Exporting to Flash with Alpha Channel

[Dean Steinmann]

My experience has been that the FCP plugin is not quite up to the task of keying at a top level.

This is probably the best one:

https://www.ultimatte.com/UltimatteMain/HOME/HOME.html

[Twintrbrx7]

Is there another plugin that you would suggest that is cheaper? I believe ultimatte costs $1,300 and for some reason it keeps closing Final Cut Pro with no warning. I imagine that is a really good one if I could get it to work but I also want to spend less money. I appreciate your help.

Thanks

[Dean Steinmann]

I have heard that this one is pretty good:

https://fxhome.com/compositelab/pro

[Terry Kean]

Hi All! I’m new to the cow…well new to posting anyway. I’ve got a project doing just what this thread is about. I have one issue that hasn’t been brought up though. I’m making my key in FCP with dvMattePro…exporting with Quicktime Animation codec and converting with Squeeze and the ON2 VP6 codec. All goes well, however the resulting flv has a slight dark outline around the keyed subjects. I’ve tried several different setting with the ON2 codec but can’t seem to get rid of that outline. The key in FCP is beautiful…I just bought dvMattePro and was very happy with the results. I’ve tried it using FCP’s standard chroma keyer as well as Boris FX’s chroma keyer and all give me an outline on the finished product. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks for any help!

Terry Kean

[Twintrbrx7]

Hi Terry,

I do all of the same things you are doing however I use the Flash video encoder that comes with Flash cs3 and have never had that problem. I would suggest downloading a demo and encode your video in that program and see if it helps.

Question:

I have perfected everything with the green screen, keying, apha channel, etc. The last obstacle for me has become the sound. Check out pagegravy.com. Wow, their sound is awesome. How did they get it that good. Are they using an audio filter to acheive that effect? I use very high end seinheisser wireless lavaliers and they sound fine in final cut but by the time it makes it out of the flash encoder it’s not that great. I need my audio to sound amazing like on pagegravy.com. Have you guys tried anything as far as audio goes?

Any suggestions? Help would be greatly appreciate. Thanks to everyone.

[John Fishback]

There are many parameters that add up to great sound: good recording techniques, eq, compression, etc. Professional sound shops have as many tools, plugins, etc for sound as video pros have for editing. You should post this kind of question on the Audio Professionals forum where you’ll get some very good info.

Within most Flash encoding apps there’s an audio selection for kbps which affects audio fidelity. Make sure you’re using at least 64kbps for mono and 128 kbps for stereo. 128 kbps is a fairly standard bit rate for downloaded mp3s, although, some sites are starting to offer 256 kbps as a higher-quality alternative.

Be aware that the audio bit rate adds to the video bit rate and you should know what kind of pipe your viewers will have. You can crank up the overall bit rate, but that might lead to long buffer times, interrupted programs, etc. if the viewer has a slow connection.

John

Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.4.8 QT7.1.3
Dual Cinema 23 Radeon 9800
FCP Studio 5 (FCP5.1.2, DVDSP4.1.1, Comp2.3, STP1.1, Motion 2.1.2)
Huge U-320R 1TB Raid 3 firmware ENG15.BIN
ATTO UL4D driver 3.50
AJA IO driver 2.1 firmware v23-28
Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neuman U87s, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[Dean Steinmann]

Terry,

Are you using the spill suppressor filter in FCP?

Dean

[Dean Steinmann]

twintrbrx7,

The Flash encoder in CS3 may not be up to the task of encoding to the level that you want. Squeeze and Episode are far more sophisticated.

While I am not personally enamored with the audio or video quality at the site you mentioned (not a very rich sound, too much treble), you can achieve superior results by engaging an audio expert to get it to sound like you want it to. Just export and OMF and ftp it to an audio pro. It doesn’t take them long to fix it up and the small cost is worth it.

Our best results are attained by having an audio expert record the audio separately and have them filter it to the clients expectations. Then encode with a specialized application like Squeeze or Episode to get a balance between data rate and quality.

Check out the other forums that relate to compression. There are some very knowledgeable people there that have helped us tremendously.

See, Compression Techniques and Web Streaming.

Dean

[Twintrbrx7]

The next frontier of all of this would be transparent video in the web site. Now I have done this countless times using just dreamweaver cs3 and one of the pre-made video player skins.

What I would like to know is if there are any pop-up programs that you use to insert the video. I have tried Advanced DHTML pop which works just fine for internet explorer but when you open the web page in firefox and safari the video isn’t transparent.

Also Do you guys have any suggestions or links when it comes to creating your own video player skin? What I want to accomplish is to be able to create my own video player skin and also be able to have a close button so the user can get rid of the video. Any help or suggestions would be great.

[Terry Kean]

Hi Dean, Sorry for the delay in responding (Holidays and all) No I’m not using the spill suppression filter…I know that can leave an outline!
I contacted Sorensen tech support and sent them sample files. They got the same result and concluded it must be a bug with the ON2 VP6 plugin (that allows the alpha channel to be exported). I am not having any luck in dealing with ON2 tech support.
Thanks!

Terry Kean