Keying Green Screen

[Boyd Mccollum]

I’ve used it a little and it works fairly well. They have a demo you can download – you should check it out for yourself and see how it stacks up to what you are currently doing.

[Michael Alberts]

We’ve had great luck with the keyer in BCC (now at v.4).

Michael Alberts
Ambidextrous Productions, Inc.

[Dan Riley]

Whats BCC ?

thanks,
dan

[Kevin Monahan]

BCC=Boris Continuum Complete: good collection of matte and key filters
DVMatte Pro is cool in FCP. I like it.
DVMatte Blast is the FXPlug version in Motion. Good for cranking out many plates and when quality is not a huge concern.
Primatte works well in Motion for some stuff.
One Bunim-Murray Onliner I talked to likes “Ultimatte” and his stuff looks damn good. But he also uses mattes (don’t we all?)

Mostly, I use the FCP keyer, but use advanced techniques like adding garbage mattes, chroma smoothing, matte choker, etc.
You can read about my techniques at kenstone.net or in my book, “Motion Graphics and Effects in FCP” (buy here at the Dairy Store).

No 2 keys are alike, therefore most FX specialists use a melange of filters and techniques. Word?

Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Workshop!
fcpworld.com
Pres. SF Cutters

[John Dehn]

Kevin:

Thanks for the input. I’ve started giving FCP’s keyer more attention and are getting better results with it. If you don’t mind another questions, do you feel that BCC or DVMatte actually get you cleaner keys or that they’re easier to use or just some of both.

Thanks again,
John

[Steve Courtney]

I’ve been feeling my way down this path recently myself. I’ve been having my best results with a combination of the BCC keyer (which gives you a better base to work with than the one in FCP) plus Final Cut’s spill-suppression. Then I add a Gaussian-blur to just the blue-channel. (Since I’m doing blue-screen.) The BCC keyer gives you more variables to play with than the built-in FCP key, and seems like a better foundation to build from.

I’m giving DVMatte some thought, but it’s like $200 for one effect. It was a lot easier to convince my paymasters to upgrade my elderly version of BCC, which has hundreds of effects for not-that-much-more money. But the DVMatte demo did seem to work pretty well. (Although it was hard to see with their annoying flickering watermark.)

But, yeah, I’m finding that it’s a combination of things that’s required, and even then I have to re-tweak the key for every shoot. Same blue-room, same lighting conditions, but changes in the model’s clothing seem to call for a re-think every single time. Good luck.

Steve