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cheap spill suppressor plug-in. Any suggeestions
Lately I have been doing a lot of chroma keying in After Effects but I can never get the edges quite right. I set my color key attributes and often use the matte choker, sometimes multiple matte chokers, and still I can’t get good looking edges; at least not edges that I am happy with. Can someone please offer up a good spill suppressor plug-in that wont break the bank? Thanks fellow bovines. -J
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5 Replies
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Oh yeah, I’m using After Effects 5.5 production bundle. -J
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You should shell out the cash and upgrade to 6.5. Keylight is a better keying tool. If you can swing it, Composite Wizard has a better matte choker than AE’s standard choker. Spill suppress only affects the color that has spilled into your keyed image, it will not really improve your edges.
Consider using garbage masks to seperate your image and use a different key and choke on the hair and other trouble areas. -
Since you don’t have Keylight, how are you performing your key in 5.5?
I prefered to use the Linear Color Key back in 5.5. Then, I’d match colors using Chroma from the drop down menu. I’d select the color to key out using the eyedropper, then click on the color swatch and choose a lighter color. That’s just what I always did and it works pretty darn well. Then use the Spill Suppressor and the Matte Choker. It was a lot of tweaking, maybe do a Levels adjustment on the resulting Alpha Channel to get rid of some of the crap.
Of course, it helps if you have well lit footage to start off with.
If you’re doing a lot if this, I agree about the upgrade to 6.5 with Keylight. It’s a very good keyer, and for simple stuff it’s only a couple of clicks and you’re good to go. complex keys still take some tweaking, but it’s still a magnitude better in my opinion.
Jon
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There’s not much to add to the advice that’s already been given… basically you won’t get a better result in 5.5 without spending money, either by investing in Composite Wizard or by upgrading to 6.5 Pro (ideally both).
Version 7 is getting closer to being released and once it is released version 5.5 will start to look quite old, so I strongly recommend you begin budgeting for the upgrade now in order to make a big leap forward.
-Chris Zwar
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You might consider dvMatte Pro from dvGarage. It works very well indeed, especially with dv. And it’s less expensive in the short term than an upgrade.
You didn’t mention if you are working in dv or another format. If you are working in dv, edges are always a challenge. One technique you might want to consider (and I can’t remember if all these effects are in 5.5 – if not, my apologies) is to first convert your clip to YUV using Channel Combiner (Effect>Channel>Channel Combiner. Then, apply Channel Blur (Effect>Blur>Channel Blur) and blur ONLY the Green and Blue channels slightly (3-5, definitely under 10!) now reapply Channel Combiner and convert your clip back to RGB. This has the effect of softening the color channels without affecting the luminance. Since compression artifacts in the color channels are what makes getting a good edge in dv the problem, this helps reduce that problem.
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