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Good Greenscreen Plug-In
Just used a product recently with a less-than-perfectly lit greenscreen that worked wonders — VKEY2 from oakstreetsoftware.com. It’s a vector-based keyer, and–at least in this case–outperformed my much more expensive Ultimatte AdvantEdge.
It’s also only $60, with free upgrades, and great customer support.
Just wanted to highlight this because it saved my deadline and I was very impressed with the performance.
Steven
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8 Replies
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I’ve used zmatte with much success, but you can’t beat $60.
Good find.
Thanks. -
Steven,
Did you do a key on the same footage with each plugin to compare? The range of badly lit or otherwise poorly shot greenscreens leads to pretty unfair comparisons IMO, but I have had good luck with DVmattePro and also the keyers in Boris Continuum Complete.
Have a wonderful day.
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I second the Boris suggestion.
It’s not cheap, but it’s easy to use and very customizable.
Their matte choker/matte cleanup options work great.
dg
danny greer
dallas, texas
http://www.dannygreer.com -
First–I should say that the greenscreen wasn’t THAT poorly lit…there were a couple of spots that were hotter than I would have liked, but it was usable. But, yes…I started with our Ultimatte AdvantEdge, and–after unsuccessfully toying with it for a couple of hours–I gave up and went back to VKEY, which I hadn’t used in a long time. Incidentally, I was several versions out of date, but I emailed their support and they provided me a custom link for downloading the free update and I was off and running. (I really cannot say enough about customer response and treatment.) After five minutes of messing with it, I had a perfect key. On top of that, it rendered SIGNIFICANTLY faster than AdvantEdge.
All of this, by the way, is not to disparage AdvantEdge. It’s an advanced keying tool, but if I have a complaint, it’s that it’s SO complex with inadequate documentation to really get the most out of it. It would probably be great for someone more skilled and knowledgeable than I.
I had just read some threads recently on keying plug-ins, and I’d been meaning to put my $.02 in on VKEY2.
There’s a free trial download, so I’d just recommend you do your own quick tests.
Steven
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I recommend Shake and Keylight. A no brainer really.
Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro -
[Kevin Monahan] “I recommend Shake and Keylight. A no brainer really.”
I use After Effects with Keylight.
There is no keyer I’m aware of that can do the job
that Keylight does in AE or Shake, Within FCP. None of them can
create a great matte with fine details. They create ok mattes,
but nothing fantastic. I wonder if the Boris one is on par that way. -
[Kevin Monahan] “I recommend Shake and Keylight.”
Same here. The entire process of keying in Shake is very different than it would be in a timeline & layer based environment like FCP or AE. In Shake it’s much easier to break a badly lit shot down into several areas & key them separately, then recombine those pieces into a single matte.
Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/ -
I’ve been a VKey2 user for awhile now and I agree, it’s a very good keyer and the price is right. I just used their new fx plugin version keyer for properly lit DVCAM footage and the results are impressive. Speed is very fast, and it has an “auto angle” function that gets you right in the ballpark for most of the keying parameters, if not dead on. Customer service is top notch. I’m sure some of these other keying software options are fine too, but this one is pretty easy, fast, and delivers good results.
Dan Sparks
Tricom Video
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