Chroma Key – it’s rubbish

[Hector Berrebi]

Iain

chroma key filter in FCP is not the best one out there. but it is definitely not rubbish.

the thing with chroma key is, that countrary to what most people think at first, its not simple to shoot it well, and not simple to cut it well.

it requires knowhow and experience, regardless of the tools you use. and can generate horrific results when you don’t know what you’re doing.

apple seemed to slightly overlook chromakeying in FCS.

unlike Avid for example, which added the wonderful spectramatte few years back with online tutorials on using it properly

try this, a bit basic but can be a good start

firts de-interlace filter as your footage sounds problematic on that aspect from what you described

then put on a color smoothing 4:2:2 filter on it

then chroma keyer
then select a narrow range closest to your key color (use the GUI tab)work with the color picker from somewhere close to the edge of your foreground

and broad ranges on luma and sat

then broaden your selection color as much as you can in small steps until all edges are clean
some edge thinning is needed at times, especially with badly lit or DV footage

a tiny bit of softening and enhance

and should look fine

or, use after effects with keylight to get much much better results

there are a million tutorials and guides on the web with tips for good keying. post and shooting

hope this helped

Hector Berrebi
Schibber Group
prePost Consulting

[Mark Suszko]

Those “3 million horizontal lines”… do you mean noise around the edges of the matte, or all the way across the screen? If the latter, you have something else wrong.

I’m “stuck” using the built-in keyer on my system until the IT guys come finish installing more plug-ins and apps, but I have made do and had quite acceptible results on several keying jobs, using DVCpr0 25 footage. De-interlacing can help, long as it doesn’t introduce temporal artifacts that distract. I often do a multi-step process and don’t attempt to key every part perfect the first time. Get the edges right around the body, and you can easily fix everything else later.

For me it has always been more about getting a truly even and consistent background when shooting the footage, first. When you work in a 4:1:1 color space, you have less info to work with, so every little trick helps. I can’t wait until they re-install my Ultimatte AdvantEdge software, it rocks. But I’m getting by all right, using some of the tweaks referred to above.

Have you thought about doing just the keying work in ProRes instead of Dv?

[Arnie Schlissel]

[Iain MacKinnon] “Oh, by the way, why does my DV footage have about 3 million horizontal lines through it whenever someone moves or blinks or anything.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlaced_video

Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/

[Iain Mackinnon]

you guys rock! seriously. I’ve had nothing but problems with this since i started and I’ll be honest, i’m something of a beginner with regards to video editing. (If truth be told i’m a guitarist to trade so what does that tell you?!)
But I watch other types of film, DV, video etc and keep saying, why can’t MINE look like that?

I heard somewhere that the film “28 days later” was shot using a Canon XLS DV camera. This is what i use and the footage is average at best.
Now surely this isn’t all due to post footage editing.
In order to get that crisp a picture it must have been foutered (Scottish word for messed) with for ages.
I just seem to be banging my head against a wall trying to get decent shots.
I’m not looking for much but i tell you what, i’ll upload a wee
video in a day or so and tell me what you think ok?

With regards to the Chroma Key, again just trying to key withot chopping someone’s fingers off whenever they move would be great.
I’ll check the de-interlace thing first and get back to you.
Cheers again guys!

I used to spend my time wondering, now it’s all used up rendering.

[Iain Mackinnon]

you guys rock! seriously. I’ve had nothing but problems with this since i started and I’ll be honest, i’m something of a beginner with regards to video editing. (If truth be told i’m a guitarist to trade so what does that tell you?!)
But I watch other types of film, DV, video etc and keep saying, why can’t MINE look like that?

I heard somewhere that the film “28 days later” was shot using a Canon XLS DV camera. This is what i use and the footage is average at best.
Now surely this isn’t all due to post footage editing.
In order to get that crisp a picture it must have been foutered (Scottish word for messed) with for ages.
I just seem to be banging my head against a wall trying to get decent shots.
I’m not looking for much but i tell you what, i’ll upload a wee
video in a day or so and tell me what you think ok?

With regards to the Chroma Key, again just trying to key withot chopping someone’s fingers off whenever they move would be great.
I’ll check the de-interlace thing first and get back to you.
Cheers again guys!

I used to spend my time wondering, now it’s all used up rendering.

[David Cooke]

Since you are waiting for IT to install some more ‘apps’, then you might not have Apple Motion.
We use that for our chroma keying and it works VERY WELL. After your CK in motion gets sent
back to FCP, we usually put a “choker” filter on it and then the regular FCP 3-way color corrector.
Unfortunately we have not “touched” the COLOR program so I’m sure we are missing some good
stuff. The difference is we shoot on DVCPRO50 when chroma-keying.

D’s Video