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Whats a good camera for Green Screening in Adobe?
I am looking to purchase a affordable camera to film myself on a green screen. I make short informative videos on products that our company sells. Currently i was using a Panasonic Mini-DV handheld video recorder. Quality is alright but greenscreening has proven difficult. Now i have a excellent greenscreen and i have a 3000 watt halogen lighting system with softboxes on them. So lighting is ok as well. But i am in the field of purchasing a camera and i am wondering what your recomendations would be? I am looking to spend anywhere from $1-$800. is there anything that falls in this range? also i use Adobe Premiere is this ok or would you recomend anything else? I was looking at the Panasonic HDC-SD9, Canon VIXIA HF-100, and Canon HG10. any recomendations would be appreciated!
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30 Replies
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In that price range it does not really matter what camera you choose, all will be bad to marginal, due to the encoding used. For decent results, but out of your budget, look at 4:2:2 or better cameras. It matters how you set up your lighting and what keyer you use. Ultra, Keylight or Primatte.
Harm Millaard
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well i was able to achieve somewhat decent results out of a extremely horrible camera already. What exactly is 4:2:2? and i use premieres chroma keyer to phase out the background. it doesnt look beautiful in any means. but its not bad for what i was using. whats the cheapest 4:2:2 out there?
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Everyone has a different opinion of what a good key means. I am for one very picky, but that doesn’t mean that an acceptable key can’t be pulled with a cheap camera.
The 4 most important steps will be even more important here.
Keep at least 15 feet between the screen and talent.
Use a well stretched foam screen (not a muslin).
Light evenly with fluorescents (kino, etc)
Don’t overlight it, if you own a scopes, keep the level below 50 IREs.
As for the camera, I am not too familiar with that price range, but I would highly recommend one that has a component out with NO MENUS so that you can record to a external computer instead of a compressed format.
Vince
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If you have a HDV camera, the signal is 4:2:0 from tape. What does this mean:
First, let’s consider 4:2:2, the most commonly encountered color difference component sampling scheme, and the one used in the first component digital recording format, D-1. The primary sample rate in Rec. 601 is 13.5 MHz, a number compatible with 525/59.94 and 625/50 systems. In 4:2:2 sampling, the Y or luminance component is sampled at the full 13.5 MHz rate, designated as a “4” in 4:2:2.
R-Y and B-Y, the two chrominance components, are each sampled at 6.75 MHz, half the 13.5 MHz rate, and each of these is designated as a “2”.
MPEG-2 and some other compression schemes use 4:2:0 subsampling.
The net result of 4:2:0 is the same number of luminance and color difference samples as in 4:1:1, but the siting of the samples is different. In 4:2:0, a single color-difference sample is taken for each two luminance samples, such that a given line contains luminance samples and CR samples only. The line below it contains luminance samples and CB samples only.
To use 4:2:2 colorspace requires HD-SDI out, because the signal is still uncompressed. That however requires a beefy computer, live recording and a large raid array to handle the data stream, as well as a HD-SDI ingest card, for instance from AJA or BlackMagic.
With your budget that is not a feasible solution, so you have to do with a 4:2:0 colorspace.
I would suggest not using PP for chroma keying. It sucks.
For fast, easy and good quality keys I would use Ultra.
For even better results use the not that easy Keylight in AE.From the stories I read Primatte is also an excellent keyer.
Given the fact that you will be using material that is suboptimal for keying, Vince’s suggestions become even more important, especially about not overlighting the background to avoid color spill. Keep in mind that if you use a single chip camera, green screen will usually give better results than blue screen, because of the Bayer filter.
Hope this helps somewhat.
Harm Millaard
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it does help. however i am not sure what PP is or Ultra or AE lol sorry. Now we are in the works of purchasing a computer that will hopefully be able to handle HD video. Now with the one camera it was a 3CCD so didnt have the bayer filter however i tested it and the shot quality was inferior to that of the Canon Vixia. Also when i imported the video i test shot onto my pc from SD card it was 1920 resolution and everytime i tried to play it on my PC it froze instantly. the files were also in a .mts format which i had a hard time opening. i used nero to convert them to 720 resolution and i was able to view them. augh i am so lost with these new cameras and i am just trying to do something my company wants… PC recomendations would be appreciated too. HD isnt neccessary a Good Quality SD would be acceptable camera as well
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If this is a business expense, buy a good camera, used if necessary.
I assume you are getting paid for this, and the amount in labor your company will spend with you trying to get something out of a consumer camera would easily buy several professional ones.
You could purchase a used XL1, DVX 100, or even HVX 200 for under $3000.00. Your job will be to explain that to the person buying it, unless that’s you, and in that case you are just making a smart investment. As for computer, at a minimum a dual core, or quad core for HD. 4 gigs of RAM recommended.
PP: Premiere Pro
Ultra: Adobe Ultra.
AE: Adobe After Effects
As Harm said, don’t plan on using Premiere alone for keying, it will not work well.
Vince
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thanks for the info 🙂 now as for lighting we have 3-1000w halogen lighting kit with softboxes on the 2 in the back for the green screen and a soft box on the center light. now i will try to throw that pitch to the big wigs on the wise investment. where could i acquire a used XL1 i am familiar with that camera actually. also what software should i be using for greenscreening then. and also feel free to check out the video i already made heres the link. this was made with a 100$ video camera lol. this is the kind of thigns we are making. product reviews and stuff. also why does my PC freeze everytime i open the HD video file. i have tried it on multiple PC’s but all of the will play the file but they dont show anything but lines…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GDg5NcNbic
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Matthew,
I am not sure what you expect as far as quality goes. To me, a great key means no spill, perfect egdes, and I want to see every bit of hair that was in the original footage. For that, you will need at least After Effect, and Keylight Ultimatte or Primatte.You are looking at a good amount of learning curve however.
To edit HD, you will need at least a RAID 0 system, several drives piped together to keep up with the data rate it requires. You also need a nice CPU, at least a dual core.
Vince
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In fact, the cameras you mention ARE 4:2:2. Both the Pano SD9 and Canon HF100 are, anyway. The problem is that both record in the AVCHD format, not yet supported by Premiere Pro. I use the HF100 (which I bought for $640) and greenscreen with the Primatte RT keyer in Motion and getting excellent results. This is Mac only, of course.
The more detailed color space of 4:2:2 and higher resolution (1920×1080 instead of 720×480) allows for a higher quality key, even if you eventually output at 720×480. And the Primatte keyer is a very simple and effective keyer. -
I was looking into getting a power mac with
2x 2.8ghz quad core proccesrors
4x 1gb ram
2x 256 HD ATI graphics
2x 1TB Sata hard driveswill this be enough for using the HF100 for i really like the quality on it. also how would i obtain the “Primatte RT keyer in Motion” any good sources you guys know i can purchase it from? after you key it do you export the video and use premier? or final cut pro?
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