Anyone know what this is? Chromatic aberration maybe?

[Walter Soyka]

[Spencer Tweed] “I some sort of weird defect on some footage I am trying to key. It is an edge around contrasting colors that is being put in by the camera itself. It looks something like chromatic aberration, but I don’t think that it actually is.”

What kind of camera? I’d guess it’s a compression artifact on those high-contrast edges.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
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[Olin Padilla]

I have gotten this exact same effect shooting with an HPX-500 on P2. In my case, I assumed it was a combination of bad lighting and contrast compensation in the compression.

[Spencer Tweed]

Good call Dave it was an XDcam, though the DP told me she was shooting it 4-4-2.

I knew that the lighting would be key in this shot, so worked with both of the gaffers very closely. I’ll forward your message to ’em!

– Spencer

PS

I’d love to take them out for beers but it’ll have to be a few years – I’m 17.

[Spencer Tweed]

Allright, so we have established that it is a defect of the chroma sampling in the XDCam format – but what is the best way to correct this? What I am thinking is pre-comping my key and using it to create an edge mask from the alpha that I can then manually just bump up with some color correction. I know this will work, but perhaps there is a cleaner way?

– Spencer

[Spencer Tweed]

Hah! Yeah, I thought that was a little funny… She’s in Australia at the moment, I’ll have to ask what she was talking about when she gets back.

But still, is there any way of fixing this in post? I know I can obviously do some edge detection and color correction (which I have already done, and it works out well) but I was wondering if there were some better way of handling it.

– Spencer

[Spencer Tweed]

Never mind, I just saw your other post.

– Spencer

[Philippe Lessard]

You could just use a matte choker, and/or chroma blur and/or a deartifactor.

Look at this:

https://pilalitos.blogspot.com/2006/10/magic-bullet-deartifacting-vs-chroma.html

[Philippe Lessard]

Sorry i forgot to paste this link, it’s what you looking for.

https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/key-correct/

[Spencer Tweed]

Thanks Philippe, I had forgotten about this plug-in suite. Sadly spending any money is out of the question, it simply takes too long to get through finance lines right now and I’m not willing to consider that option.

For the future though I would love to get this suite, I have seen a few videos on what it can do. It is great stuff!

– Spencer