Keyable graphics question?

[Debe]

To pull a proper “superblack” key, the black needs to be at least 8, but better if it’s 10 IRE lower than the the darkest part of the animation. If you have any black in the animation and it’s at the same level as the background black, it won’t work correctly.

You need a real waveform monitor to know where you’re at in real IRE. The FCP internal scopes don’t really measure true IRE. They measure things in terms of FCP units, which aren’t the same as IRE units. You can fake it, but you’ll need time to test it. You’d need to pull the animation back into FCP from the tape and try the key yourself in FCP. If you can get it to work in FCP, the next step it to test it on whatever is the intended destination/use for the animation. It may take several back and forth runs to get something that works.

The best thing to do might be to create a second alpha animation, which is your animation, but everything is turned white. Then whoever is doing the keying can marry the fill to the alpha (color animation to the white animation), and use the white alpha information to knock out the rest of the black to give your your key. In both these situations, of you’ve added a soft drop shadow to the animation, it might be problematic, and you may be better off leaving it off on your animation adding the shadow when the key is made.

If it’s a linear situation, then they’d have two tapes and marry them together that way. You can give them two tapes with timecodes that match, or they can make a copy. Make sure the animations start on an even, whole frame number, preferably a whole minute or second, and that you notate what that number is for the fill and the alpha. If it’s another NLE situation, they can just capture both and line them up on a timeline.

debe

[David Bogie]

Debe, concise and clear, thanks for the post.
I was going to make a different suggestion altogether but you took the wind right out of it!

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Debe]

Hey, Bogiesan, the more the merrier!!

I’d appreciate another take on how to accomplish what the poster is asking about! Who knows, maybe your idea will work better for Russmann!!

debe

[Debe]

…but thanks for the nod!

I’m a little too quick with that “Submit Post” button….I didn’t finish my thought process!

debe

[Bret Williams]

I’ve never ever experienced the FCP scopes being dead on. And I don’t believe there’s anything called FCP units. Perhaps you’re confused because you’re used to looking at analog scopes where black is at 7.5 IRE? In the digital world, you should be stripping setup and blacks should be at 0ire, which of course throws off all the scope settings you’re used to, like 3 black, 7.5 black, & 11 black in your setup.

[Debe]

Bret–

I use an external digital scope, and I am properly trained and I do know how to read it correctly. I don’t use the FCP scopes, and perhaps I mis-spoke, or am not remembering rightly an article I believe I read recently on Ken Stone’s or Larry Jordan’s site about how the internal FCP scopes aren’t what those of us who use dedicated external scopes are used to dealing with.

Perhaps the term FCP Units was something that was coined by the author of that wrote the article to make writing the article easier. I just did a search, and I cannot locate the original piece.

Perhaps someone remembers the article of which I speak, and might be able to come up with a URL?

Regardless, using the scopes in FCP aren’t exactly the same as using an external dedicated scope. Therefore, I didn’t feel I could give the original hard-and-fast numbers to shoot for when making his animation, for fear of giving him bad numbers to shoot for.

debe

[Debe]

Bret–

I use an external digital scope, and I am properly trained and I do know how to read it correctly. I don’t use the FCP scopes, and perhaps I mis-spoke, or am not remembering rightly an article I believe I read recently on Ken Stone’s or Larry Jordan’s site about how the internal FCP scopes aren’t what those of us who use dedicated external scopes are used to dealing with.

Perhaps the term FCP Units was something that was coined by the author of that wrote the article to make writing the article easier. I just did a search, and I cannot locate the original piece.

Perhaps someone remembers the article of which I speak, and might be able to come up with a URL?

Regardless, using the scopes in FCP aren’t exactly the same as using an external dedicated scope. Therefore, I didn’t feel I could give the original hard-and-fast numbers to shoot for when making his animation, for fear of giving him bad numbers to shoot for.

debe

[Debe]

Wow, this thread has bad juju for me! Sorry for the poor grammar and the accidental double post!!

That last ‘graph should read: “Regardless, using the scopes in FCP isn’t exactly the same as using an external dedicated scope. Therefore, I didn’t feel I could give the original poster hard-and-fast numbers to shoot for when making his animation, for fear of giving him bad numbers that I couldn’t guarantee would work.”

debe

[Russell Hill]

Thanks so much for all of the help!!!

[Russell Hill]

Can I make that Super black BKG in Photoshop? If so how?