reduction allows larger broadcasters to buy more chroma keyers. The new price makes it easier for them to justify a chroma keyer on each camera which gives the most flexible system when using a virtual set that works from different camera angles, improving the workflow and reducing the stress levels of the operators during live applications. There are a number of advantages to having a chroma keyer on more than one camera. Firstly, it allows the operator to preview the chroma keyed shots before taking them to air. When using a single chroma keyer, the composite picture only exists when it is on air and the operator has to select the green screen as the next shot; with an extra chroma keyer it is possible to check what the composite looks like before selecting it. Secondly, it is easier to keep a chroma keyer set up for a single camera – for example, lighting can vary between the different angles – and reduces the need to recall presets to cope with different chroma key settings for different cameras. Finally, broadcasters prefer the multiviewer showing the studio switcher inputs to show composites rather than the green screens.

The new Safire 3 pricing allows smaller broadcasters – who previously had to rely on the lower quality chroma keyers in their studio switchers – to have better quality keying. Safire 3 will always produce better and more reliable results for live virtual productions than studio switchers – especially when the conditions are not perfect. Studio switchers struggle to chroma key if the foreground is similar to the key color, the production includes shadows or the lighting is not perfect. Safire 3 overcomes these challenges with its excellent foreground suppression of the key color, key shrink to remove unwanted outlines, shadow enhancement and powerful lighting compensation for uneven illumination of the backdrop – where it boosts the key to get a uniform key signal across the image.

The price reduction came into operation on 1st February 2018 and has already resulted in an increased number of enquiries.

Based at Whittlesford near Cambridge in the UK and with an office in the USA, Crystal Vision provides a full range of interface and keyers and helps people transition through a range of technologies – from SD to HD and from HD to IP.

www.crystalvision.tv