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Artist doing Greenscreen and using After Effects and Final Cut
Ok, here’s the deal, and I’m sure I will get some help from you fine people so here it goes. First, I should state that I am by no means a video expert. I have very minimal knowledge of After Effects, Final Cut, and editing video in the first place, but I am slowly learning, and doing a pretty good job I think thus far. I should also state that I am an artist working with this as a medium in my current body of work (I am not a video artist either, but trained in painting/sculpture). What I am trying to do is some greenscreening so that I can edit myself into already existing films to take place of some of my favorite actors or to edit myself in so that I can have conversations with my favorite actors. I have built a greenscreen and have gotten some decent footage (although it is DV from a 1CCD camera…but once again, I’m not looking for this to be perfect…hopefully it will get better over time). I have read plenty of tutorials and gotten what I think is a decent key with After Effects (keylight and Aharon Rabinowitz and his Super Tight Junk Mattes ROCK). In any case…here come the questions.
1. When I do my keying, I am using the straight .dv footage that I pulled off the camera. Is this a good idea? (It really bogs down my computer – a new generation macbook)
2. Would it be best, possible, or even a good idea to do the key, export the footage with a blank background, and then import into final cut to do editing and add the background movie footage? Or would it just be easier to do it all in AE?
3. If I am converting the .dv footage to something else first, what kind of footage would work best to be splicing with ripped DVD footage (mainly widescreen footage)?
4. Generally, are there any suggestions or questions about the process that I am currently working through?
I thank everyone here for their great tutorials and awesome website with a rocking community. And a thanks in advance to anyone who helps me out with this.
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7 Replies
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I’m not one of the main cow gurus, but I have a good deal of experience with this kind of work in AE.
1. If you captured the footage in FCP it shouldn’t be .dv; it should be .mov in the DV/NTSC codec. Maybe that’s what you meant? I’m wondering about that, though, since you say it’s bogging down your computer. Staight up DV (as opposed to .dv) footage runs smooth as butter on seven year old G4’s with 7800 rpm drives. If you mean you’re not get smooth playback in AE, once you’ve done your keying, then you must be trying to watch real-time playback without the use of RAM preview. That’s not going to happen on any system, at least not at full speed.
2. AE is, among other things, a compositing app. FCP isn’t. You should stick to AE for the compositing.
3. .dv is a proprietary format for imovie only. Did you capture with imovie? If so, the footage needs to be converted to DV/NTSC.
4. You say that you’re happy with the way your keys are turning out. That’s surprising as DV is a notoriously poor format for keying. But it’s the best you have. You can’t add more color space by converting to another format.
That being said, I strongly recommend the use of Magic Bullet for AE, especially if you’re keying. It converts interlaced footage to progressive better than AE. And it has an antialiasing feature to smooth out the jagged edges inherent in DV footage.By the way, I’m sure you’re aware of all the potential copyright violations in a project of this nature.
Good Luck.
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I agree with Joey regarding the .dv/quicktime issues, as well as keeping your composite in AE rather than FCP. That should solve most of your issues.
Outside of those things, I would suggest that you continue to read up on the various tutorials out there if you want to improve your keys and the final result. Some information that doesn’t make sense or seem relevant when you are starting out suddenly seems so sensible and brilliant once you’ve stumbled through a few keys the hard way.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Thanks for the info so far, this is helping alot. I do have a few more questions due to the information that was presented however.
1) I must have captured with imovie although I did not realize it. Is there a better way that I should go about capturing my footage off of my camcorder? FCP, AE, something else? (What should I be using, when remember, my end result is to be combining with actual ripped dvd footage)
2) How do I disable real time vs. RAM Preview as I think this may be part of the problem as well?
3) You say I should stick to AE for compositing, should I stick to AE for editing as well? Or should I composite both of the footages together and then switch to FCP for editing? Or is that a waste of time/energy?
4) I am very aware of legal issues involving this, (shhh don’t tell, but as an artist, we really don’t care about this matter). But thanks for the looking out!
5) I’ll be sure to check out Magic Bullet and see what it does for me.
Lastly) What kind of camera/footage is best for keying. I have heard and read about issues with ALL DV footage (1CCD, 3CCD, and HDV)…but on the opposite spectrum, I have heard that HD footage in another format such as AVCHD is difficult to edit anyway due to propriety encoding and whatnot)? Not saying I’m going to go out and buy a new camera for this project, but it would be nice to know what others think about the matter.
Once again, thanks very much for all the help here. I really appreciate it and I hope that I’m giving enough information. Thanks again!
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1. Capture with FCP. DV/NTSC Easy Setup.
2. To RAM preview your footage, hit the 0 key on the numeric keypad.
3. Composite in AE, edit in FCP.
4. Good Luck
5. It rocks.
6. I recommend the Panasonic HVX200. It shoots DVCPro format which utilizes 4:2:2 color space – as opposed to DV’s 4:1:1 and HDV’s 4:2:0. That means better keys.
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I’m still having a bit of trouble with the image being really choppy in AE. I recaptured using FCP this time instead of as .dv footage. I think I have RAM preview enabled, but I’m not entirely sure and that might still be the problem. Could someone describe to me what it should look like or the exact steps to making sure it is enabled? The zero thing didn’t seem to work for me, but I think that is because I’m on a laptop and don’t have a numeric keypad, just the numbers at the top of the keyboard. Any help would be great. Thanks much guys.
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I should add, that I think I basically figured the RAM preview out, I just want to make sure I am doing it properly. I am also using After Effects CS3 if that matters. What I find odd is that I essentially have to re-do the RAM preview every time I change anything…even something minor. This becomes a bit of a hassle when doing a key and just moving a screen gain or clip black slider by 2 or 3 points. Does this make sense that I should have to re-do the RAM preview every single time, for every single thing?
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That’s pretty much how it goes. You’ll get used to it.
Joey Foreman
Editor/Animator
Nowhere Productions, Athens, GA
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