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Keying with the EX1
Still trying to get up to speed with my new EX1. Working with chroma keying now with a key, fill, and highlight. Flat and evenly lit green screen with subject 8 feet from screen. Camera distance to subject is 10 feet. Waveform monitor shows luma from 75 to 95 on subject and 30 to 40 on the green screen. Video is HQ 1080/30P imported into FCP 6.0.2 via XDCAM Transfer. FCP sequence timeline is 1920 x 1080 HDTV 16:9 with a compressor setting of XDCAM EX 1080p30/35 Mb/s VBR.
Current experiments show best results using the Nattress 4:2:0 chroma sharpening filter with the “smooth then sharpen” setting before using the FCP chroma key filtering. The unfiltered image shows excellent detail and want to preserve as much as possible when chroma keying.
Suggestions?
Thanks!
TG
TG
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5 Replies
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Terry, have you tried keying from a straight HDSDI footage capture to a HDD using say ProResHQ rather than the mpg files?
Should be a lot better I guess if you’re in a studio situation with the Mac/PC and a HDD available.
Alan
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While I concur with Alan’s suggestion to record the HDSDI out of the camera to a format that bypasses the MPEG2 4:2:0 subsampling, I would also highly recommend using just about any other keyer than the plugin built into Final Cut, which is extremely primitive.
If you want to keep it inside of Final Cut check out Conduit from dvGarage. It does much much better keying than FCP’s, and it’s pretty darn inexpensive to boot.
You may find that you get perfectly acceptable keys for your application even with the 4:2:0 sampling once you’re using better software.—
Jesse Rosen
Director of Technical Development
Abel Cine Tech, Inc.
http://www.bustedskull.com -
Off course, as Alan and Jess suggested, if you could record from the SDI you would have an Unc 422 signal. Much better for keying.
About the Nattress Chroma Smoothing/Sharpening there is not much point to use it in a 420 sequence. You need to apply it in 420 footage but change the sequence to Prores or 8/10b Unc if you want the filter work properly. You can not smooth the chroma in a format that have only one chroma sample per block (420/411). You need at least two chroma samples per block to appreciate the smoothing. I haven’t tried yet with with the EX-1 footage (I’ve got my camera today) but this is the way its works in SD.PPC G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM/BlackMagic SD/PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM
JVC DTV-17″/FCS2/AE CS3/COMBUSTION/SHAKE -
Thanks everyone for the suggestions. On the road this week, so next weekend, I’ll ingest directly from the camera and see how it goes. I downloaded Conduit and the dvmatte pro3 trials and am working through the manuals and instructional videos. Conduit looks like a very powerful tool with many more uses besides keying. In 2 minutes time, the dvmatte product produced a key much better than the FCP keyer and an hour of tweaking using the previously described EX1 clips. I can see practical uses for both products.
Thanks again!
Terry GriffeyP.S. Jesse – Some kudos go to your sales staff. Great service on last order.
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Just a note – very good pricing on the dvmatte and Conduit software bundle until 2/20 – nice tutorials on the products and seems to be quite a bit of flexibility and creative uses for the Conduit product.
Thanks!
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