[Charles Wren]

Just wanted to say this helped me a ton! Cheers 🙂

[Charles Wren]

Excellent, that’s very interesting indeed.
“Are you saying that you have keyed out something, and want to render out a video with an alpha channel so you can overlay that in FCP?”
Yes, that’s exactly it 🙂 Sorry if I did a toss job of initially explaining, wasn’t intended in any way.

Now regarding the keyed footage in AE, as mentioned whenever I render the footage it shows in the ‘get info’ window as being apcs regardless of me choosing ProRes 422(LT). Is this likely to be the same story if I choose ProRes 4444? If so, does it matter or is it just a file quirk?
I really could do with all footage ending up as 422(LT) to match my sequence, will 422(LT) lend itself for alpha channel exporting? If 4444 works better then perhaps I’ll render as 4444 and then send it straight to Compressor to use the same 422(LT) droplet I initially converted my footage with? Now, finally, I feel a viable solution is in sight!! lol.

Thanks again for your advice, it’s much appreciated!

[Charles Wren]

Yep, I render it as a Quicktime movie and in the ‘get info’ section the codec shows up as ‘apcs‘.

“hunh? a bit depth of 84,000 – what on earth are you talking about?”
My mistake, I believe it was ‘Total Bit Rate’ that showed the 14,000 – 84,000 difference.

I changed all of the appropriate settings in the Output Module to exactly match the original and my timeline, still end up with a file that (when inspected via the ‘get info’) shows up as ‘apcs’ codec, no sign of ProRes 422(LT) as it was originally 🙁 Feel like I’m smacking my head against brick wall tbh. If Keylight wasn’t so impressive I’d have given up long ago 🙂

All i want is to take my clean key from Keylight and to carry on editing in FCP, this shouldn’t be so hard surely? Am I missing something? Screenshots of settings used will follow later if any use?

“You have to render the shot in AE – its simply not possible to send an un-rendered effect to another application and hope it will render for you. You wouldn’t go to a restaurant to get a chef to prepare your meal, only to take it home to cook yourself would you?”
Nice metaphor btw 😛

(Thanks for all responses so far, result or no result, it’s great to get feedback!)

[Charles Wren]

Thanks for the response guys.
Unfortunately I’ve tried a bunch of times with various settings and the properties of the end file always show as being an ‘apcs’ codec. I’ve selected ‘current settings’ and chosen ProRes 422(LT) in the Video Format section, 1080i, 25fps etc to match the original file (and my timeline) exactly, but always the same in the end. apcs codec, also noticed that the bit depth ends up around 14,000 whereas the original had a bit depth of around 84,000, the file size is smaller too.

In regards to the round tripping (Adam Taylor), perhaps I didn’t explain very well. I’m aware you can round trip between Adobe products and Apple products, but it’s a round trip between FCP and AE I’m looking for. So far, I gather the trip would have to be from FCP to Premier, then to AE, then back to Premier, then somehow (hopefully) back to FCP via another xml export? Seems incredibly long winded just to keep the native codec and settings.
Thanks for the tip on the Automatic Ducks plugin, I’ll look into it, does it work both ways? ie. Once imported to AE, can I get it back into my FCP timeline in it’s native format without rendering out?

Thanks in advance!!
🙂

[Charles Wren]

Fantastic, downloaded and studying now 🙂
Thanks for the link!

[Charles Wren]

Ah yes, the infamous light wrap technique. I’m not overly familiar with this yet, although I’m aware of the concept to harness ‘light’ from the scene to produce a more believable key by ‘wrapping’ the edges?

I really have no idea where to start with fake shadows though (in terms of making them believable). I think a google quest is called for here.
Thanks agian for all your help Dave, it is all greatly appreciated!

[Charles Wren]

Yes indeedy I do, and I started off doing my keying with the Primatte RT in Motion 3 (Which I love!). After upgrading to Studio 3 though, I noticed that the Primatte RT has now made an appearance in the filters menu in FCP 7. Is this (excuse my naivety) identical to the Motion Primatte? It looks the same, and I’ve got some great results from it.

“– combined with the other things to spruce up a key –”
Can you recommend any other plugins I should be looking at to clean up my key in Motion or FCP?

Thanks again for your expertise Dave.

[Charles Wren]

Thanks for the advice Dave. I was aware when filming that lighting was the quintessential ingredient. I had to make do with what I had available at the time which was a couple of 100watt halogen lamps, 1 either side of the screen and one front 50watt ambient for character lighting. Surprisingly this seems to have worked pretty well (although not perfect).

Have you any recommendations for lighting? I’ve spotted your posts on various threads and have taken on board many of your points along the way 🙂

Also, so far I’m almost entirely FCP based, is it worth me looking into Shake for keying? The interface seems a little daunting 😉

Thanks again.

[Charles Wren]

Thanks for the advice, I’ll try converting the footage to Prores LT, maybe AIC might be worth a try too.

In regards to the overwhelmingly condescending response, I appreciate you’re most likely a professional, but I however am doing this simply for fun at this early stage. As such, I unfortunately can’t justify the budget required for a high end/broadcast HD cam. Equally, I’m not massively experienced at this moment in time, hence why I posted this thread, in the hope that I might be greeted with honest (as it was) yet friendly advice.

I’m getting a really nice key so far with just the Primatte RT plugin and fcp spill suppressor. On top of this, I’m actually having a ball with what is by along way the highest quality footage I’ve had access to so far 🙂

And yes, my machine is a somewhat ‘consumer’ level macbook pro that has proven faithful even until this point. Whilst I’m sure the 27″ iMac may not be the machine of choice for all industry work, it appears to meet my needs completely whilst remaining in my budget.

I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but we all have to start somewhere right? And here I am, at the beginning.

I just hope I didn’t offend you somehow with my amateur choice of codec 😉

[Charles Wren]

Cheers Simon,
That’s exactly what I ended up doing.
I too ended up slowing it to around 99.6%
Spooky.
Are you working on Pal of NTSC?
I’m Pal as I live in the UK.
Thanks for your help man, all the best.
Chaz