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For those interested in Chroma Key software
I mentioned last week I had bought Ultimatte, and it looked great,
but found out it wasn’t Universal so it would not work when I upgrade
to Mac Pro in January. Ultimatte isnt planning a universal version until
sometime in the spring at the earliest. So I asked here for opinions and was told about
Boris Continuum which is Universal and makes a nice chroma keyer.
Well I downloaded the trial of Continuum and I couldn’t be happier
with the key. I’m at DV level because this is the roughcut, so I added
the Nattress G Nicer 4.1.1 chroma fix first, then the Boris chroma keyer,
then the Boris Matte Cleanup. It looks, I think, even better than the
Ulitmatte. It’s certainly as good, plus I get all these other effects
I’ll have to find a place for 🙂Thanks, especially to Walter for his input on Boris.
Dan
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8 Replies
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Glad it’s working for you!
Jeremy
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Glad it’s working for you. Spring / NAB is when I expect we’ll see a lot of Universal apps show up for pro users. I believe NAB is when Adobe will show or release AE Universal.
I consider Boris Continuum Complete the swiss army knife of plug-ins and it should really be the first purchase for any FCP editor. You can pretty much emulate all the popular looks out there with this set.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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[walter biscardi] “I consider Boris Continuum Complete the swiss army knife of plug-ins and it should really be the first purchase for any FCP editor. You can pretty much emulate all the popular looks out there with this set”
Walter,
I think it should be pointed out that at the moment there are still compatibility issues with FCP 5.1.2 and BCC 4. It seems to affect some but not all users. The problem is that the controls in the effects palette do not show up unless you follow the prescribed workaround. Even then it doesn’t always work.
As far as keying, it’s worth noting that Motion includes Primatte and for $500 you get all the horsepower of Shake if you go that route. As far as other plug-ins, I highly recommend the Noise Industries filters, which are similar to BCC in many effects, but offer the ability to customize. The company includes a marketplace to offer free or for-sale additional filters to expand your toolset. Along with Noise Industries, I rate Nattress plug-ins as pretty valuable for various looks. I have also gotten a lot of mileage out of the various free FCP plug-ins available on the web.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
And for choma-keying only I can recommend DV Matte Blast as well. It’s realtime in Motion and very easy to use.
Regards,
Uli
Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.
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[danrnw] “It looks, I think, even better than the Ulitmatte.”
I wouldn’t discredit Ultimatte too quickly. I’ve used many keyers and Ultimatte has always been at the top of my list. There have been shots I’ve keyed with Ultimatte that shouldn’t have been keyable in the first place. Keep in mind that you can get very, very deep into the Ultimatte settings. It’s so much more than simply eye-dropping a keyable chroma area and fiddling with a couple of settings. I’m not saying other keyers are bad. In fact some are very, very good. But IMO, Ultimatte has always been on a higher level than the rest.
If you go a step further and shoot for Ultimatte, your keyes will be drop dead real.
And please don’t get me wrong. It sounds like you’re in a time-crunch and you needed a keyer to work on an Intell Mac *now*. If it were me, I’d either do the same thing or install Ultimatte on a PowerPC Mac if the key was that important. But for me, LOL, it always is! 😉
Marco Solorio | OneRiver Media
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dan,
You should not discredit all this good info, I’m a BCC junkie as well, but you should look at the sample movie on DV keying in Conduit, from dvgarage, the same folks who brought us dvMatte Pro and Blast. This plugin works in nodes, yet another plus if they agree with you, but this is an entirely new and different approach to keying DV. It is truly worth a look, not to mention the mere $150 for the software. Happy keying!
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Who’s discrediting anything?
I’m saying thanks for the info.As far as Ultimatte goes, I agree it makes the best key.
(I’ve been using hardware Ulimattes since the 80s.)
And I did go quite deep into it. The eye dropper is just a
starting point. The 411 filter is very effective on my DV shots too.The BCC keyer looks nice but since playing around with it
and my subjects, it’s not as clean as the Ultimatte,
but I can’t keep Ultimatte, because in a month I need something
that works Universal. Right now on my G5 it’s great
but it doesn’t make any since to spend $1200 now
and then another $800 in a month or so.I took a look at DV Matte and maybe it’s just me,
but I don’t get a clean edge with it, not like
the Ultimatte Advantedge software. But Hey, that’s just
one man’s opinion.Dan
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Dan,
You missed my point, take a look at Conduit for DV keying, it’s quite different.
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