[Marc Lucas]

Thanks guys

[Marc Lucas]

Thanks for the advice on this thread!

I tried with both Keylight & dvMatte pro and ended up using dvMatte.

The situation I was in was less that ideal the original footage had the green screen lit to bright ( I later found out that this was a result in there being to different shades on ‘green screen’ so they had to light brighter to compensate for this??)
I wasn’t happy with the ‘edges’ I got originally with dvMatte so when Dave suggested Keylight I gave that a go to. When I initially tried Keylight the first key I was getting was taking way to much detail from the talent and making things difficult. I also tried Dave’s suggestion of duplicating the layer and matting out the keyed footage with the original. That kind of worked but I wasn’t getting the results I wanted/needed.
I thought why not give dvMatte another go, I perservered and actually got a really good key right out of the box….way better that the Keylight key! My main problem was the edges I had but with some tweaking and patience I got a good end result.

In retrospect I like the ease of use that dvMatte has it is a very simplified way of working with only a handful of options/controls that make the keying process really quite easy. I on the other hand would assume that the deeper I get into keying and the like the functions of Keylight with enable more flexibility for more complex workflow.
This was a great learning curve and can’t wait to have another go! I think I’m going to download some stock green screen footage now and get more accustom with Keylight but for now dvMatte did a very good job for me and got me out of a hole!

Thanks for the comments and advice really appreciated!

[Marc Lucas]

Hi

Thanks for the reply.

I had been through to the ‘drivers’ section before but didn’t realise that the ‘desktop video’ was the actual name for the Decklink drivers:-/

I have had email communication with tech support before regarding this and every time there was a crash in FCP it was coming up as a ‘Blackmagic Plugin Error’ however when I’ve sent the various crash reports to tech support they couldn’t find what the problem was so the communication kind of stopped there. I think I will install the newest drivers to see if they do actually make a difference, its worth a try I’ve nothing to lose.

Thanks

[Marc Lucas]

I have tried that but when the file comes out it is 4:3

[Marc Lucas]

Can’t understand why when I select the IMX 625/50 setting in QuickTime I lose the ability to select 16:9 anamorphic?

[Marc Lucas]

Did the above with regards to easy setup and MPEG IMX 625/50 (50Mb/s) I also chose the size as PAL 720×576 16:9 but when I export that file and check its dimensions in Media Inspector it comes in at a 4:3 file

[Marc Lucas]

I’ll give that a go and report back!

Just out of interest I tried the footage in FCPX and it pulled a great key right off the bat, well impressed! Even the harsh edges have come out quite clean! I have also seen a technique for putting a ‘light wrap’ around the talent to help with blending into the BG so I might just export the keyed footage from FCPX and do the rest in AE.

The lighting was done by someone else on this occasion BUT yes I will definitely make sure that is sorted properly in the future. So I take it that because the green screen was lit to bright that the brighter colour information has affected and spilled into the talent thus resulting in the key not performing as it should?

Really appreciate your help on this one!

[Marc Lucas]

I’m using Keylight to key the footage. All the tutorials I’ve seen have the Screen gain at the default of 100% and when they select the green to be keyed the back ground disappears and the e.g the talent or foreground element keeps all its colour and tonal quality. When I do the same thing I seem to be getting noise in my subject (gain noise I think??) With that I’m losing definition in colour and contrast detail. Why is this is it just because the default gain is to high?
If I then drop the screen gain I start to lose the transparency of the green.

If I go to screen matte view I can see clear contrast between the white & black areas but then going back to the final result view my talents clothing has lost the detail.

[Marc Lucas]

Yes they specified either the IMX or MXF formats. The IMX they wanted in a QuickTime wrapper so all is good. Still might have a go at creating an MXF file though just so I know how to do it in the future.

thanks

[Marc Lucas]

Thanks I saw that recently on another post whilst researching. I think I’ll just export straight out of FCP and use the QuickTime conversion export function to export the IMX file. I think this will be easier and save more round tripping.

Thanks for the replies!