Whats a good camera for Green Screening in Adobe?

[Andrew Weinstein]

I would agree with all of Andrew Yoole’s comments. Just a couple of additions/nits.

“Get a low-end HDV camera with true uncompressed HDMI output. The Canon HV20 is a perfect example. This will give you native uncompressed 1920×1080 output from the HDMI port, which is the BEST way to achieve quality keying.”
True, BUT the files of uncompressed HDMI are humongous. The file size from the HF100 (AVCHD) is a small fraction of the size. It is not a great low light camcorder and if you are shooting alot of action with quick moving things, it is subject to slightly more artifacts. But if you are shooting greenscreen of talking heads with good lighting (needed anyway for a decent key anyway) the results are outstanding with the HF100 and the file sizes are miniscule compared to uncompressed HDMI. You always have the option of doing a live feed of uncompressed HDMI from the HF100 using the Black Magic Intensity card if you decide the quality from AVCHD (which FCP converts to Pro Res) is not sufficient. When transferring AVCHD to the computer there is NEVER an issue of a dropped frame, as it is being transferred, not captured. But he is right. Uncompressed HD from HDMI feed is the highest quality option (though done right, the difference with well lit AVCHD is not visible unless you do some serious pixel peeping).

“CHEAP choice: No Apple RAID card. Just install the three new drives and stripe them as RAID 0. Con: No data protection if one of the drives fails. ”
This is how I do it, though I set up a RAID with 2 drives, not 3. The Mac OS has a very simple approach to setting up a RAID with internal drives. Just make sure all the drives for the RAID are identical. I had zero experience setting up an internal RAID and it just took a couple of mouse clicks. Cost is 0. I cannot emphasize enough how simple it is to do. While not quite as robust as using a card it is more than fast enough for all but uncompressed HD (actually, I’ve never worked with uncompressed HD in any meaningful way so I don’t really know from first hand experience whether or not the software RAID is sufficient for this).

[Matthew Lamond]

Everyone,
Thanks for all the info you have given me. this has been a very hard to task to accomplish for i do not know much about this. Now i plan on buying most of my stuff of a third party vendor. but still a few more questions. when you say no raid card and just stipe the drives in a raid 0. can i do that without a raid card? also, if i have 3 1TB hard drives setup in a raid where do i back up my data to if one fails? where do i keep my OS and software? and i can afford raid 5 since i will be buying all my harddrives from a third party. as long as you feel mac pro raid card is good i will get that unless you have a third party recomendation. and one last question. should i record my video onto the camera then use the HDMI to record it from the tape in case i have to film off location? i mean while in office i can have my pc setup next to the camera and can record straight onto my PC through HDMI.

[Matthew Lamond]

i plan on buying the HF100 per your recomendation. Andrew is there any way i could see some of your work to show for example why my company should buy this camera?

[Andrew Weinstein]

“when you say no raid card and just stipe the drives in a raid 0. can i do that without a raid card?”
Yes. The Mac OS will let you set up a RAID, software only. Nothing additional to buy/install.

“if i have 3 1TB hard drives setup in a raid where do i back up my data to if one fails?”
Same place you would back up to if it were simply a single drive. For $500 you can get an external 2 TB external RAID 0 and back up to this.

“where do i keep my OS and software? ”
On the System drive, which is separate and apart from your RAID setup. So, if you are going to have a 3 drive RAID, you would need 4 drives altogether; 1 for the OS/software/etc and 3 for the RAID. Then of course the external drives for backup are additional.

“i can afford raid 5 since i will be buying all my harddrives from a third party. as long as you feel mac pro raid card is good i will get that unless you have a third party recomendation. ”
I don’t use the Mac Pro RAID card since the software RAID setup is more than fast enough for my needs. At $800, it is not a cheap addition. My Mac Pro has room for 4 HD. One for the system leaves 3 for a RAID. If you set it up to be both fast and redundant (RAID 5) it will leave you with only about 1.3 TB capture space, assuming these are 3 1TB drives. I think it is better to back up to external drives and set up the internal drives as RAID 0. 3 1TB drives as a RAID 0 will give you about 2.7 TB of storage. Keep in mind that uncompressed HD is something along the lines of 119 megs/sec. The intensity card has an option to do a compressed form that is 12 megs/sec. But if one is going to choose that, it seems to me you’re better off shooting in AVCHD and transferring to the computer as Pro Res format (which is a full 1920×1080).

“should i record my video onto the camera then use the HDMI to record it from the tape in case i have to film off location? i mean while in office i can have my pc setup next to the camera and can record straight onto my PC through HDMI.”
If you want to get full uncompressed HD you must capture while shooting it. You are thus tethered to the computer. If you record to the camera first and then transfer, the data has already been compressed. I don’t work in full uncompressed HD. I shoot. When done I remove the 16 gig SDHC card, plug it into a card reader, open up Final Cut Pro and “log and transfer”. It is converted from AVCHD to Apple Pro Res format which I edit in. With a dual quad core machine it does this in real time (a ten minute recording takes 10 minutes to transfer to the computer). When done you can out put it to whatever you would like.

[Matthew Lamond]

ok so it sounds like i will be buying 4 1 TB drives. setting 3 up as raid using one as a system drive. using mac software to setup the raid. and buying a external 2 TB HD Raid 0 system. what software do you use to backup your raid setup and how often? and everything sounds good else wise thanks andrew! btw did u see my last line do u have any public videos out there shot with th HF100 that i can use to show the quality of the camera or no?

[Andrew Weinstein]

I don’t have public videos but if you send me your e-mail address I can send you a snippet of some 1920×1080 green screened footage. I’m not with my Mac Pro right now. I don’t really remember the name of the backup software but it was something generic. It was either free or nearly so. I back up daily but if I were doing this every day (I don’t) I’d back up more often.

[Matthew Lamond]

mlamond@transcriptiongear.com is one option or atomiccow3886@gmail.com is another option if the first one bounces any emails because they are too large. gmail usually doesnt put a limit on the emails. where are u and why is ur mac pro not with you lol

[Elijah Lynn]

Intro
I just read this whole thread and there is some wonderful advice in here and I am amazed at how helpful everyone has been and hasn’t been bashing you like some other forums do. There must be a lot of really great people here who have been in your/our situation at one time.. I have just spent the past few weeks dealing with the horrid premiere pro on a bloody 32 bit XP PC that crashes frequently (large renders). Originally it was just to shoot our talent on a green screen and make webclips. Well after hours of frustration and research I learned that no one uses premiere for keying and it overall is very clunky in it’s UI (user interface) design. Premiere Pro (PP) doesn’t do many things, it isn’t intuitive and the keying SUCKS. I despise it, it cannot even move layers up and down. I don’t ever want to touch that software again.

I have been working with PC’s for about 10 years now, I have built 5 workstations and have been playing with Ubuntu Linux for the past year or so. I have always heard good things about Mac. Never more than in my last months researching video editing platforms. We almost went the AVID route. It was nice and ships with PC and Mac versions and probably is a great software but has a steep learning curve.

What makes a really great software though? The ease of use and how intuitive it is. People get paid big bucks for UI design and I keep hearing apple has great UI AND workflow down pretty well. We finally made the decision to go with FCS (Final Cut Studio). FCS has pretty much everything you need to truly get started and start focusing on the video. It comes with Primatte RT which is supposed to do a ok job keying but I hear DV Matte Pro and Primatte are much better. I can’t wait to see how much easier it is to use than PP.

Now here is why I posted

Raid – I highly disagree with those recommending Raid 0. Especially for video and any data you can never get back if it is gone. What I am planning on doing when I receive my components is running a Raid 0+1 OR Raid 5 array. The advantage of Raid 5 over Raid 0+1 is it gives you a bit more storage space if you are using 4 drives. Raid 5 is supposed to suffer from worse write performance in “certain” situations. Raid 0+1 is supposed to be a bit faster. If you really want to do it right get the raid card from Apple. Get 4 drives from newegg, I got Raid 0+1 is most likely the way I will go but we will see if there is any significant performance difference.

Do not ever use Raid 0 for any thing remotely important. Anything on Raid 0 should be easily re-installable or downloadable etc. If a drive fails you are in for a big headache you will wish you paid the extra money for. All hard drives will eventually fail. You need to PLAN on every hard drive failing at some point in its life cycle. Period.

The Velociraptor – A Velociraptor is the HDD that currently has the highest performance/price ratio in the industry right now, nearly twice as fast as your average HDD. Use the uberfast velociraptor for your boot drive using a 5.25” bay adapter and one of the two internal sata ports. Your VelociRaptor boot drive will also be good for a cache folder for Final Cut Studio and other programs, this will help speed your system up even more. The drive that comes with the Mac Pro (300 GB 7200 rpm) “could” be used if you some how made room for it however you can just pop it in an eternal enclosure and use it as a time machine backup for your Velociraptor which is what I plan on doing. You CANNOT use a Velociraptor in the HDD bays of the Mac Pro as they have a style that requires no cables and the Velociraptors SATA port is in the wrong place, it WILL NOT work.

The Machine – If you call the Apple business division on the phone they will give you a very nice discount on everything. Don’t order from the web. Get the warranty as it supposedly includes 3 years of phone support for OS X AND FCS.

I plan on adding a eSata PCI card to run multiple Raid 1 arrays for backup of projects that I am done with but need online access to for future projects. Either that or a much larger storage server on Fiber.

Get the Nvidia 8800 GT card as driver upgrades will eventually be released and it will be like it should have in the first place. In other words just get it and it will get faster with time..

Get your Windows Fix too! (pun intended) – WVmware fusion will be used to run Windows XP “inside” the mac, on a second 20” monitor. Newegg sells it for $60. You can hook up a second LCD (we have a few extra) and run all your wonderful XP programs inside Mac OS X, it even supports graphical acceleration. You can dedicate 2 cores and 2 GB ram just for XP if you want. You can drag and drop files and all that good stuff.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832331002

The Machine in Detail
Here is “exactly” what I ordered after a ton of research. If you can afford it go with it. You may be able to afford cheaper raid but I want my raid to be rock solid AND supported by Apple.

Power
Don’t skimp, you may not do HD today, just like me, but when you do you will be glad you did!
8 core 3.2 Ghz, at a minimum get a 2.8 Ghz 8 core. Rendering is a bitch and it will never be fast enough.

Graphics
Nvidia 8800 GT

Memory
2 Gb stock ram + 4×2 GBDDR2 800 ECC Fully Buffered Dual Channel Kit Ram totaling 10GB (will have 5 of 8 slots taken now)
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820349019

Input Devices
Stock Wireless Mouse from Apple (Shuttle Pro should be better but… everyone needs a wireless mouse)

LogicSkin Final Cut Pro M89 Alu Keyboard – Product # LS-FCP-M89-US (This is only $50 compared to the full $100+ for the hardcoded FCP keyboard, it is removeable for those who don’t use final cut and it is effectively spill sproof)
http://www.LogicKeyboard.com

Shuttle Pro V.2 Multimedia Controller (It Jogs! And it has a buttload of other programmable buttons, get one!)
http://www.LogicKeyboard.com

Screen Real Estate
28” Hanns-G for $550 (It comes with HDMI → DVI adapter cable)
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824254026

Raid and Disk Storage
Stock Raid Card for $800 for use in Raid 0+1 or Raid 5 (still deciding which one I will permanently configure to based on the benchmarks I get from testing)
4 x 640 GB (they had the best ratings on DOA). $95/HDD
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218

Velociraptor 300 GB HDD (use this as a boot drive and get ready for a uber-fast OS X!)
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136260&Tpk=VelociRaptor

Drive Bay Adapter
https://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2704

Keying best for last
I am going to give Primatte RT a try but am thinking DV Matte Pro or Primatte Keyer Pro 4.0 will be the best in the long run, likely the latter. One click keying sure would be nice! (Primatte)

There may be some cables I don’t have or some small stuff I missed but this machine is going to rock!

Closing notes
Data is just too important sometimes. Don’t learn the hard way!
Friends don’t let friends use Raid 0 for real data!

I arrived at this conclusion with a PC background of 10+ years and one day I tried doing video production that involves a lot of keying on a windows box with Premiere Pro and found my way to this as being a solid beginner machine that has room for a ton of growth!

My name is Elijah Lynn, I have never used a Mac or Final Cut Pro/Motion before but am going to tear it up when I get it all put together!

[Vince Becquiot]

I will address the RAID 0 comment. I was a big RAID 5 fan until I reccently went through pros and cons.

While I recommend a high end RAID 5 or 10 if you can afford it, the card and the amount of drives you will need to reach the speed of a cheap RAID 0 is going to cost in the $1500.00 + range. That’s more drives, more heat, more power consumption, mo money !

Most of the data (HD footage) you will need to access on the RAID 0 should be backed up already (twice if you really care about it) and will not change much over the course of a project (unless you are in the news business).

Mirror backups only take a few minutes in most cases after the initial backup. We are still safe so far.

The other problems is that many failures have nothing to do with the drives, but have to do with the sytem, the RAID card itself, or anything in between. Either way, you are probably screwed.

So RAID 5 or not, if you really want your data safe, you’ll have to backup every hour. After that, if you have have the budget, fire away.

Vince

[Vince Becquiot]

I should add that, however much you hate PP, it is an editor, and as such, is not built for compositing (ie: Chroma Keying).

That’s what AE was built for. None of the editing apps I’ve works with are good for keying.

Primatte, BTW, works in Premiere too, but I much prefer using it in AE, as it is once again what it is designed for.

Cheers,

Vince