[Adam Taylor]

okay – must have been the compression on the little image you posted. Red stuff should look good if sll the hype is to be believed (not worked with any myself).

Another possible you might want to try is to add some small coloured light effects – as if lanterns were hanging in the trees. Use something like Trapcode Lux to add a small amount of volumetric lighting and perhaps experiment with blending modes to bounce the light of nearby objects (such as the trees).

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

i think whatever method you use will be a compromise. I am guessing the material was shot dv or hdv? Its hard to tell from the very small sample image, but it looks like you are getting the blockiness in the tree that is indicative of low bit rate color sampling. Its very difficult to get a good key using that video format.

You should find some good tutorials for dealing with dv keys in the tutorial section (Aharon Rabinowitz’s stuff is certainly worth watching.

What are you replacing the sky with?
You would be better to put the replacement in place to see how they play together, and then decide how to cure the problem. It will always look bad on black, but the replacement might not be as noticeable, especially with some blending.

The other option is to crop out the treetops all together. I was going to suggest replacing them with graphic trees that have been alpha channelled, but as your source footage was shot with that fisheye lens, then you would have a nightmare trying to replicate the lens distortion…but then again, you will probably have to do that anyway on the sky replacement, otherwise your sky will not look right.

thats quite some task you have … good luck
adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

keying is one of those things that sounds easy, but in practice can be anything but.
I came at this solution after trying loads of methods that all seemed lacking. I find this one to be pretty darned good almost all the time.

have fun.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

i second Todds suggestion. Thats a really small amount of ram to use with AE, so switch off Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously.

You might find that it is worth stopping the render, resetting the preferences and re-rendering…this may be a quicker overall option.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

your problem is the shiny bangles are actually reflecting the sky, and so your keys are actually doing their job correctly…they are removing all your sky!

What you will need to do is mask the areas where the sky needs to remain (Rotoscoping). As the girl looks to be dancing, then i’m sorry to say you will have to do a lot of rotoscoping. Its a good skill to learn, so don’t be too disheartened.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

If you want to do greenscreen, then avoid HDV or DV cameras. Search the forum – its been discussed many times.
The cameras simply do not record enough colour data for useful keying.

However, some HDV/DV cameras have an hd/sdi output that you can record from, and that sends a clean signal (ie, before it has been compressed for the record to tape). If you have a decent video capture card (or a digibeta deck) then you could record direct to those and have high quality and usable footage.

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

The way i have found to be most useful is this (apologies if it sounds a bit complex…it does work!)

1. in your comp, duplicate the greenscreen clip and select the upper most of the two tracks.
2. Apply a Hue/Saturation effect.
3. select the colorize option, and then rotate the colour angle until the color values of the greenscreen is sufficiently different to the yellow. it does not need to be green – you can rotate the value until you get as pure a colour as possible (ideally you want pure green, pure blue, pure red, etc. The Keylight effect works best if it has a pure colour value to work with, so if you can avoid blends all the better. Depending on how clean the shot is, you can even raise the saturation a little to improve the colour separations.

4. Apply Keylight (make sure its below the Hue/Saturation effect on the effects palette). Use the eyedropper to select your wildly adjusted greenscreen.
5. switch your display to show the alpha channel and adjust your keylight settings to give a clean edged mask.
6. when happy with the alpha channel, switch back to RGB, and on the lower track (the pristine untouched video) set the trackmatte to alpha.

You may need to do a little adjusting to get it just right and you may also need to do some further masking … but not often. I use this method to get some really clean keys when the foreground and background have been less than perfect and it works almost all the time.

good luck
Adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

if you have the student option, then use it whilst you can, then upgrade as and when its feasible.

my 2p.

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

there is no real benefit from using the Prores 422 HQ with HDV material…all you are doing is creating a much larger file, which may be part of the reason you are having problems. Stick to non Pro Res and you should be fine.

Gary Adcock explains his findings in this enlightening article….

https://provideocoalition.com/index.php/apple/story/prores_a_closer_look/

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

ahh yes, of course…BBC news correspondent – thats where i have heard your name. Used to be an ITV regional news vt editor myself – glad i’m out of that game now!

Ok – question – is the timeline you edited on set to anamorphic? From memory as i’m not in front of fcp right now, its four or five down in the Sequence menu. If not, then click the anamorphic checkbox.

I’m a little puzzled when you said the format you output was a “film”. I was asking what file format / codec you are using to edit and playout the material. That can often have a bearing on the kind of problems you may be having.

regards
Adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk