[Oliver De morassé]

@ Steve Brame – I followed the tutorial step by step. With the downloaded files, no problem. With my video… see the results:

Auto-trace settings
Result pre auto-trace
Post auto-trace, 1st frame
Post auto-trace, 2 secs
Post auto-trace, 4 secs
Post auto-trace, 5 secs

Any idea?

[Oliver De morassé]

@ Jon Bagge – OK, I will try a neutral picture style. Would you leave all settings for Sharpness, Contrast, Saturation and Colour tone at 0?

I thought I read in the Magic Lantern docs that best quality video needs to use ISOs in increments of 160 (160, 320, 480)?

As for lens, we use the normal EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens.

[Oliver De morassé]

@ Dave LaRonde – what do you mean about lighting the green screen more flat? I will also try to shot some green screen with a Camcorder and let you see the results.

[Oliver De morassé]

@ Steve Brame – We do mask our persons before keying. I have already looked at this video on junk mattes but was unable to get it to work with my footage. Not sure what I am doing wrong, but only the 1st frame got correctly masked – the auto tracing did not work correctly for the rest.

[Oliver De morassé]

Many thanks to you both for your quick replies.

@ Dave – We do infact light the green screen and subject separately. The subject stands about 4-6 feet away from the screen. We use the following lighting.

– For the green screen: 2 x Daylight lightbanks with mirrored barndoors. 4x55w equ. 1300w. 5400K

– For the subject’s head/body: 2 x Softbox diffusers 60x60cm. 5x24w bulbs. 5000-5400K.

– For the subject’s feet: 2 x Softbox diffusers 40x60cm 1x50w bulb. 5400K.

– Backlight for hair: 4W LED 230v Bulb. 3000K.

– We have been told to shot a very ‘flat’ image for better post-work. We use a Canon EOS 550d with the Magic Lantern firmware. Settings are:

Movie rec. size: 1920×1080, 25 frames
Auto Lighting Optimizer: Disable
Picture Style – CineStyle
– Sharpness: 3 (scale 0 to +7)
– Contrast: -3 (scale -4 to +4)
– Saturation: 0 (scale -4 to +4)
– Colour tone: 0 (scale -4 to +4)
ISO: 320
Apeture: f/4.5
Shutter: 1/48
WhiteBalance: 6500k
Bit Rate:
– Mode: CBR
– CBR Factore: 1.4x
– QScale factor: -12

…could this be our problem – the camera settings? We have also tried to shot with a more ‘friendly’ picture style. See:

@ Andrew Somers – Here a sample from the camera: https://www.edv-sorglos.de/downloads/creativecow/original2.zip

The screenshot you made, is that from the original or post? Yes, we used sharpening both on the camera side and post side – the customers wanted more ‘crisp’ and well defined edges. Should I have no sharpening from the camera side – a neutral picture style with no sharpening? What about contrast, saturation and colour tone?

Sorry, but I’m not sure how to view the red channel in my green screen video within AE?

Regarding keying – we follow this workflow:
1) Effect > Color Key – turn tolerance up to 20, turn feather up a little bit;
2) repeat Color Key 3-4 times at least, each with a tolerance of 20;
3) Effect > Simple Choker. Turn up easy choker slightly (negative value);
4) Keylight > turn up keylight, eliminating all green adjusting clip blacks and clip whites.

Regarding your tips – great, thanks.
1) Yes, our color correction comes after keylight.
2) How do I look at the red channel alone?
3) I don’t understand what you mean here?
4) 5) Yes, we do this.
6) What screen shrink setting did you use?
7) Should sharpning come before or after keylight?
I would be interested in any other AE settings you used to get a good output.

Finally, we are thinking about upgrading our DSLR camera to a camcorder – check post https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/54/860836 – what do you think… would this give us better results?

Once again – thank you both for all your input!