keying out white

[Joseph Springer]

You may want to try adjusting the new background that your subject will be over, some are more forgiving than others (for example a lighter color might disguise the white better)..

Regards,
Joe Springer
Certified Adobe After Effects Training and Premiere Training Instructor

[David Bogie]

Keying out white behind a black costume is difficult to impossible unless you are shooting very high resolution material. You did not state your video format but if it’s DV, you are in for some very unpleasant results. Just zoom in to 800% on the raw footage item and check the pixelation on the edges. Your keyer cannot do any better than that.

The best keying in AE requires multiple copies of the same layer and many different tools applied to each layer. Matte chokers, feathers, light wrap. You may need to create a copy that is totally black and white to pull a decent matte. You may need to replace the white with green in order to fake a chromakey for one copy of the layer. You may need to reshoot against blue or green. What you’re trying to do is more of linear key and your foreground contains lots of linear information.

Wish I had better news to offer. Evaluate some third party keyers like Boris (which ahs a fabulous edge renderer). But, worst case, you many want to consider reshooting with better video and a proper key set.

bogiesan

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

[Kevin Camp]

you might try aharon rabinowitz’s super tight junk mattes technique (find his tutorial on his bio page or on the tutorials page).

you’ll then want to do the reverse of expanding the mask layer, to tighten in on the footage. this layer will be your ‘core’ image.

next you need to create an edge layer… duplicate the footage (no matte, or with a matte set to expand the edges of the mask) and apply unmult or xmult (both are free plugins) to the footage and place it bellow the core image. this should remove the white, you may need to use levels to make the backgound totally white prior to unmult/xmult. alternately, you may be able to try setting the edge layer to multiply…

it’s hard to say how well this technique would work, or what problems you can expect to encounter without seeing the footage, or a frame of it.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Steve Roberts]

[david bogie] “You may need to reshoot against blue or green.”

The DP may have thought that black and white are opposites, so it would make a great key. Wrong. They’re both shades of gray. If the talent needed to be wearing black, the DP needed to introduce colour on the background, such as a pure, saturated green, to make the key useable.

This is all well and good after the fact, but hopefully the DP will learn from this so it doesn’t happen again.

[Kevin Camp]

if you try the above method and tyr unmult/xmult to the edge layer, you will need to first apply invert to the footage… both those effects will only remove black from the layer…

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Matthew Mccarter (macattack)]

Try duplicating your footage and using the second instance as an inverted luma matte. If the edges appear grainy, apply a fast blur to the top layer. My first assumption would be people are making a bigger deal out of this than it needs to be.

[Matthew Mccarter (macattack)]

Oh and if it doesn’t look right, check out Andrew Kramer’s tutorial on Advanced Sky Replacement. He covers procedural mattes in there.