Ultra Key – green screen

[Kevin Monahan]

What was your source footage??

Kevin Monahan
Sr. Content and Community Lead
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Systems, Inc.
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[Vince Becquiot]

Hi Eric,

The screen is a bit under lit to my taste, I usually light at around 45-50 ires on the screen itself to get a bit more saturation in the greens, but you’ll also need some distance to avoid spill.

You problem though, is mostly noise. This will always show up on matte edges. My advice in this case would be applying a denoiser first. This is the software that I use, and you can download to see for yourself.

For more advanced keying, I would look at After Effects with either Keylight, or Red Giant Primatte.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Eric Pokorny]

Thanks Vince,
I didn’t think about a denoiser first.
I tried using Keylight in after effects but it obliterates his grey tweed jacket (and i can’t dial in anything worth working with – so i stuck with premiere) My distance is pretty short and I had to make due with the space I had. I’ll check out the software you link to above.

Dell Precision
win7
16G
quadro 2000
CS6

[Paul Neumann]

Post a couple of seconds of the original clip on Vimeo or somewhere and let’s all have a whack at it.

[Eric Pokorny]

Here is what I am working with.
for sure didn’t have the screen hot enough.
I am only using premiere and don’t have any plugins (on a budget)
Any help is greatly appreciated

DVCProHD 720/30
(1.3333)

I uploaded an AVI here
https://vimeo.com/44472468
Password = help

[Eric Pokorny]

posted

Dell Precision
win7
16G
quadro 2000
CS6

[Jon Barrie]

Try this:
4325_ultrakeydarkgreentweaksuiteskills.prfpset.zip

Cheers JB

Jon Barrie
Adobe Video Solutions Consultant ANZ
Jon’s YouTube Tutorial Page
follow Jon with twitter

[Eric Pokorny]

way better… i think i might try that neat noise reducer plugin to see if it helps with the jacket overall but for the project i need to turn out this will get it done.

Thanks Jon

[Jon Barrie]

Good Luck. Glad to have helped.

Cheers JB

Jon Barrie
Adobe Video Solutions Consultant ANZ
Jon’s YouTube Tutorial Page
follow Jon with twitter

[Anthony Marotti]

Hello All

I know this is an old post but I hope someone finds it and responds.

I have run numerous experiments and must disagree with the noise theory… that being “noise in the original footage is causing the problems in UltraKey”… and I’ll explain.

First I’ll state my theory: The PremierePro CS6 and UltraKey combination are creating the noise.

My Camera is a GH4, which is known for being a bit noisy at high ISOs in low light, however I removed this behavior from my tests.

My Test Technique

I shot footage against a green screen at all different ISOs and in various formats. I used super fast lenses and slower lenses. I shot at different exposures from overexposed to underexposed, and pulled all of them into PP CS6 and keyed them with UltraKey.

I ran the gambit as far as different shooting conditions to see what would get me the best results for keying.

I always noticed noisy keys using PP but I attributed it to my camera gear being noisy. But when I got the GH4 and was shooting 4K at 100mb I thought that I could get a clean key easy enough… But even though better than 2 K, and pretty darn good, I still got noise when keying.

I have been on a quest for clean keys for some time now and am reaching a frustration level that doesn’t correspond with my Zen like approach to life.

This latest set of test were meant to test different lenses to determine if they made much of a difference and whether I should pick up a new lens for my small studio (wider angle).

What I found surprised me. I discovered that I could get a cleaner key by correctly exposing, or even underexposing rather than slightly overexposing.

The reason that I was surprized is that I thought underexposing would create more noise and therefore lend itself to the theory that the noise I experienced in keying was a result of noise present in the original footage.

So if underexposing should create more noise in my original footage, why did it give me a better key than slightly overexposed footage that should have less noise??

After some thought I revisited a previous opinion that I had. I thought that PP might be adding noise to my clips once I applied UltraKey. After reading some posts here I dismissed that as being the case and continued looking for a solution.

Well after my recent tests I am leaning heavily toward my original opinion that UltraKey, in communion with PP, is creating the noise.

Analyzing my footage, both in and out of PP, I concluded that the original footage was extremely clean and most of my test footage was, what I would consider as close to noise free as any footage I have ever reviewed.

So if my footage was very clean with no detectable noise, why did the footage get noisy after applying UltraKey?

Again I looked at the footage very carefully and did not see any noise in the areas that I tested until I brought it into PP and applied UltraKey.

And I’m not just looking at output files that had been compressed, I see the same results in PP prior to export.

So I am convinced that the combination of PP and UltraKey is the problem, but I would love to be proven wrong or lead to a solution.

What say you?

Thanks in advance for your constructive feedback!

Anthony

AM 🙂