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Keylight Plug-in in FCP
I’m working on a composited green screen piece, shot in 720. I’m doing the keying using the recently released plug-in “Keylight” for Final Cut. The results have been pretty good. Much, much better than either the chroma key or blue/green screen filters that come with Final Cut.
Has anybody tried an A/B comparison between Keylight in FCP vs. Keylight in After Effects. I’ve been using Motion for my “motion graphics” needs, and haven’t upgraded A/E since version 6. My results were very good in FCP, but I’m wondering how much better the plug-in works in A/E than in FCP.
MacPro 3.2ghz 8 core, 4 Gbyte RAM, FCP 6.0.3, OS X.5.2
QT7.4.5, Kona3 (v5.1), Atto FC41-ES, 8TB Custom RAID-striped RAID 3.
NVidia Geoforce 8800GT -
7 Replies
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It is easier to garbage matte things in AE depending on how bad the greenscreen was shot. I was actually curious to see how Keylight works from within FCP? Is it fast and stable? I would love to stay in FCP as it is less work sort of… I have been very happy and or lucky with the results. Some where there is a $1500 greenscreen keying plugin that is supposed to be the end all be all. I am quite happy with built into AE Keylight. I am however doing sit-down interviews and not the next star wars.
James
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Keylight in FCP works just like any filter. Just drag it onto the clip, use the eye dropper to pick a color(green or blue), then fine tune. The fine tuning(I assume is similar to AE) includes screen gain and balance, alpha bias and despill bias, nine adjustments for screen matte. There are also crops, source crops, edge and foreground color correction, tuning adjustments, and inside masks .There is a view menu to see 11 different options. It rendered very quickly, and stability was never an issue. I noticed on several occasions with a lot of adjustments to the filter, the viewr took a beat to “build” the composite frame, but it was no different than waiting for a sapphire filter to composite.
After playing around trying many of the adjustments, I found the best results were to just let the software do the work. Pic the color with the picker, then a slight screen gain adjustment, a modest amount of despill, and that’s all I needed for a great looking key. Especially around a tennis racquet, where all the strings keyed through nicely even though the racquet was moving through the green screen. (I was worried about that). I even got some nice natural shadows to key through. Out of the eight shots I keyed, only one needed any special treatment beyond basic adjustments. Overall I was quite happy with the $250 plug-in filter.
That $1,500 plug-in must be the Ultimatte. I’ve used the hardware version, but not the software plug-in.
MacPro 3.2ghz 8 core, 4 Gbyte RAM, FCP 6.0.5, OS X.5.6
QT7.5.5, Kona3 (v6.1), Atto FC41-ES, 8TB Custom RAID-striped RAID 3.
NVidia Geoforce 8800GT -
[James Sullivan] “I was actually curious to see how Keylight works from within FCP? Is it fast and stable?”
Absolutely.
I have tested many keyers over the years.
There is no NLE based keyer that can touch Keylight (running in final cut pro)
for performance and capability.It takes very little effort to get a great key, even from un evenly lit footage.
It’s a dream come true.
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Just curious, Chris, if you tried the same key in AE and compared them?
MacPro 3.2ghz 8 core, 4 Gbyte RAM, FCP 6.0.5, OS X.5.6
QT7.5.5, Kona3 (v6.1), Atto FC41-ES, 8TB Custom RAID-striped RAID 3.
NVidia Geoforce 8800GT -
[Scott Shucher] “if you tried the same key in AE and compared them?”
oh yeah.
I had keylight in AE for 2 years prior to the fcp version release.
we use it exclusively for AE keying work.
I kept telling one of my editors….”now if only there was a fcp version….”
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where can I buy it? who has the best price? I’m looking at Toolfarm.
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Check out http://www.thefoundry.co.uk
You can download a 14 day demo to try it out, or buy it.
I did an A/B comparison using Keylight between FCP and After Effects with no discernible difference in the quality of the key. The settings are nearly identical in both versions. (Although AE will give you some other compositing options that are part of AE)
MacPro 3.2ghz 8 core, 4 Gbyte RAM, FCP 6.0.5, OS X.5.6
QT7.5.5, Kona3 (v6.1), Atto FC41-ES, 8TB Custom RAID-striped RAID 3.
NVidia Geoforce 8800GT
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