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Advice on Color Keying?
I’ve been editing for almost 10 years but took my first crack at color compositing yesterday. It’s an actor doing an interview in front of a green screen. So far it’s been a nightmare. And I stupidly told the client it would be easy to do. He’s expecting a master on Monday.
I bought DV Matte Pro based on a reccomendation. I watched the tutorial and read the manual. I totally get it but I still can’t get acceptable results. The only way I can make it look semi decent is to use a ton of garbage mattes, which will take me longer than this weekend since the actor moves around contantly.
The footage came to me on Digibeta and I captured at 10-bit uncompressed – but it’s very pixilated. I suspect it was shot on a consumer DV camera, which I understand is a big no-no for keying because it’s 4:1:1. It’d be great if I could blame it on that, but since I’m new at doing this, I could be shooting myself in the foot. For all I know they do this all the time and whoever used to do it had no problems.
There’s a large online facility nearby that we use occasionally. They’re all Avid DS there and are probably experts on color keying. But it would take me all day Monday and probably cost more than we have budgeted.
Any advice?
Sean
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5 Replies
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Hi Sean
there’s a nice tutorial over on Kenstone’s FCP webpage regarding chroma keying in FCP, but i’m thinking you’ll not learn too much new if you’ve already studied the DV Matte tutorial, still, if it helps, here’s the link
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/chroma_key_fcp_hd_monahan.html
i do know that the big deal when shooting for chroma keying is getting the lighting right … of course that doesn’t help you now, eh?
i’m sorry i can’t be of more help
best of luck
Andy -
[Andy Mees] “i do know that the big deal when shooting for chroma keying is getting the lighting right … of course that doesn’t help you now, eh?”
That’s actually the most important thing, other than not shooting on DV. Most problems with green screen come from the field production not providing enough light on the green screen. it should be the brightest thing on the screen, but very often it’s just way too dark.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
Now editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Apart from what others said already
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Thanks everyone. As long as I can blame it on the shoot, I don’t look incompetent, so I’m fine.
Sean
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Use the 4:1:1 Color Filter ahead of the keyer. I’ve gotten surprisingly good green screen keys this way with the FCP chroma keyer and they have all been shot on DV with moving talent.
One thing I often do is tweak the luminance levels of the background video. This will effect the look of the key greatly.
Keying takes patience.
Often I’ll get a keyer setting that is close and then duplicate the keyer. Shut down one of the keyers and then continue to tweak the other. That way you have something to go back to if it gets balled up and you don’t have to start over from scratch.
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