[Patrick Mckenna]

Hi John,
Thanks for the reply. When you say what bit-rate when I encode the MPEG2 files, what do you mean? Do you mean when I render the project out from Vegas to DVD Architect?

As for the DVD discs that I am using, the brand is Verbatim, so I assume they are a good quality disc.

[Patrick Mckenna]

Hi John,
Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I was thinking that’s what the problem was. I noticed it a few months ago so I starting editing other scenes separately as individual Vegas projects with the intention of, as you said, “stitching them back together”. What would be my best render setting for each smaller project if I needed to bring them back in to stitch together for the overall project?

(By the way, the footage was shot in MOV format at 30fps at 720p, if this helps)

[Patrick Mckenna]

Hi Frederic,
Thank you so much for the reply. The camera that I am using is a Panasonic GH1 (unhacked). I took your advice and I downloaded MediaInfo to see what exactly are in the files. Here’s what I found:-

I hope this helps. Being such a newbie to Vegas and the whole editing process, I don’t even know what kind of codec I use.

Regards,
Pat

[Patrick Mckenna]

Hi John,
Thanks for the replies. Sorry I never mentioned about the green t-shirt being used in subsequent scenes. I tried secondary colour correcting the green t-shirt to red and it is heartbreaking work. I’m nearly at that stage where of giving up and I’ll just have to except that the green screen footage is not going to look the way I want it. I think that the green screen was too close to the actors and car and that it caused the spill of green light into the car. And then there’s the huge error of the actor wearing the green t-shirt…..

I just thought that there would be something very simple that could trim away the green edging spills and even if I could color corrected the green spill/edging so it might blend better with the background.

[Patrick Mckenna]

Hi John.

Below is a snapshot of the basic footage shot without any effects or tools used. This might give you a better insight into my problem.

3286_greenscreenproblem2.jpg.zip

[Patrick Mckenna]

At a guess, it could be an auto exposure setting on the camera when the footage is shot. Or does it only happen when the footage is imported to Vegas?

[Patrick Mckenna]

Thanks for the swift replies John.
I’m new to the whole Vegas experience so I wouldn’t be too familiar with how to do that. I generally get my ideas from advice that I google.
If I was to change the t-shirt colour in the secondary color corrector, would I not mess up the color for the whole scene? What I mean is, I shot an outdoor scene that this car scene leads up to and having the actor have a different color t-shirt in two different shots would totally mess up the continuity. Or do you mean something different?

To explain it from the start, I tried the Sony plug-in which as you said it very primitive, and that caused the actors t-shirt to go dark blue. So I googled color correction when using green screen and I was advised to use the secondary color corrector by adjusting saturation, hue, etc and bringing the alpha channel right down to make the green screen transparent and voila, everything is perfect except for the fine green edging or “spill”.

I then tried your advice of using New Blue’s chromakey which is much better than the Sony one except it left me with the grain problem and washed out look.

If you want I can try and post up a picture of this particular shot later this evening without any of the added tools (chromakey, color corrector, etc) where it is the actual footage with no effects added and it might give you a better idea as where I should begin.

[Patrick Mckenna]

Thanks again for the replies.

I tried the masking solution and regardless of how hard I try, I can’t seem to get rid of the greyness. This is a result of the problem of one of the actors wearing the green t-shirt. It’s his tshirt that is where the extreme grain is. When using the mask. If I increase the values to make his t-shirt entirely white, it causes the green screen to become more grey than black or similarly if I make the green screen pure black, the t-shirt becomes grey.

Using the secondary Color corrector instead of the chromakey tool achieved the best results overall except for the green spilling onto the edges of the actors, particularly their faces. Is there any other tool out there that I can use to touch up the spilling problem?

[Patrick Mckenna]

Hi guys and thanks for the replies,

I downloaded the free trial of New Blue’s Video Essentials II and tried the chromakey effect and unfortunately it doesn’t make it any better. I stayed away from the Sony chromakey tool because of one of the actors were a green t-shirt. Instead I used the secondary color correction tool. I got the result that I want except for the green screen “spill”.

When trying the New Blue chromakey, it does give a lot more control than the Sony chromakey version but it csuses the footage to look very very grainy and seems to “wash out” the colors in the shot.