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All Green Screen Show KEYLIGHT/AE/PHYX KEYER
I’m doing a multi-cam all green screen series in FCP7. The client is requesting every rough cut have the key done in it. There is no clean plate and it’s poorly lit with reflective surfaces and objects in the set. I didn’t know how to take my sequence to AE until my editor told me about Autoduck, but even then I still have to render every shot and then she has to replace it on the timeline. Also, the cut is going to change and I don’t have handles unless I add them in AE, but she still has to replace then too and I just have to save my keying presets. We tried out Keylight since I’m fluent with it in AE, but it’s a different beast in FCP kinda. She ditched Keylight last minute and now were using PHYX Keyer, which has caused problems, and unfortunately she doesn’t know how to key very well when I should be the one doing it (management problem).
Can someone please give me some workflow advice here since were not finishing/keying on a LOCKED FINAL CUT? Plug-ins are great, but somewhat exhausting when there are changes to the spill/tint and I have to delete and reapply every single filter per clip. Plus, multiple mattes in FCP is kind of a nightmare instead of using AE.
Yes, I tried taking an XML to Premiere for finishing, but again the cut will change and I will have to re-key everything again. Also, she doesn’t know Premiere so dynamic linking is out of the question or I would hop on that workflow. This is one of those “a number of ways to do it” situation and I know it would have been a breeze in FCPX. Any help would be appreciated and thank you for your time!
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2 Replies
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First Impression:
First suggestion:
I don’t know why you decided to do this in FCP7, and I love 7, but I’d re-visit that choice as it seems to have put you into a “cant-get there-from-here” situation.
Second suggestion: while normally I would never do this, because of the crazy backwards-ness of your approval process, it seems to me what you need to do is just build each shot with handles in AE with the keys and plates applied, export them as self-contained, and call those your new sub-masters. Then you can edit them in an FCP workflow as if they were camera masters.
No tracking markers in the scenes? Bad backgrounds and lighting? Sounds like the producer/crew is not experienced, and expects the process to be more “magic”.
Suggestion 3: no matter what; since they are making you work slower and harder with these workflows, bill by the hour and bill the project in thirds, so you don’t have to wait until the end of this almighty slog to see your first dime from it.
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Hey Mark, thanks for replying to this slog of a process, yikes!
Suggestion 2: Yes, this was my initial approach, although each shot doesn’t have an individual name associated to it, so it will just batch export (after media managing) each multiclip with handles and the filename of that camera. There would be no way to tell what shot was which, because the filenames would all be the same :/
Ex: 03_CAMA_S001_T001_MS.mov (TC00:00:01:23) and 03_CAMA_S001_T001_MS.mov (TC00:00:03:12)
Suggestion 3: This is the best possible solution right now, however render times are pretty big, considering the takes roll for a while. Even if I do get them to shoot plates of the props next time and not together with the actors, I’ll still have to comp and render everything for each camera and so on. A better idea if it’s shot correctly then is to key the actors’ plates in FCP at that point and just comp in the backgrounds/set pieces as I’ve been doing. My only fear is that there will continue to be a good amount of spill and reflective set pieces, and I will still need to make separate mattes for those then still render the submasters out of AE.
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