AE 6.5 vs CS3

[Darby Edelen]

[Michael Black FCP] “I’m using keylight (version1.0v4) in After Effects 6.5 to key out a bunch of greenscreen material in some Animation quicktimes. When I view the Quicktime source in After Effects, the edges are looking a little jagged, a problem which carries over to the exported quicktimes. The question is, I guess, is this a problem that is inherent in AE6.5 that can only be solved by an upgrade to CS3? “

When you say ‘animation quicktimes’ do you mean Quicktime files using the Animation codec? Is this footage that was created on a computer or captured? If you are capturing footage then you may be having problems with chroma compression. Most capture codecs use chroma compression of some kind. For example, DV and HDV compress your chroma channels to 1/4 of the resolution of your luma channel, which can make chroma keying (what keylight does) difficult. Most keying plug-ins have some operation that will smooth your chroma channels before generating the key.

Read more about this here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling

This may not be the problem you are facing, but it is definitely one that many keys face. It is an issue regardless of what version of AE or software package you are using.

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Michael Black fcp]

Thanks for the response. I am using Animation-codec quicktimes that were generated from a 720p DVCProHD source. Apparently, the client was able to bring the quicktime file into CS3 and use keylight on it without any problems. So, either I’m suddenly terrible at keying or there’s some strange problem inherent in 6.5 vs CS3. Thoughts?

[Darby Edelen]

I’m not sure what has changed in Keylight from 6.5 to CS3. I remember using Keylight in 6.5 and not having issues, but I suppose I may have been more willing to accept any issues I was having then.

It sounds like it may just be an issue of tweaking the keylight properties. There are so many properties to alter, it’s hard to know what to suggest without knowing what you’ve already done.

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Michael Black fcp]

I’ll continue to tweak. I just thought I’d try and see if there were any known issues. Thanks.

[Seth Hancock]

Michael,

There is an update to Keylight too. It can be found on The Foundry’s site. http://www.thefoundry.co.uk. It probably won’t help with your issue re: footage, however, it is always nice to have the most recent version of a plug in.

Seth

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Thomas A. Edison