[Oliver De morassé]

Unfortunately, the Sony PMW-200 does not show any named picture profiles – one has to create them from scratch. Do you know what settings the Cinegamma 1 uses?

[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks Jeff and Dave for your replies. Now it all makes a little more sense!

In AME I found under Format the following choices:

… and here we go, there is a MPEG2-DVD option with the following settings!!!:

To get the best possible quality video (I shot at HD422 25P), dod I need to set Quality to the maximum (i.e. 5) and what about the bitrate settings? BTW, what are GOP settings?

Thanks for all your tremendous help!

P.S. @Dave – Yes I am in Munich and the beer is great… especially on nice hot sunny days like today ;O). I will send greetings to the Paulaner biergarten and also the Wiesn (Oktoberfest).

[Oliver De morassé]

Another thing, I can’t find out where I can purchase Adobe Encore – is this only part of the creative suite or in the Adobe cloud?

[Oliver De morassé]

Hi Dave, thanks for your feedback.

I use AME CS5 to render my compositions. The following presets are shown:

Unfortunately, I see nothing for a DVD. I want the videos to be at the best possible quality for the DVD. Hence, I selected “H.264” Format and preset “HDTV 1080p 24 High Quality”:

You mention I should create a “720×576, 25fps file in mpeg2”. I don’t quite understand why – sorry, but I have never created a DVD before. Also, which settings should I change on this preset (pixel aspect ratio, profile, level, bitrate settings/encoding etc).

Regarding DVD authoring software, have you had any experience of ‘free’ tools such as DVD Flick or DVDStyler – what speaks for Adobe Encore?

Many thanks, Oliver

[Oliver De morassé]

@ Brent – I like the idea of renting a helicopter ;O). Thanks for your tips.

[Oliver De morassé]

@ Don. Thanks for your reply and tips! I am a little confused regarding the picture profiles. I looked at the link you sent and it mentions the Cinegamma picture profiles… not sure which settings to use etc. any ideas?

I did a test run – filming skiers in snow. The big problem I had was bright sunshine (blue sky), white blending snow and very colorful outfits!

[Oliver De morassé]

Not sure what you mean by cutting the key in half?!?!

Have tried to create an additional mask around the feet, then duplicated the layer and played with the effects on both layers. However, had problems joining both keyed layers together – the blending between both layers does not look good.

Am I going about this right? Any tips? Would be great if you could do a rough update of the AEP so I could see how this is best done.

Many thanks.

[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks for all your tips. I have experimented a little and come up with a reasonable result. However, I have found that when I take too much shadow away then I start to loose details i.e. shoes appear to shrink & hair begins to vanish. Please see following:

AEP Project
Feet – Original
Feet – keyed
Head – Original
Head – Keyed

Any tips? Do I need to mask each area separately and then apply the effects – what’s the best approach.

Thanks again for all your help / advise.

[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks for your feeback Stefan. Very interesting workflow, and just for clarification a few questions:

1. Why do you start with “color key” for the basic keying and not straight away with keylight?

2. Why do you use “simple choker” shrinked and then expanded?

3. Your AEP has 2 compositions – Key & Final. Please can you explain a little regarding what you are doing here. From what I understand, the “Key” is where you do the original keying which produces a relatively noisy result. You then created a new “Final” composition and brought the keyed “Key” composition into it. The original footage is used as a Alpha Track Matte and is the parent for the “key”. If I need to do any color correction, should I be doing this in the “key” or “final” composition.

I am new to this… go easy with me ;O)

Thanks again.

[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks RoRK for your feeback. The spokesperson walks on/off the screen – never used Roto Brush – will this work and any tips?

You have kind of lost me regarding the whole procedural mattes thing – any chance of supplying a rough AEP so that I can look at exactly what you mean.

Great tip regarding the ALT & CTRL keys when keying – thanks.