[Dean Sensui]

If there’s a chance of a project being repurposed in HD then it’s better to go full HD from the start. If it’s all done in SD and the client decides an HD version is needed, the graphics and other elements have to be redone and manually positioned. Many elements created in Livetype and AE might not scale up easily from SD to HD. It certainly won’t do so automatically when using Media Manager.

It means re-doing an entire program just to rescale up to the original resolution.

Dean Sensui — Hawaii Goes Fishing

[Dean Sensui]

I had a 2.5 dual G5 and upgraded to an 8-Core.

With After Effects rendering it was about 8 times faster.

I’m certain you’ll experience a significant increase in speed with Compressor.

You can probably take a sample file to the Apple Store and ask to do a test. Compare the time it takes to do that same task on your 2.7 GHz G5.

Dean Sensui — Hawaii Goes Fishing

[Dean Sensui]

I don’t know if you’re working on a Mac but this is what I do:

— Go into Project Settings.
— Set “Working Space” to “none”.
— “Linearize Working Space” is “off”.
— “Blend colors using 1.0 Gamma” and “Match Legacy After Effects QuickTime Gamma Adjustments” are “on”.

Dean Sensui — Hawaii Goes Fishing

[Dean Sensui]

That looks like a much better green.

After you got your key, you can start making color corrections.

Dean Sensui — Hawaii Goes Fishing

[Dean Sensui]

Mark…

Regarding exposure levels of green screen, the “hotter” the green screen the higher the risk of green spill and flare. Fine detail and edges get eaten up by the bright background — exactly what happens when you shoot against a backlight.

Considering that most skin tones fall into the 45 – 65 IRE range (not including highlights), you want to have that background closer to the brightness of the foreground elements, rather than have it overpower them. That allows you to retain finer detail.

With a lower exposure level there’s more saturation, up to a certain point. Too low and you start to get closer to the noise floor.

And then there are those situations in which the person is actually standing in a green screen set, and at that point the green will be at whatever exposure works for the subject. You’ll have to make a choice of exposure levels to get optimum results.

BTW, Primatte can key just about any color background. The most important is to have a background that is as unique and consistent as possible. What makes Primatte so powerful is that you tell it what “is” and “is not” the key color. It then uses a three-dimensional color space to determine what to include and exclude. And there are a lot of fine-tuning tools that help further define that color space.

Whatever background color you have, it’s best to have one that shares as little in common as possible with your foreground elements.

Dean Sensui — Hawaii Goes Fishing

[Dean Sensui]

Mark…

Something else to be aware of: Whatever camera you’re using has to record the image with normal hue and saturation values. Do NOT use any “looks” in-camera that will affect saturation levels. Always leave that to post.

The reason is that the computer software depends entirely upon chroma information to determine what’s foreground and what’s background. While it’s possible to extract a good matte from badly shot green screen footage, it’s not easy. Not even with the best software in skilled hands. And even then rotoscoping might be required and that can be a whole huge headache in itself.

Without top quality chroma information, you will have a very hard time extracting a top-quality matte.

Do the very best you can to get the green screen or blue screen to be properly saturated and accurately exposed. Every shortcut taken in-camera will mean about 10 times more hours spent in post to fix any shortcomings. Conversely, 15 minutes spent to get it right can mean five hours less time wasted making it work.

When done well green screen can be a kick in the pants. When done wrong it can be a kick — well, in the front of the pants. 🙂

The examples I posted, particularly the one for Aloha Petroleum, was a single key. It even retained the fine hairs off Cindy’s head. It was shot with a Sony EX1 using the XDCam EX 4:2:0 codec. So it’s not the RED codec being too compressed. Also note that Cindy’s sweater is actually slightly green, yet it still keyed cleanly.

Hope this helps!

Dean Sensui — Hawaii Goes Fishing

[Dean Sensui]

Mark…

Your green screen is over exposed and off-balanced.

The RGB values are:
R 187
G 213
B 106

They should be:
R 70
G 158
B 70

If you checked exposure with zebras they should be right at 50%. And you must white balance for the light hitting the background unless you’re lighting your background with green light — and that shouldn’t be necessary.

Here’s a sample of your JPG composited with Primatte. Keep in mind that this isn’t a carefully composited image, and that the green screen is less than optimum.

Dean Sensui — Hawaii Goes Fishing

[Dean Sensui]

[Mark Linthicum] “Have you ever tried Keylight? I wonder if Primatte is the secret or with enough tweaking can Keylight do as good?”

I use Keylight in the studio to check lighting and composition during the setup process, but I don’t use it for the actual key.

Keylight doesn’t have the controls that Primatte has to select green and non-green areas. Primatte’s procedure is more than just a single click: you tell it “this is green, this isn’t green” by clicking or selecting several areas in the composition. It’s so discerning that I’ve actually keyed green clothing, as long as the green is different from the green screen.

It also has separate spill controls, choke and edge controls, and a set of controls to handle detail.

It’ll key veils, smoke, translucent plastics, flame. And “lightwrap” will incorporate the background into the overlapping edges of the foreground elements. This is an important feature that helps blend things together for a cleaner key.

I also use Composite Wizard, which has better lightwrap capabilities, as well as edge blurring and other features.

Dean Sensui — Hawaii Goes Fishing

[Dean Sensui]

I use Primatte. Here’s an example of a typical key.

https://hawaiigoesfishing.com/greenscreen_demo.html

This was a single key. With more time a separate key can be done for the hair and even more detail retained.

Here’s another example, also done with Primatte. Note the hair detail retained.

https://hawaiigoesfishing.com/ap_vfx.html

Dean Sensui — Hawaii Goes Fishing

[Dean Sensui]

If the media used in the project was renamed in the transfer process, then you’ll have a very long and tortuous road ahead. And if the folders in which the media resides aren’t well organized nor documented, then that makes the process a lot harder.

When I organize a project, the hard and fast rule is to NEVER rename media during the transfer process. Otherwise, there’s no way to know what the original media was nor where to find it.

I might rename a clip in a sequence. But the media itself retains the original name that was assigned by the camera when it was shot. It’s not an intuitive name, and that’s not very convenient. But it’s even less convenient to attempt to find something that’s been renamed with no records of its source.

There might be some metadata somewhere that indicates the timecode and that might help.

Dean Sensui — Hawaii Goes Fishing