Green screen – recording or post problem?

[Oliver De morassé]

@ Steve Brame – I followed the tutorial step by step. With the downloaded files, no problem. With my video… see the results:

Auto-trace settings
Result pre auto-trace
Post auto-trace, 1st frame
Post auto-trace, 2 secs
Post auto-trace, 4 secs
Post auto-trace, 5 secs

Any idea?

[Oliver De morassé]

@ Andrew Somers – thanks for all your infos & tips ;O).

Been ‘playing’ with “levels” and “curves”. Any particular settings for the “levels” effect – I have been adjusting the “Input black” setting? When the layer is duplicated, should this appear below the original layer? What do you mean with a “wider choke”.

Thanks again.

[Andrew Somers]

The additive layer needs to be above the normal layer.
“wider choke” means less shrinking.

[Oliver De morassé]

@ Dave LaRonde – sorry, access to the images should now be OK.

[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks for all of your feedback.

I have been ‘playing’ with camera settings and picture styles etc. and my tests can be found here: picture-styles.zip (original footage is 360MB – I can make smaller .zips if necessary).

I have used the following picture styles (shot with an ISO of 320 and aperture of 3.5). I have included a brief description of each style:

Faithful: 0, 0, 0, 0 (Sharpness, Contrast, Saturation, Color Tone)
– This Picture Style is for users who prefer to process images with their computer. When the subject is captured under a color temperature of 5200K, the color is adjusted colorimetrically to match the subject’s color. The image is dull and subdued.

Landscape: 4, 0, 0, 0
– For vivid blues and greens, and very sharp and crisp images. Effective for impressive landscapes

Neutral: 0, 0, 0, 0
– This Picture Style is for users who prefer to process images with their computer. For natural colors and subdued images.

Portrait: 2, 0, 0, 0
– For nice skin tones. The image looks softer. Effective for close-ups of women or children.

Standard: 3, 0, 0, 0
– The image looks vivid, sharp, and crisp. This is a general-purpose Picture Style suitable for most scenes.

Marvels Advanced 3.4: 0, -3, -2, 0

CineStyle: 0, -4, -2, 0

Marvels Cine 1.2: 3, -2, -1, 1

I would welcome your comments on which styles you think are the best to use.

When analysing the movies and looking at the red channel in the green screen element, a white line still appears around the subject, eventhough some of picture styles use NO SHARPNESS – any ideas why?

Also, I find the movies without any sharpness whatsoever, a little blurred. Yes I know – SHARPEN MUST BE OFF – but the end result doesn’t look too nice. If the source material is bad, then one has little chance in the post – is it not a matter of “garbage in, garbage out”?!?!

Finally, do you think that investing in a camcorder (see post “Which camcorder for green screening full-HD e-learning DVDs”) would help?

Thanks for your continued help in this matter.

[Andrew Somers]

If you must use a sharpen tool, it needs to be after you pull your key.

As for why you see the white line – since I don’t use Canon dSLRs, I can’t speak regarding how they may handle the compression in H264.

I did tests just now with my Nikon, using a dark and black objects in front of my green screen, and got no white line. The Nikon compresses into a 4:2:0 space as well.

But as you may recall, in a previous post I pointed out that your green screen is NOT sufficiently narrow band to get a good key (from what I can tell in the images you posted).