Davinci Keying without noise

[Chris Hall]

I’m with Sascha, 3rd party plugins would be a great answer to this issue (instead of rebuilding something from the ground up). And I would pay whatever it takes to pull some cleaner keys as this has frustrated me a bit over the past few years.

Chris Hall
Colorist – Basher Films
Pasadena, CA

[Gabriele Turchi]

I agree ,
cleanest keys as possible are a must in compositing , but would be TRUE gold in color correction (quite few times i had to say “i cannot key that , key can’t be clean enough because those 2 color are 2 similar (even though visually different (but than gets be done in flame /smoke (unsung just their keyer (seen it with my own eyes).

Resolve have a world class (probably best ) tracker , i guess could/should think of having the best keyer as well

i would pay as much as it cost , and i keep voting for RESOLVE costing 20K with panel only or 10K minimum as software only ,

in am ALL in for OFX plugIN , but i think that the keyer should be (if) improved in resolve , since it really is the heart of cc

finger crossed

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[Paul Provost]

Well that’s the conundrum… Back in the apple color days there was a lot of complaints on the functionality and support of that free app, and offers to pay more for a “supported” version of the app. But a company does not have much incentive to fully support something like that as it does a $100k+ system
But people kept using color as the only other choice was to spend a hundred grand on something else.
Resolve is awesome as it is a great tool that you can get into for free and then scale up. But you hit a ceiling as there is limitations to it. But hey, if it’s good enough for company 3, Ridley Scott and Prometheus, it’s good enough for me!

If you need something like baselight, you might need to buy baselight or some other product from a company that only builds color and image enhancement systems. That is their only focus and product and you end up paying or that.
BMD has a lot of other products to focus on so resolve is not their only revenue stream. Hard to say if it’s more of a “loss leader” for them or what.
They have done an amazing job with it, and I for one am greatful to have the product at the moment.
But if it becomes a drain on their resources, it may end up being abandoned as a side project. But that’s ok because they have pretty much forced everyone else to start offering more entry level priced solutions solutions.
Fwiw, I’m ok with the keyer unless it’s really compressed noisy footage, but then I’ve never had the capabilities of baselight.

[Sascha Haber]

We are not comparing it to Baselight or Lustre.
I only have extensive Scratch experience to build on and like 10 years as compositor using all sorts of keying plugins in all price range hosts from Fusion to Flame.

The keyer as it is is fine for day in day out work as getting skintones and adjusting them.
But the market is also adjusting and clients are asking more complex work from a colorist.
Everyone knows that turning a grey sky into a blue one works fine unless you have some trees in the foreground creating all sorts of chromatic abortion (there , I finally used it 😉 ) or other artifacts.

So the request would be either for BMD to provide a plugin architecture that allows third party developers to provide a decent chroma or vector key, or dive into development like they did on the outstanding, mouthwatering, unsurpassed and client thrilling tracker.

Oh, and i totally support the 10K software idea…with panel.
Even if Smoke is only 3,5 K now…and they have an amazing keyer 🙂

A slice of color…

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ICA Instructor
https://www.icolorist.com/Sascha.html

[Paul Provost]

I agree with you completely, it’s just that once something is given away for free it seems impossible to raise the price for more features even if some users want it. I wish they had added the plugin arch. BEFORE they started giving it away.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

A slightly weird suggestion. Try keying the same keys in FCP X 10.0.3 or higher.

I recently did a keying job in FCP X.

I first tried the key in AE. AE’s built-in keyers are not very good with Canon and other such material. Then I had an asst try in Resolve. Admittedly he is no expert so the keys weren’t that great in Resolve either. And I do have access to many Nuke/Shake artists.

But before sending off the footage, I tried ‘one last time’ with FCP X. And was amazed. Clean keys with the minimum of effort. And surprisingly powerful controls. This is not some iMovie keyer. This is stuff they’ve gleaned from Shake, Primatte, Final Touch and other such legacy apps.

Also, it may help to convert the footage to ProRes4444 so at least the chroma color space is cleaner.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Gustavo Bermudas]

[Paul Provost] “I agree with you completely, it’s just that once something is given away for free it seems impossible to raise the price for more features even if some users want it.”

Yeah, I agree, the damage is done now that is free, it will be hard and almost impossible to revert that.

I find a lot of limitations with the keyer but I get around it, and for green screen comps I use it as a way to see what it looks like and then I give the colored plates to the VFX guys so they do the keys.

I’m noticing a trend of clients asking for VFX right there in the color session, do a green screen here, or can you do a wire removal, or we need to paint that guy out, or can you do some titles, and now with Smoke targeting the one man post show, I wonder if Color/VFX will start blending more and more? It is all part of finishing really, but what’s making it really hard for us is that stupid video card war we’re in. You can’t do a grading session in Smoke, and you can’t do compositing in Resolve, and you can’t use both in the same machine. C’mon guys, truce?

Autodesk/AJA could have won this war by adding Lustre to Smoke, that’s all they needed to do, but they so missed it, maybe next version if they wise up.

[Esteban Aguilera]

My feelings are the keyer is not so powerfull how it could be, my main problem is the saturation channel it is a bit useless because, it could be the key part of the keyer but not.

a 80 percent of the slider is useless in the saturation, when you get the 20% (from left to right) you get the full legal saturation.

I think you can do a bit more stepped.

What do you think guys ?

Di Davinci Resolve Colorist

[Joseph Mastantuono]

That’s the really sad thing about FCPX, all of the underlying algorithms it seems to use are really top notch. It’s great for color accurate conversions from DNxHD, it’s a good keyer, etc… It’s just got a shitty interface, it’s not stable and it’s bad for handling any project of any complexity.

I think the keyer in Davinci is pretty lacking, but I can usually work around it. My #1 pet peeve is how the “Grow/Shrink” grows in these little diamond patterns as opposed to something useful. #2 is how finicky the saturation control is. You just can’t do any fine control with it.

The tracking though, is sublime.

Joseph Mastantuono
http://www.goodpost.net
Color Grading & Post Production Consulting

[Margus Voll]

For me it seems if any third party plugins would ever be supported without cuda support
makes workflow a bit useless.

I have the same feeling fcp7 vs premiere cs6.

Premiere can nicely run my secondary gpu and run super fast as fcp7 bogs down a lot.

If keyers would kill Resolves speed then it seems bad karma to me.

So far it seems if pro app is missing cuda support it is somewhat a joke in speed sense.

Probably BM made keyed with additional features would be killer.

—

Margus

https://iconstudios.eu

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