[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks for your suggestion Mark. What would you say is the min/max size of the LCD panel? Does the camera not have problems with focusing behind the glass or silvered film – is it not too dark?

[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks for the tip Paolo. Is an Asus board better than Intel? Also, what would you suggest as a minimum of RAM and HDD-type?

[Oliver De morassé]

Sorry Dave, not really sure what you mean by using the noisy key as an alfa matte – but sounds good ;O)

[Oliver De morassé]

@ Frank – thanks for Denoiser II tip from Red Giant… currently testing. Is it best to use the plugin before or after Keylight?

[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks Bill for your quick response. Done a little research regarding beam splitter mirrors – wow, expensive! Have you a preferred make / recommendations in different price segments?

[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks for your feedback Dave. I have tried different codecs:

– Using a Black Magic DeckLink SDI card connected to a Sony camcorder, we captured a “10 bit 4:2:2 YUV (AJA Video Systems Xena)” video

– Using a Panasonic camcorder we captured a “AVC (Component) High 4:2:2@L4.1 AVC-Intra 100” video

Both produce a small white halo around the subject when anaylsing the Red channel. Unchecking the “Unpremultiply Result” checkbox in Keylight, removes this white outline.

Any ideas?

[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks for your feedback Steve. What do you mean with “shrinking the matte a little in keylight” – the “screen matte” / “Screen Shrink/Grow” value as negative? Would you use the “matte choker” after keylight?

FYI, we do use a little color correction after Keylight (levels, curves etc.) – however, the end results with turning “Unpremultiply Result” off, seem to be better than playing with the matte options. Is there anything against turning “Unpremultiply Result” off?

[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks for all of your feedback.

I have been ‘playing’ with camera settings and picture styles etc. and my tests can be found here: picture-styles.zip (original footage is 360MB – I can make smaller .zips if necessary).

I have used the following picture styles (shot with an ISO of 320 and aperture of 3.5). I have included a brief description of each style:

Faithful: 0, 0, 0, 0 (Sharpness, Contrast, Saturation, Color Tone)
– This Picture Style is for users who prefer to process images with their computer. When the subject is captured under a color temperature of 5200K, the color is adjusted colorimetrically to match the subject’s color. The image is dull and subdued.

Landscape: 4, 0, 0, 0
– For vivid blues and greens, and very sharp and crisp images. Effective for impressive landscapes

Neutral: 0, 0, 0, 0
– This Picture Style is for users who prefer to process images with their computer. For natural colors and subdued images.

Portrait: 2, 0, 0, 0
– For nice skin tones. The image looks softer. Effective for close-ups of women or children.

Standard: 3, 0, 0, 0
– The image looks vivid, sharp, and crisp. This is a general-purpose Picture Style suitable for most scenes.

Marvels Advanced 3.4: 0, -3, -2, 0

CineStyle: 0, -4, -2, 0

Marvels Cine 1.2: 3, -2, -1, 1

I would welcome your comments on which styles you think are the best to use.

When analysing the movies and looking at the red channel in the green screen element, a white line still appears around the subject, eventhough some of picture styles use NO SHARPNESS – any ideas why?

Also, I find the movies without any sharpness whatsoever, a little blurred. Yes I know – SHARPEN MUST BE OFF – but the end result doesn’t look too nice. If the source material is bad, then one has little chance in the post – is it not a matter of “garbage in, garbage out”?!?!

Finally, do you think that investing in a camcorder (see post “Which camcorder for green screening full-HD e-learning DVDs”) would help?

Thanks for your continued help in this matter.

[Oliver De morassé]

@ Dave LaRonde – sorry, access to the images should now be OK.

[Oliver De morassé]

@ Andrew Somers – thanks for all your infos & tips ;O).

Been ‘playing’ with “levels” and “curves”. Any particular settings for the “levels” effect – I have been adjusting the “Input black” setting? When the layer is duplicated, should this appear below the original layer? What do you mean with a “wider choke”.

Thanks again.