I am DESPERATE for expertise. PLEASE HELP!

[Simon Webb]

I ran into a similar problem myself some time ago and my solution was to run the Magic Bullet Suite in After Effects (making sure to use the 4:1:1 de-artifactor which, by default, is off), then rendering out an uncompressed QuickTime which was then used as the element for keying in Combustion.

It worked surprisingly well despite the DREADFULLY SLOW After Effects render time.

I’m not sure if what I’ve written will help you in any way, I’m afraid, but good luck. I have my fingers crossed for ya!

[Jeff Carpenter]

You may find some info here that helps you, but as a last resort if you don’t I would suggest this: Hire someone else to do this.

It IS possible to key DV footage well but it’s more of an art than a science. If you needed a painting of someone you’d be far better off paying an artist than spending the time to learn to paint. I see this as the same thing given that you have a deadline. You CAN learn to do this yourself but now might not be the time.

Edit your video FIRST and then give ONLY the footage you’re using over to the person to work on (with 1 second of extra footage on either end). They’ll charge you by their time so don’t have them work on more than you need.

It might not come to this, but whenever I have a deadline I like a “Plan Z” to fall back on. You should consider this and start calling people now to find out availability, timing, and price just in case it comes to this.

[Frank Nolan]

Wow, I feel your pain. I bet you wish now you had spent about 10% of your 2 day research time before you actually shot the interviews. I have seen some fairly decent keying done with DV footage in FCP although I have never seen it projected to a 12×12 screen. Unfortunately, being that you have tried so many different options, all with similar results, your problem may go a lot deeper than the keying options you are trying. It may have to do with the lighting used and possibly the seperation between your subject and the green screen, in which case no matter what you try you will end up with similar results.

[Graeme Nattress]

If DVMATTE is not working, the problem is with your footage/lighting, not DV’s 4:1:1. The key to getting a greenscreen to work is not the tape format, but the lighting.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Appledude]

That at least sounds somewhat enlightning. However, I do not own After Effects for my mac. I do have it for my Premiere Pro System. I would hate to have to turn on Premiere Pro and go through all of that hoopla. Thanks for the info. What file format should I export from FCP the de-artifact filtering? Should it be uncompressed quicktime or uncompressed 8bit or ???

[Appledude]

You guys have some really good ideas but regarding hiring out.. what is someone going to be doing any differently other than rotoscoping? I think that I can learn from people’s successes here with this particular issue at hand.

[Appledude]

ok, the lighting was fairly good for keying and the separation was good. If I don’t get anyone here to perhaps offer some unique solutions for a fix, can you guys tell me Who or What type of freelancer I should be seeking in order to get what I need? thanks

[Appledude]

Hey, another question: Should I de-interlace my footage before keying. Should I render it de-interlaced out of FCP or de-interlace when captured in Combustion or Shake? Actually, if de-interlacing is the way to go then what do I do with the export? Depending on the export of the footage whether it be back into the FCP timeline or compressed to mpeg2 from another program, does it come out interlaced in the end anyway? It just seems like everyone is saying to deinterlace before keying and I don’t see what the difference is in the long run?

[Debe]

It’ll never be perfect, but you certainly can get better results than some of the horrific keys I see on those “Top 100 This-or-That” shows on VH-1 or the like using DV footage if you’re patient and diligent. You need to make use of the Matte Choker, the Color Smoother, and the some of the third-party keyers like DVmatte if you can’t get the Color Keyer or Chroma Keyer to work. G-Nicer from Graeme Nattress is also helpful instead of the Color Smoother. Sometimes both help. Sometime both fight each other.

It’s art and science. It’s a ton of tweaking and a ton of patience. It’s knowing which way to “hark on the knobs” after you look at the key. It’s more renders than you can think of, and it has to be full renders, ‘cos if it looks good spot checking through the shot, there’s always going to be that second when they shake their head and their hair goes funky, or turn and their glasses disappear…or something. Partial resolution renders don’t get you very far.

I did a series of DV keys last winter that were shown at a large business meeting, projected on a screen. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know how big the screen was. There were some crawly edges here and there, and there were some eyeglass frames that disappeared, but the budget didn’t allow for taking it to an uncompressed online suite to finish. The client was happy with the results. The limitations of the format were recognized, and next time, they probably will make a different decision, but it wasn’t unuseable, it just wasn’t as flawless as we’d all hoped it could be.

If this is your first experience with keying, I do suggest you make some noise among your colleagues in your area and see if you can scare up someone with a little bit of a background in this. You will find yourself wanting to punch out a wall after a while, especially if you don’t have enough background of your own to really have a grip of key theory yet. This one sounds like an extra huge job.

debe

[Aaron Neitz]

Not sure of your hardware – but try loading your tape into FCP with a DV deck that has SDI out – capture at 10bit Uncompressed. Sometimes the hardware upsampling to SDI will help smooth out the edges and get you a better key. But, end of day, there will be a lot of roto.