Jaleo system gets a test run

bill kinnon is president of Toronto post operation Scene By Scene.

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in the summer of ’94, at the ITS Forum in Washington, d.c., my partner, Imbi Medri, and I heard rumors of a new non-linear compositing system coming from Chyron. These rumors suggested it would be wise to experience Florida in the summer – the compositor was being shown at siggraph in Orlando.

siggraph is the hot graphics/ animation show and it was made even hotter by the tropical temperatures of Florida.

Alongside the huge booths of industry leaders Alias, SoftImage, Wavefront, Parallax and others was the smaller booth of Chyron’s Aurora subsidiary. This booth featured the rumored compositer – Jaleo (pronounced Ha-lay-O).

Developed in the Canary Islands by Comunicacion Integral Consultores, Jaleo was being shown in its Alpha version at siggraph, and it appeared to be a very capable non-linear compositing product. Designed as an open environment running on an SGI Indigo2, Jaleo featured the ability to edit and composite D1 video and sound elements from videotape, disk recorders, 2D and 3D graphics systems, and 2D and 3D animated images.

At siggraph, it appeared that Jaleo would be distributed by cmx, a Chyron company. In September, when the formal relationship between cic and Chyron was announced, Jaleo had become a Chyron product.

In November, Scene by Scene became one of four North American Beta test sites for Jaleo. We saw this type of non-linear, D1-quality, compositing environment as logically complementing our Serial Digital Suite 1. Jaleo is perfect for short-form D1 compositing work – commercials, on-air promos, openings, etc.

Video is imported into Jaleo from our Accom disk recorder. Graphics are also brought in through the Accom, or imported through/created in Aurora Liberty, running on the same sgi.

Jaleo features a number of powerful compositing tools, including unlimited dves with light source, shadows and page turns; keyers with additive, luminance and color (‘Ultimatte’ style chroma keying) parameters; and numerous image filters including blur, plasma, displacement mapping, noise and many others.

Jaleo also features Image Stabilization and Motion Tracking, two very cool tools.

Image Stabilization actually allows you to smooth out camera shake.

Motion Tracking allows you to attach an image (a key, picture in a dve, etc.) to a pixel and have that image track with the pixel it has been attached to as that pixel moves through the frame. This tool would allow you to do a pan of the Toronto skyline while attaching your logo to the CN Tower. The logo would appear to be on the tower. (Honest cn, we haven’t done this. Yet!)

With Jaleo being in Beta test release, we have not yet been actively promoting it to our clients. As with all software, the Beta version of Jaleo has had its fair share of bugs. However, we continue to be impressed with its power and, along with hundreds of hours of play time, we have used it on a number of projects.

The powerful keying capabilities of Jaleo were used on a recently finished music video. The lead singer had been shot over an Ultimatte background. A ‘monitor-wall’ background was created for the opening shot.

The trick was that the camera zoomed in on the singer. The background had to be zoomed with an Jaleo dve to match the camera move. Not only did the Jaleo create a transparent ‘chroma’ key, we were blown away by the performance of the Jaleo dve.

With most dves, 50% blowups will cause the picture to soften. This is not what happened in Jaleo. The monitor-wall background appeared to be just as crisp blown up as it was full frame.

Jaleo has been used, as well, to create the backgrounds for this year’s Bessie Awards. Graphics have been imported from both our Chyron Max and the Aurora Liberty to create backgrounds for the award-winning spots.

Jaleo is also being used to create the opening for part two of Water and the Human Spirit. This 40-second opening is more than 20 layers deep and includes stills, video and film footage from Betacam sp and Digital Betacam, graphics from the Chryon Max and Aurora Liberty, and the creative input of Scene by Scene Jaleo artist, George Levai.

nab featured the release version of Jaleo, Version 2. This promises to be a more heavily feature-laden, bug-free version of Jaleo and we anticipate promoting it heavily to our clients.

Jaleo is repped by Motion Media.