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Can someone please explain what “Pedestal” is
My keying techniques are getting better and better each day – but can someone please finally explain exactly what Pedestal is? All I know of it is that it’s “the thing that I want to boost all the way up because it’s awesome and keys out my background extremely well”. I’d love to know exactly what it’s doing, though, if someone wouldn’t mind explaining..
(also feel free to throw in any tips and tricks you have during your keying process, too – that would be awesome as I’m always looking to improve!)
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“Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.”
–St. Thomas Aquinas -
9 Replies
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IT can be a box, or a step, where you stand and give speeches from. You can get smaller ones and put candles on them.
Sometimes people get put up on pedestals.
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Pedestal is the black level of a video signal. I have no idea what super awesome qualities boosting it would have in keying.
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[Martin Kruul] “My keying techniques are getting better and better each day – but can someone please finally explain exactly what Pedestal is?”
“Pedestal” is the same thing as “Lift” or “Set Up” – it’s a black level adjustment that compresses the black values.
In terms of what it does in a typical keyer, and I assume you are using Premiere’s Ultra Key here, what it does is it crunches down the black values in the “raw” greyscale matte which renders the background more transparent and removes more of of the semi-transparent pixels.
It is a matte post-processing effect which is best used with extreme moderation as it results in compromised edge pixels – and soft, greyscale edge pixels are the one thing you want most of all to preserve in your matte.
Therefore pushing this value up to the maximum is generally speaking not a good idea at all.
Never, ever compromise your edge pixels if you can possibly avoid it – always use garbage matting to take care of as much of the unwanted backing as possible.
Consider using a better keyer.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
Hm— thanks for all the input and information, all. Something told me that using “Pedestal” should be a last-ditch effort while keying — it’s just that pushing it up tends to work SO well and I barely see any loss. I’ll play around.
Simon, I was referring to Premiere’s Ultra-Key. When you say I should use a better keyer, what do you specifically have in mind?
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[Martin Kruul] “When you say I should use a better keyer, what do you specifically have in mind?”
https://fxfactory.com/info/hawaikikeyer/
Simon didn’t mention this, probably because he’s too modest to mention he is the software designer who created it, but it’s a great keyer.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
Grrrr…
I was hoping that you wouldn’t post ‘Hawaiki Keyer’, because, y’know…Windows.
Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions -
[Herb Sevush] “Simon didn’t mention this, probably because he’s too modest to mention he is the software designer who created it, but it’s a great keyer.”
Thanks, Herb, for the mention of Hawaiki Keyer.
I don’t like to spam these forums with plugs for our plug-ins, but since you have so kindly given me the opening, I’d just like to mention that there’s an exciting new version of Hawaiki Keyer (HK4) coming out this autumn which will include several more unique features you won’t find in any other keyers as well as further major improvements to the core algorithm.
And yes, we are working towards a PC version in the near future, all being well.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
“And yes, we are working towards a PC version in the near future, all being well.”
Wow! Never thought I’d hear those words regarding a FX Factory plug in. I’ll be your first purchase!
Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions
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