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Feathering 8-point garbage matte
Hi, all,
Question: I am compositing a face against a second background, isolating the face from its own background loosely with the 8-point garbage matte. Essentially I want the face on one side of the image and the new background on the other side, but I DON’T want a color key-green screen effect; I want to see some of the face’s background blended into the second image.
The problem is that I need the boundary between the two images to be highly feathered so they blend, but when I feather the matte it also feathers the top and bottom of the image on which I’ve placed the matte. This is disconcerting when the background image is active and it looks like things are buzzing around inside the top of the head. I’ve tried raising the points at the top and bottom of the image, but that doesn’t work. Do I have to go outside FCP to do this (I’ve done it in Shake just fine, but it’s much more time consuming) or is there something I can do just to feather the boundaries I want?
Thanks!
Mike
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1 Reply
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Hi Mike,
I’m not a big fan of the garbage mattes in FC, in fact, I can’t stand them. I’ve never keyed anything from within FC, it’s just not got the tools to do a good key.
As for your problem, try ‘nesting’ the garbage matte layer before applying it to the background. Sometimes it’s easier to work with that way. Unfortunately, you can’t choose which sides to feather, it’s all or nothing. And the buzzing around the head sounds like it’s a keying problem. Either the key isn’t great or the tolorances are set too high/low.
If you can get in and out of Shake fairly easy, I would go with that. Or AE or Boris.
Good Luck,
Todd at UCSB
Television Production
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