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Keying Bad Green Screen
Hi Everyone,
I have a major keying task to attend to over the next several weeks/months. It’s a feature film that was entirely shot on green screen, which was not the ideal green screen that we all see in demos and manuals. It was not always uniformly lit, sometimes had many creases and folds in it, and some other times the talent/objects were too close to it and bathed in its lovely green spill.
These are some project specs to give an idea about the footage and system used:Production:
– Camera: Sony HDW F-900 HDCAM CineAlta
– Tapes: Sony BCT-40HD
– Shooting format: 1920×1080 25pPost-Production:
– Workstation: Mac Pro 1 (Dual-Core Intel Xeon 3GHz processors –16GB RAM – NVIDIA Quadro FX4500 graphics card – MAC OS X Tiger10.4.10 operating system)
– RAID Storage: G-TECH GSPEEDXL12 Dual Host 4Gb FC with ATTO Celerity FC-42ES host adapter card
– External monitor: JVC DT-V24L1D broadcast LCD monitor
– Software: Fincal Cut Studio 2, Shake 4, Studio Artist 3, Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Production Premium.
– Capture card: Blackmagic Decklink HD Pro PCIe
– Capture VTR: Sony HDW-M2000Now, I have been looking for the most effective keying applications for the past few weeks and I ended up with the aging Primatte (in Shake) as well as the better Keylight (in both Shake and After Effects) and Zmatte (as a plug-in to After Effects). I’m also using Power Mask from Digital Film Works/Tools, which comes handy with shots with minor/no camera/talent movements where I can easily and effectively mask without having to struggle with keying a bad green screen. Adobe Ultra is not compatible with my Mac system and I’m not sure how helpful/superior it is to the other keyers like Keylight, zMatte and Primatte. I’m also thinking about Nuke’s IBK keyer, but again I’m not sure about how superior this keyer is to the other ones.
Going with Adobe Ultra or Nuke IBK is an expensive solution for me, given the system I already have, but I’m willing to take the plunge if they will add significantly more power to my keying operations beyond what I already have (Keylight, zMatte, Primatte, Power Mask). I’m also wondering if there are any hidden (or so obvious) keying gems out there that I’m missing here.
Any thoughts/experiences/comments/tips on this will be much appreciated.
Many thanks,
Ayman -
5 Replies
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Maltaannon demonstrates a set of plugins that I think you haven’t mentioned here: check out his tutorial near the top of the list at maltaannon.com.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
[Ayman Farahat] “Going with Adobe Ultra or Nuke IBK is an expensive solution for me, given the system I already have, but I’m willing to take the plunge if they will add significantly more power to my keying operations beyond what I already have (Keylight, zMatte, Primatte, Power Mask). I’m also wondering if there are any hidden (or so obvious) keying gems out there that I’m missing here.”
Ultra is a “virtual set” program, not just a keyer. Think of Ultra as a program that creates those virtual walk-on/walk-through sets that you see in news shows, commercials and documentaries, etc. It’s a nice program but a little bit on the cheesy side for a lot of it.
You have four of the best keyers already with Keylight, Primatte, zMatte and Power Mask. I don’t think you need any more keyers. ;o)
What do you think of Power Mask in your experience with it?
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net -
You seem to have some decent gear and presumably some experience with keying, so I would say beyond the tools you have, the only extra thing you can add is some elbow grease and some creative masking techniques. Sometimes it’s a matter of motion tracking an object and breaking a shot up into multiple precomps etc. to get it working. It all depends on how determined you are.
Failing that, it comes down to re-shooting whatever is impossible to work with (which nobody likes to hear).
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The only thing I’d consider adding to your arsenal is Key Correct from Red Giant Software. Key Correct can be a real time (and life) saver when dealing with poor greenscreen footage. It can even help to get a pretty decent key from DV footage (which, we all know, is not easy).
I’ve gotta agree with Ron, about Ultra virtual sets being cheesy. I played with Ultra just before Adobe bought it, and haven’t bothered with it since. I’d rather put in the time to create my own (slightly less cheesy, LOL) CG environments. Of course, there may sometimes be projects that are well suited to cheesiness (is that a word?). If (or, should I say, when) one of those comes my way, I might possibly consider Ultra for the job.
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…and even then, if you’re on a mac platform, it’s probably not worth having just one PC app in your arsenal.
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