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How do I key out this frizzy hair?
So I have been keying out this interviews on a green screen for some time now without to much of an issue, but yesterday we interviewed this lady and holy crap her frizzy hair is a nightmare! How would I go about keying something like this? The usual techniques don’t seem to work, even if i key out some of her hair, the edges are all shaky and it looks crazy.
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6 Replies
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Frizzy hair can definitely be a problem, but there are a lot of steps you can take to improve your end result.
In studio: you may want to create more distance between subject/bkgd. I can still see the grain in the canvas. Also, a bit more light on the subject is needed. Under the scopes, it looks a bit low in your midtones and highlights. Of course, this doesn’t help you much since this is all afterthought, so…
In post: I would prep this footage in Color (or w/ the 3-Way at the very least). Try to bring your midtones/highlights up, while maintaining good contrast. If you can iso the green range, you can give a lift to the greens altogether. It will help to color correct your footage before you attempt to key.
Plugins: The FCP chroma keyer or color key filters are probably not suitable to give you the best key you want. I encountered this same type of problem w/ frizzy hair and had no choice but to purchase a 3rd party keyer. With research, I went with the Primatte Keyer Pro plug-in from Red Giant. I tested this against all of FCPs native keyers, as well as the keyers in Motion and Keylight in AE. Primatte Keyer Pro will handle this frizzy hair… you may want to look into it.
“The deepest blues are black” – Foo Fighters
(this doesn’t help me when I’m chroma keying!) -
If this is in a DV25 timeline, bump this section into a higher rez format for starters. Color correct it first, then re-try the keyers. Don’t try to do it all in one keying pass. Crop or use the multipoint garbage mask matte tool to cut closely around the woman’s body, so the keyer has a shorter range to have to work over. When sampling the green, pick a spot close to the hair. Use some of the spill-killer filter. You may want to try adding some soft shadow as well.
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What Mark said. Isolate areas with mattes and adjust each key to that area’s particular challenges. And be sure to feather the edges. You may end up with many instances of the keyer.
Note that Motion includes a lite version of the Primatte keyer. While it’s not as powerful as the Pro version, IMHO it’s better than FCP’s keyer.John
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I’ve had good luck using DVMatte Pro from DV Garage. My 2 cents are now in.
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You say DV and HDV are pretty bad for chroma keying? Then what format is the best – or at least good – for it?
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I’ve also recently run into this problem. I use FCP and Motion typically for projects of the like. But I have heard that After Effects is better for Green screening. Is that true? Or is this just a typical problem for frizzy hair?
I’m already into post, so everything done in production is out of my hands at this point. I’ve been looking at the primatte keyer from Red Giant. Is there any way around this problem without spending 500 dollars for one plugin?
Obviously this is not a job for the FCP stock plugins. But even when I get it to a decent point in Motion, I’m seeing static around the hair.
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