Green Screen Basics for Web?

[Stephen Smith]

I would use the Animation codec, it will work for someone on a PC and a mac. You don’t need to compress it as a .SWF file. The Flash person will do the compressing. They will most likely want it uncompressed. Flash will compress the footage with the background when the web guy is done with it. We just give it to them as an Animation – millions +. To do that in FCP go to File, Export, Using Quicktime Conversion. Click on the Options button. Set the Video to Animation. Make sure the Compressor setting is set to Millions of Colors +. That is what will give you the alpha channel. Thats it, you don’t need to do anything else, the Flash person will know what to do from there.

Stephen Smith
Utah Video Productions

Check out my Motion Training DVD

Check out my Motion Tutorials

[Rory Keenan]

Great advice…….Thanks!

I’ve never used Keylight….. Is there a tutorial on-line?
I think I’ll start with the keyer in FCP.
If that doesn’t work I’ll try Keylight

[Stephen Smith]

I have not watched these tutorials on keylight but I think it will be of great help. It is 4 parts:

https://library.creativecow.net/devis_andrew/Multi-Layer-Editing-1/1

https://library.creativecow.net/devis_andrew/Multi-Layer-Editing-2/1

https://library.creativecow.net/devis_andrew/Multi-Layer-Editing-3/1

https://library.creativecow.net/devis_andrew/Multi-Layer-Editing-4/1

Stephen Smith
Utah Video Productions

Check out my Motion Training DVD

Check out my Motion Tutorials

[Mark Suszko]

Rory, you’re asking us to cram several books up your nose as if this is the Matrix and you can just upload perfect knowledge instantly. “woah, I know karate!” Not going to happen like that. Expect to spend days or weeks learning this and learning by doing. And step one is to RTFM, there are actually good instructions in the FCP manuals for all these things you’re asking. The only way to get it done faster is to hire one of us to do it FOR you. That said, I’ll try to answer your questions, but really, you have to do this on your own.

Still, I’ll try to answer some of your many questions, since I seemed to have provoked most of them:-)

In the 3-way color corrector, you would be trying to refine the green screen to make it as even and well-saturated as possible, without affecting the rest of the people in the image, so the keyer has the best initial information to work from. And you try to work in a deeper color space than DV, which is very difficult to pull a good key from.. One of the tricks to working with bad chromakey footage is to use the 3-way color corrector to deliberately over-do the green. Then you make the matte based on this version of the footage, but apply it in a layer to a different, good quality normal colored version of the same scene, to make the best matte/mask combination.

Chromakeyers can sometimes be stand-alone programs that work indepenedently of the NLE. Some can work both as stand-alone and as a plug-in. You “invoke” them or call them up by navigating to your video effects menu, then dropping down the list to “keying”, where you’ll find luminance keyers as well as chromakeyers.

Apple Motion is a compositing program; it specializes in layering tracks of video, so it is a natural place to put a chromakey effect together with the new background and then export the finished product back to the NLE timeline or whatever. But if you have never touched Motion before today, I doubt you’ll do much better than staying within FCP. But a great crash course in Motion is the DVD turorial “Moving with Motion” by COW expert Stephen Smith, who has saved my bacon enough times to equal a whole hog. Get that DVD and by chapter 13 you will be a Motion whiz yourself. But realize it doesn’t spend a whole lot of time specifically about keying. Motion may have more chromakeyers and tools installed, though. Like a spill suppressor, which counters the rim of reflected green or blue light that may be seen on the edges of talent that stood too cose toa too-bright screen.

Multiple instances means using the same thing several times on different areas of the screen. In the FCP chromakeyer, you get an eyedropper tool for sampling the green. You can touch and sample more than one time, building up a better and better profile of the color you want keyered out… I use that as a starting point, then I use the visual graphic interface of the keyer to manipulate the control sliders manually, to further refine my key. In a really bad situation, I might mask off all but one part of the scene and just make the best key I can of that part, then bring in another copy of the scene and work my magic on a different parts. Build up the scene until allt he aprts are keyed as best as you can, and that’s what I mean about multiple iterations.

[Rory Keenan]

Thanks so much for your help Mark.

I realize I’m asking for a “crash course”…..but even a “crash course” will take some time.
I’m prepared to spend a week doing tutorials and experimenting with the footage they shot.
I just need to know where to start…….and you guys have given me some places to start.
If I can’t get pretty close in a week, I’ll tell the director we need to hire one of you guys.

I’ll start in FCP today & tomorrow (using your suggestions).
If I hit a wall I’ll be back here bugging you guys.

If the footage is too problematic for FCP then I’ll go to another application.

Correct me if I’m wrong:
I get the impression that keying in Motion is a little easier than keylight.
Keylight is probably harder to learn but produces better results.
Do I have that right?

If the FCP keyer isn’t producing satisfactory results I’ll start tutorials on Motion or Keylight.

[Rory Keenan]

Thanks for the links to tutorials Stephen
Now I have a really bone-headed question.

I went to the link for those tutorials you suggested.
However the video tutorial won’t play.

I clicked on the icon that says: “Play the Video Tutorial Here”
A new page loads and there is a blank area where video should be (no play controls either)
Am I doing something really dumb?
Do I need to subscribe to something (or pay) to play the tutorials on Creative Cow?

I can’t believe I’m asking for help on watching a web video, but there it is.

Thanks for your patients guys.

[Mark Suszko]

Update your flash and quicktime, brah.

[Romeo Rubio]

Definitely try to do the chroma keying in FCP first before you go to an outside program. Might as well stay in FCP if it works fine, right? I’ve had good results with FCP’s chroma keyer, even with uneven color/shadows on backdrops. Just gotta do some tweaking to the settings in the keyer to get the entire range of the backdrop.