Keylight for Hollywood movies

[Chris Wright]

I gather you’re trying to find the best one that you can afford, not the most expensive and best. I have tried many and primatte keyer is unbelievable. You can key anything, super poor lighting, green fuzzy carpet, low rez video. It needs no fiddling or goofy workflow with layers and blurs. It’s fast and simple and fun to click around. Just shoot 1/100th shutter and deinterlace with algolith or fieldskit beforehand will give best results. AE’s field separate is kinda hokey. Download the primatte tutorial is fun to watch and will turn you into a better keyer than 90% of people in a matter of minutes because the tutorial uses all the problems people run into. spill, artifacts, etc. AE’s keyer is crap.

[Tim Kolb]

[Chris Wright] “AE’s keyer is crap.”

Are you referring to Keylight?

I suspect the guys at the Foundry (makers of Nuke, Furnace, Tinder, and…Keylight) might disagree with your assessment of their keying software…

It’s not a single button/single layer key…but for the best control over different matte edges, often several layers of source with different matte parameters are preferable…

Keylight works quite well for me. I also like Ultimatte…but I’ve also used (now Adobe) Ultra and had success on a few projects. Different tools for different jobs.

Preferring Primatte is certainly your right, but ‘crap’?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

CPO, Digieffects

[Chris Wright]

older keying discussion:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/937308#937350

[Brendan Coots]

I really disagree with this assessment. First of all, I’ve worked on three mega-budget features with huge teams of people all using Keylight. In the right hands, it works fantastically.

Secondly, Primatte is a decent keyer but it has workflow limitations that Keylight does not, and in my experience Primatte makes for an EASY key, but it doesn’t always give a GOOD key. I saw in your link someone raving that Primatte managed to pull a hard-edged, unrealistic key for someone trying to key out their carpet. While that says a lot about how good it may be for rank amateurs who want a one-click solution, that doesn’t really tell us much in terms of how it performs in professional situations.

In response to the poster’s question, most big-budget shops use Apple Shake or Nuke for their compositing, which allows you to basically build your own keying tool from scratch. Down here on earth, most people use Keylight, Primatte or Ultimatte.

Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com

[Chris Wright]

Thank you for your opinion. As to the right software, it comes down to what your workflow is and if you have a team or just yourself and a 3 hour deadline. I am not saying that primatte is better than keylight in a perfect situation, but if a client shot something wrong and needs it fixed, am I going to use primatte or keylight? Keylight works for well shot projects. I mean, they use it for blockbusters such as Harry Potter. They use complicated multi mattes and so on. Keylight is a workhorse, but a 6 team workhorse that needs a perfectly lit room. In my opinion, an editor will pull less hair out and smile more with primatte.

[Brendan Coots]

I would generally agree with this. I only even bothered responding because you said Keylight was crap and I felt that needed a rebuttal.

I will add that I have had a LOT of success getting one-step keys with Keylight.

Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com

[Clyde Villegas]

Thanks guys for your help. I’m quite comfortable with Keylight right now, so I’m gonna stick to it for a while. But I’ll try to look for a primatte trial too. I went to Apple’s website and saw Shake. It’s awesome but I think After Effects can do most jobs also… I’m just not sure if AE can work on very large images like Shake.