Premiere Ultra Key vs. After Effects Keylight – which is better?

[Todd Kopriva]

Ultra Key is optimized for dealing with footage with heavy compression, and it’s designed to be simple to use (at the loss of some fine control).

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects product manager and curmudgeon
After Effects team blog
———————————————————————————————————

[Tl Westgate]

That’s sort of a non-answer. But it sounds like you’re implying Keylight is better?

— TL

[John Fishback]

I’ll throw out another option – Hawaiki Keyer. Check it out. It looks like a very powerful keyer. In a head-to-head with Keylight, I think it wins. It works with FCPX, Motion 5, Premiere Pro and AfterFX.

[Stephen Smith]

I agree with Dave. But I have to say, coming from FCP 7. Ultra Key is amazing for an editing program keyer. When I’m in a hurry I use it and I have been very happy with the results. It handles close up and medium shot interviews well. I think Keylight is better but if you are trying to save time I say give the work flow to Ultra Key in Premiere a chance and see what you think.

Stephen Smith

Utah Video Productions

Check out my Vimeo page

[Jeff Cipin]

From my experience, Ultra Key is a very good built-in keyer – if you’re pulling a very undemanding key. For me, the workflow required to use Keypoint in After Effects was a non-starter in my search for an additional keyer.

After fairly extensive testing of Primatte Keyer 5.1, Chroma Key Pro, Phyx and Hawaiki Keyer 2.0 I’ve decided that the latter (and oddly enough least expensive) works best for the keying problem I’m currently dealing with. Wispy blond hair. Not sayin’ my testing was “scientific” but I have found what I think is good solution.

Jeff