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Rendering HDV Chroma Key clips BEFORE dragging to the timeline?
Hi COW Colleagues…
Ive got loads of interview clips with green screen that Ive dragged a nice tight chroma key onto, but how do I force FCP to render the key into each clip? I’ve got an eight core Mac pro but it cant play the HDV clips smoothly and I therefore want the chroma key rendered out BEFORE I drag them into the timeline
ANy suggestions? Selectin them all and then slecting render all / render selection..render only…etc etc DOES NOT WORK 🙂 Its grayed out
Currently my only solution (ugly ) is to drag them ALL to the timeline, THEN rendering is an option, THEN delete them from the timeline..
Clumsy. But is this the only way?
(Ive serached here but other users asking the same question have not had answers that understand what the questioner was asking, so I’m asking here for their sake and mine!)
many thanks
DL
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4 Replies
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I think rendering them can only happen once a clip is on the timeline. You can export them out of FCP via Quicktime conversion as Animation Codec .mov’s.
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What you asking for is just impossible.
You want those clips with the background transparent.
To do that you must apply a Chroma Key.
To do so you need to put your clips in the time-line because is the only place you can apply any effect in FC.
Of course not only you have to render, you also need to export in Animation or any other codec that supports Alpha Channel (transparency). HDV can not.
So put your clips in a HDV sequence and change the codec to Animation Millions of Colors +.
Apply your Chroma Key to get rid of the background and export.
Reimport with the transparency ready.
rafael -
Hi Rafael
I;’m grateful for what you say but “To do so you need to put your clips in the time-line because is the only place you can apply any effect in FC. ” isnt entirely correct, from what I understand, in as much as you can drag a chroma key effect from the list of effects onto a clip in the browser and then from then on that clip will have the chroma key effect, and any other clips you do the same thing to, what I’m trying to is then leave these to render out so they can be added and edited in the timeline without having to have poor playback just because they have alpha.
So I guess put another way, I need to find a way to batch render the alpha out and back in, though that itself might be a pain!
I think when all is said and done, I probabluy want to try and look at a prores solution as my Mac Eight Core takes ages to render 5 video tracks (video+aplpha(chroma), 3D HD motion title, 2D Motion HD lower 3rd,HD 2D motion background, HD still background) (HD=HDV 1080i)
20 secodns of that takes 55 minutes!! I think that HAS to be quicker if I can figure out the right workflow – but Iv e never used ProRes and havent found the definitive idiots guide to workflow 🙂
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You are absolutely right that you can drop any filter to a clip in the Browser and adjust the filter in the Viewer. But then what? What you want to do with that clip on the Browser?
If you export the clip from the Browser you have to render it as Animation or so anyway.
And another question: Will you try to adjust a Chroma Key in the Viewer?
I don’t think is the place to see if you are getting a good key or not. You can’t do that without being able to change the background.
Cheers,
rafael
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