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Step away from the Apple Keyer now! (And build a better one of your own.)
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As far as keyers go it’s the most intelligent, wonderfully designed keyer I’ve ever seen. Just doesn’t quite get you all the way there on fine detail or edges. Especially with compressed footage. I had some material that I had AVCHD 1080p versions, and access yo the sony RAW verIons. The raw can’t be read by X yet, but I was able to transfer it to prores 4444 via resolve and it keyed pretty darn well. Although I was downscaling in a 1080p sequence. So the problems might have been the same on a pixel for pixel size basis.
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Luckily I was only testing some new lights when this happened. I had a co-worker stand in on the green screen. He was wearing a light blue shirt. I took the footage into X and as soon as I dropped the keyer on the clip it keyed out his shirt. I selected the green (it even showed up in the color range as nothing but green) but would not let go of the blue in his shirt. Nothing I tried worked. Same result every time. Guy with a see-through shirt on a green background. Same clip in Ultra keyed just fine.
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Weird, I’ve had much different results. While I agree with Simon in that the edge detail is, uh… difficult to get a sharp key on, it works ridiculously well on fairly crappy green/blue screen stuff. It needs some love, but it can get great results without a lot of work or, in my case, not much keying expertise. 😉
I’m cutting some stuff from an early version of a feature, so it’s all raw, ungraded dailies. I got some really great looking keys just by dropping it on the clip and selecting a some color ranges. Like, surprisingly good considering a lot of the blue/green backgrounds were fairly… awful. And that’s being charitable.
Also, though I’m just working on advertising for it, it’s probably a 100 million dollar movie!
No, not that one. 😉
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
Thank you for this Simon, I learned a lot today !
Patrice
Patrice Freymond
Editor Certified Trainer FCP7/X
Post ConsultantAlways learning…
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[Bret Williams] “As far as keyers go it’s the most intelligent, wonderfully designed keyer I’ve ever seen. Just doesn’t quite get you all the way there on fine detail or edges.”
[Charlie Austin] “While I agree with Simon in that the edge detail is, uh… difficult to get a sharp key on, it works ridiculously well”
Sorry to disagree but …
To say that a keyer works “ridiculously”, “wonderfully” well but it doesn’t resolve edge detail is like saying you’ve got a “ridiculously”, “wonderfully” great car but it doesn’t go round corners.
Don’t take my word for it – ask any expert and they’ll tell you that resolving edge detail is the acid test of whether or not a keyer is fit for purpose. And the Apple keyer is quite clearly not fit for purpose on this basis.
it’s a great keyer for a world where the roads only go in straight lines, but even you guys over the pond must need to pull into a gas station once in a while and what do you do then?
The cold, hard reality is that keying is a world with pretty much only tricky corners and very few nice straight roads.
Going back to your gag, Bret, it’s fine for keying bald men wearing very tight clothing who move very slowly indeed, but it’s not often that you’re gifted with such delightful material.
The reason I’m labouring this point is that it’s not the same discussion as whether or not one thinks FCP X is fit for purpose, which is largely a matter of taste rather than objective measurement (although there are three key things missing which make it not “fit for purpose” for my particular workflow niche, much as I like it otherwise).
The Apple Keyer fails the “fit for purpose” test because it doesn’t satisfy the key (sorry) requirement for any keyer. Cutting a hole out of your greenscreen is not the test – it’s whether it can do so in a manner that has sufficient precision and subtlety to create a great composite.
To repeat the essential point – resolving edge detail is the universally accepted objective test of whether a keyer is good enough.
Apple’s is not.
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Patrice Freymond] “Thank you for this Simon, I learned a lot today !”
That’s great to hear, thanks.
Although I’ve shown these techniques in Apple Motion, they are of course equally applicable if you’re working in any other compositing software.
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Shawn Miller] “Totally agree. I think I first heard about Conduit from Alex Lindsay at NAB a number of years ago. I really loved the mission; to make a stable, powerful and inexpensive compositing tool that didn’t require a fire breathing beast of a machine (like everything from Autodesk did). I believe I purchased a license that night when I got back to my hotel room. “
It was actually Conduit that go me into the wonderful world of compositing in the first place – it was an amazing discovery. There’s no better place to start learning and the results you can get with it are pretty much as good as it gets.
[Shawn Miller] “Even so, I also wish Conduit was more popular. It’s one of those tools that everyone should be using. I mean, the core application is free, isn’t it? And if I’m not mistaken, the advanced add on pack (or whatever it’s called) is like $100 US… right?”
I couldn’t agree more. It’s a ridiculously good deal – it was incredibly cheap before but the new free version is a no-brainer and you can do truly amazing things with it.
[Shawn Miller] “Now I’m slowly embracing MambaFX, hoping that the industry acceptance of Mystika will fund further development.”
Yes, that’s looking pretty interesting. I did a bit of work on Jaleo about 15 years ago and it was powerful but horrendously badly designed and I moved onto DS instead. But it’s looking much more promising these days.
As you say, best to try and know as much as you can about everything 😉
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] “Although I’ve shown these techniques in Apple Motion, they are of course equally applicable if you’re working in any other compositing software.”
Funny you mention as I mirrored this technique for the despill in Ae last night (still used keylight for the initial matte).
Dare I say, it’s easier in Motion as you can see the group contents all at once instead of constantly jumping in and out of Ae precomps. Am I allowed to say these things in public?
Then, of course, clone layers.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Dare I say, it’s easier in Motion as you can see the group contents all at once instead of constantly jumping in and out of Ae precomps. Am I allowed to say these things in public?
Then, of course, clone layers.”
I was hoping someone than me would point out this rather surprising fact 😉
But yes, indeed, it’s certainly quite elegant – and clones are a genius idea.
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] “Sorry to disagree but …
To say that a keyer works “ridiculously”, “wonderfully” well but it doesn’t resolve edge detail is like saying you’ve got a “ridiculously”, “wonderfully” great car but it doesn’t go round corners.”
No need to be sorry.. I mean, you’re right. I guess I should qualify my praise and say that it works ridiculously wonderfully well for my purposes. That being quickly and easily getting a decent looking key from barely adequate green/blue screen material for an offline presentation.
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~
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