Keylight leaving grainy footage, blue screen – black magic camera

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

The original seems to have compression artifacts. What recording format did you use?

[Frank Feijen]

Having the ‘replace method’ set to ‘none’ in stead of ‘soft colour’ might help. I usually tend to use another method for spillcorrection rather than the builtintokeylight correction.

[Tero Ahlfors]

Choose intermediate result under the view dropdown instead of final result.

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

For greenscreen work, use Prores HQ.

You should also test using video gamma instead of film gamma. At least it is worth a try. I used to use film gamma to eventually conclude it will mostly just lengthen the color correction stage considerably without (usually) adding much to the look. In many cases it works just as well the other way, you can desaturate and decrease contrast from footage shot with video gamma to get a filmlike look, but the original footage will be much closer to the final look right out of camera. That’s my experience on that matter. (Obviously, this in not true in all cases. Sometimes you will definitely want the film gamma. But perhaps not as often as you might think.)

[Dan Pelc]

the originial format is CinemaDNG. I exported from Da Vinci Resolve as an mpeg, and its flat because its still just RAW with no color grading.

[Dan Pelc]

It is so washed out because I shot it in CinemaDNG raw and isn’t color graded at all. But I exported it from Black Magic Da Vinci Resolve as an MPEG and brought that into after effects.

So I could always reexport from Da Vinci as another video file with a better codec. Is my main problem that it is flat from being shot as a RAW file and would maybe key out better if it was color graded?

Thanks
Dan

[Frank Feijen]

Can’t you work with the original DNG’s in AE? I was under the impression that this was possible, but haven’t tried it.
If not, go for the highest bitrate possible, for instance prores444.

You might be able to improve the key by grading (adjusting the levels and pushing the saturation to ‘standard’ levels) prior to keying (no need for inbetween renders, just apply these effects on the same layer first).

Shooting flat scenes in Raw seems to have become the standard, but I’ve always wondered if it doesn’t ‘downgrade’ the images when it comes to visual fx work.
The way I see it: you can have only X-amount of data per frame. Every bit that you throw away when grading is a waste. If you could shoot so that every bit of data is necessary, than you’d have more data available to pull that perfect key…

[Dan Pelc]

I’ve been working in cs5.5 so I just downloaded premiere CC 30 day trial and I was able to directly import .dng directly in. It isn’t the flat look, it has a rec709 lut color grade to it. I still get a slightly grainy matte when I key. Is this footage more realistic to get a good key out of?

Thanks
Dan

[Chris Wright]

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/1066654

[Dan Pelc]

Thank you!!