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Camera Settings for Keying
Hello–
I’ve been asked last minute to shoot next week and wanted to quickly review and ask a few questions before I hit the set. I’m traditionally an editor first and shooter second, but I’m hoping someone here can confirm that I know what I’m doing, as I’ve never done multi-cam before and I’m “green with green screen.” 🙂
– I suggested shooting on 720p because we’re delivering in SD DVD’s and I figured that would make the most sense since they’re just talking heads and I don’t see any benefits visually to shooting 1080 in this situation.
-I Plan on shooting 24P … will this key okay or would I be better off shooting interlaced? Or 30p?We’re doing multi-cam and here’s what I planned on doing if the other DP asks. I’m assuming he knows more than I do but I want to have an insurance policy in case I have to explain.
-Check that the times are identical within the cameras
-Change recording to “free run”
-Name clip prefixes and reset to 001 (A cam, B cam for later logging and syncing ie. VA_001, VB_001)Am I missing anything?
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5 Replies
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Progressive absolutely for keying.
Depending on subject and settings, lower frame rate might have more motion blur and that might be an issue in certain situations. 24p might be OK for talking hands but even a fast moving demonstrative hand (especially fingers) can have a bit of blur. -
I would shoot 720p60 if you’re going to NTSC. It gives you the same temporal resolution as 60i, and your software should be able to convert each frame as it’s own field, making for a really great conversion. (The BBC white paper on the EX-1 recommends doing this)
I might also shoot at -3db gain if you’re going to do green-screen work. The less noise you can get in the picture the easier the key.
Also you may just want to set all cameras to time of day time code, that way you can start and stop with them, and still sync them later. Just make sure both cameras are set to the same time obviously. 🙂
John Burkhart
Editor in Chief
Videomaker Magazine -
I’ve done a lot of green screen work with our EX cameras, and I like 720P30 for standard def DVD when working with talking heads.
Cf
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[Craig Seeman] “Progressive absolutely for keyin”
I’ve read somewhere that due to the 420 sampling of the codec, would be advantages recording interlaced for keying.
But I’ve been shooting progressive for keying and works really well.
I’ll try to retrieve that info.
rafael -
It would be hard for me to dig up all the previous posts including the one from Juan Martinez at Sony but interlace is a problem because of 4:2:0. The gap creates aliased edges. To key, shoot progressive. Verified by many sources.
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