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Horrible result in Keylight on Canon C300 footage
Shot C300 TrueLog footage recorded direct to ProRes422HQ on a Samurai recorder. Applied look in Resolve 9.1.1 rendered back out to ProRes422HQ
All keys pulled in AE using Keylight show incredible noise in the subject. The screen matte is clean but the Status view is very noisy as is the final result.
Also tried bypassing the Resolve transcode stage and had similarly poor results in Keylight with tons of noise.
Any suggestions?
C.
Chris M. Oben
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17 Replies
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How was the footage shot? 5600K or 3200/3400K? A good technique for 3400K is to shoot with a blue filter, this reduces noise generated from having to white balance color channels.
I would also learn how to pull an inside key and an outside key. This works a lot better than trying to slam the footage with one hard keying setting… it lets you dial in edges more gently. Really poor shots benefit from garbage masking as well.
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Thanks for the ideas Angelo. I guess I’m looking for feedback from others who may have had a tough time with C300 footage specifically…
Thats a good keying principle to use an inside and outside key.
C.
Chris M. Oben
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This post won’t really help in your workflow, but I have faced the same problem:
Last year I was in the unfortunate position of having to key some footage from a C300. It was shot in the same studio with the same lighting setup as dozens of previous shots (shot with a Panasonic HPX170 or something like that) which always produced a beautiful key, regardless of subject – fine hair, motion blur – whatever.
No matter how I wrestled with Keylight plus some other keyers, I could not pull a decent key from the C300 footage. And we tried getting the output from the C300 in every way imaginable, with everything set to highest resolution, widest color space, various sharpness settings from none to lots, etc. But our conclusion was that for greenscreen work, the C300 is completely and utterly shit. Not what you wanted to hear, but don’t feel alone in your frustration with this camera.
Looking at the specs of the camera, it should theoretically produce easily-keyable results. Maybe someone else will chime in with a more constructive suggestion – we wasted many days trying to get the thing to work, but just had to live with crappy results – we couldn’t reshoot with a proper camera.
– Paul
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One suggestion Chris –
Do you have Premiere Pro CS6? I think it was also in CS5.5 – throw it in the Timeline and give Ultra Key a try. I’ve heard people say that it’s a one-click wonder. Here’s a quick tute from Adobe:
https://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-premiere-pro-cs5/creating-a-green-screen-key-using-ultra-key/
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
While I don’t use AE I use my C300 extensively for green screen shoots and has had no problems which I can relate to bad quality from the camera.
I use FCPX together with the built in Keyer and now more often Phyx Keyer suite since release 4.
I find that Phyx Keyer is generally better even though it has less options for fine-tuning than the built in Keyer. I shoot simple corporate videos where I shoot the background and the subject at different locations. Quite straight forward and not much motion blur.
As for the C300 settings I’ve been using both C-log and now more often a custom made profile based on the EOS Standard profile but without sharpening, lighter shadows and color corrected to get rid of the slight greenish tint that I think C300 always has. Since I don’t do heavy grading I found that a ready-baked profile suits my workflow better.
And I’ve never used any external recorder. But for my work this has produced very good images.
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Since this thread got me curious and it was a long time ago since I used C-log for green screen I decided to do a little test.
Since I’m alone in the studio I filmed a mannequin while shaking it 🙂 using my preferred custom profile and then C-log (but slightly edited to get rid of some green tint).
I then used FCPX and Phyx Keyer 4. And now I seem to remember why I stopped using C-log for green screen work … it’s much easier getting a clean key if I use my custom profile, at least in my workflow. I’ve done some basic grading to the C-log shot but still I can’t extract as good key, it’s quite noisy if I don’t use quite harsh settings on the matte.
My custom profile use EOS Standard as a base (which is awful by default, yes I know!) but I’ve tweaked it a little and it works for my kind of work.
In the video I’ve scaled the C300 shoots to 200% which means when you look at it in 960×540 pixels (which is the size of my player) then it should be a 100% crop of the 1920×1080 original.
I think if you pause the video you can see that the software has trouble with the edges of the blurry hair when using C-log. It’s also moire noise in the fine hair just over the top of the head in the C-log shot.
All is shoot directly to CF-cards (50 Mbits/s). From what I understand an external recorder and ProRes results in less compression artifacts but the color data will be exactly the same (4:2:2 8-bit).
https://www.studiostahre.se/tester/spelare.asp?film=c300greenscreen.mp4&bredd=960
No science … just a quick test.
One of Canons/Sam Nicholsons launch movies “XXIT” shot with the C300 relies heavily on green screen from what I know. What software and profile they used I don’t know but I would still guess C-log since that is what Canon promotes.
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I don´t wand to sound like a big mouth, but that one is easy!
Footage / Dubblicate / Apply Keylight on upper Layer / Set to Show Matte / Tweek / lower Layer / set Use LUMA MATTE from upper LAYER
Done and the noise is gone (if you tweeked the upper layerKeyFX right!)
Let us know if this works for you!!!Greetings
😉 -
Chris
If you can post a still of green screen footage, I will try to create an example project for you using keylight in a better way. Also choose Intermediate result and not Final result as Final Result will give you noisy results 90% of the time. Then use Spill Suppressor Effect to remove the Green spill over the subject.
Vishesh Arora
3D and Motion Graphics Artist
Films RajendraBlog:
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Here is a link to a 24 frame clip of the original C300 footage. It was shot using a TrueLog profile and recorded to ProRes422HQ on a Samurai recorder.
https://chrisoben.com/test/C300_green_screen_sample.mov
I’d love to see a sample project that minimizes the noise in the subject while pulling a clean key.
It’s interesting to note the waveform on the monitor screen right. You can clearly see that the green screen was exposed at 50IRE viewed in Log mode.
btw our solution so far has been to send the project to a Nuke artist who seems to have a handle on suppressing any noise in the C300 footage. I am just hoping that AE has the tools to do this and that I simply haven’t found the right recipe yet…
Chris O.
Chris M. Oben
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hey, take a look, its not perfekt, but no (little) noise!
Dubblicate the footage / keyLight on the upper one (i addet a kurve to bust some color in it!) / set KeyLight to MATTE OUTPUT / take the lower copy of the footage / and use the upper one as luma matte
the noise is “natural”…
I did it in about 3 minutes… the key is not perfekt, but, there should be a litte “fun” left for you 😉
i realy hope this helps!!
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