Simon Ubsdell
6
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Charlie Austin] “quickly and easily getting a decent looking key from barely adequate green/blue screen material for an offline presentation”
Completely agreed. Strictly offline only. For that purpose it’s sure handy to have around.
But they could have made the darn thing a whole lot better ……. 😉
It’s just not in their DNA, as Ron Brinkmann observes (and he should know a lot better than any of us):
https://digitalcomposting.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/x-vs-pro/
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “I meant to build something for FCPX, in Motion. Basically, publish something from Motion. I would have to see what exactly can be published and how. I thought I imagined just having one effect to drag over, but perhaps it would take several. I mean, there’s no way to publish a clone layer, is there? Or do you simply clone drop zones? Looks like I have some messing around to do.”
All you’d have to do is build is as an Effect – rather than a standard composition.
The Motion “Effect” comes with an Effect Source layer.
All you need to do it turn off this layer but use it as the clone source however many times are necessary to build the comp.
In order to be able to view the matte, all you’d need to do is rig the opacity of the Matte group to a checkbox widget that turns it on and off.
BTW, it looks as though you’re in danger of catching the compositing bug – so beware, if you’re at all like me, you’ll soon never want to work at anything else 😉
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “Dare I say, it’s easier in Motion as you can see the group contents all at once instead of constantly jumping in and out of Ae precomps. Am I allowed to say these things in public?
Then, of course, clone layers.”
I was hoping someone than me would point out this rather surprising fact 😉
But yes, indeed, it’s certainly quite elegant – and clones are a genius idea.
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “Would this matte stack make it over to fcpx? I guess I would just have to try it. “
I was wondering the same thing – I reckon it could probably be done. Might be a bit cumbersome.
[Jeremy Garchow] “The “trickiest” part would seem to be to make the initial matte. Since all the mattes made are customized to the footage, how would this be done without being able to solo each step of the way?”
Are you talking about how you’d do this in X or in Motion? If you published the right things out of Motion it would be easy enough to create switches to solo the relevant parts as needed. If you’re building it in X then solo-ing is pretty easy, no?
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Don Eitner] “To your point about reusing the keyer, would you just keep it in a .motn project file and when you need it copy & paste it out as a group into whatever other project you’re working on?
Or could you save the keyer group to the Library so it’s always ready?”
Both your routes would work depending on what you find most convenient – copying to the library is certainly a good idea.
Personally, I’d be likely to do it a different way again and that’s to save the project to your User/Movies/Motion Templates/Compositions folder. That way whenever you open it you are automatically working on a duplicate of the original project and don’t risk accidentally over-writing it.
Since I prefer to work on keying shots in isolation (to keep everything neat and tidy and as lean as possible), I’d be more likely to bring the background and foreground materials I needed into the master Keyer Project rather than copying the keyer project elements into a different more complex project.
(Don’t forget also that you can now very easily have multiple Motion projects open at the same time.)
But it’s just a matter of what works for you.
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Shawn Miller] “Totally agree. I think I first heard about Conduit from Alex Lindsay at NAB a number of years ago. I really loved the mission; to make a stable, powerful and inexpensive compositing tool that didn’t require a fire breathing beast of a machine (like everything from Autodesk did). I believe I purchased a license that night when I got back to my hotel room. “
It was actually Conduit that go me into the wonderful world of compositing in the first place – it was an amazing discovery. There’s no better place to start learning and the results you can get with it are pretty much as good as it gets.
[Shawn Miller] “Even so, I also wish Conduit was more popular. It’s one of those tools that everyone should be using. I mean, the core application is free, isn’t it? And if I’m not mistaken, the advanced add on pack (or whatever it’s called) is like $100 US… right?”
I couldn’t agree more. It’s a ridiculously good deal – it was incredibly cheap before but the new free version is a no-brainer and you can do truly amazing things with it.
[Shawn Miller] “Now I’m slowly embracing MambaFX, hoping that the industry acceptance of Mystika will fund further development.”
Yes, that’s looking pretty interesting. I did a bit of work on Jaleo about 15 years ago and it was powerful but horrendously badly designed and I moved onto DS instead. But it’s looking much more promising these days.
As you say, best to try and know as much as you can about everything 😉
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “I have not really tried rigging and publishing on anything but the simplest of tasks, but this may push me in that direction.
“We should make this an open source project – everyone could chip in and make something really useful 😉
Incidentally, I forgot to mention in the tutorial that this will work for bluescreens as well as greenscreens – just substitute blue for green where appropriate.
However it’s not a “chroma keyer” that will key any colour.
Another thing I forgot to mention is that although the Apple Keyer is seriously lacking when it comes to giving you a nice edge (the essential to a good key), you could use it very effectively for procedural garbage matting (“inside” or “outside” mattes) with the appropriate dilate/erode function (using the MinMax filter as shown).
I also omitted to show you how to invert the key if you want to work on a conventional looking matte rather than using the Invert Mask option in the Image Mask. Simply add a Negative filter above your Channel mixer and before any Levels operation and that will swap it around the “right way”.
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Patrice Freymond] “Thank you for this Simon, I learned a lot today !”
That’s great to hear, thanks.
Although I’ve shown these techniques in Apple Motion, they are of course equally applicable if you’re working in any other compositing software.
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Bret Williams] “As far as keyers go it’s the most intelligent, wonderfully designed keyer I’ve ever seen. Just doesn’t quite get you all the way there on fine detail or edges.”
[Charlie Austin] “While I agree with Simon in that the edge detail is, uh… difficult to get a sharp key on, it works ridiculously well”
Sorry to disagree but …
To say that a keyer works “ridiculously”, “wonderfully” well but it doesn’t resolve edge detail is like saying you’ve got a “ridiculously”, “wonderfully” great car but it doesn’t go round corners.
Don’t take my word for it – ask any expert and they’ll tell you that resolving edge detail is the acid test of whether or not a keyer is fit for purpose. And the Apple keyer is quite clearly not fit for purpose on this basis.
it’s a great keyer for a world where the roads only go in straight lines, but even you guys over the pond must need to pull into a gas station once in a while and what do you do then?
The cold, hard reality is that keying is a world with pretty much only tricky corners and very few nice straight roads.
Going back to your gag, Bret, it’s fine for keying bald men wearing very tight clothing who move very slowly indeed, but it’s not often that you’re gifted with such delightful material.
The reason I’m labouring this point is that it’s not the same discussion as whether or not one thinks FCP X is fit for purpose, which is largely a matter of taste rather than objective measurement (although there are three key things missing which make it not “fit for purpose” for my particular workflow niche, much as I like it otherwise).
The Apple Keyer fails the “fit for purpose” test because it doesn’t satisfy the key (sorry) requirement for any keyer. Cutting a hole out of your greenscreen is not the test – it’s whether it can do so in a manner that has sufficient precision and subtlety to create a great composite.
To repeat the essential point – resolving edge detail is the universally accepted objective test of whether a keyer is good enough.
Apple’s is not.
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Shawn Miller] “Very well done, Simon. Shows how valuable a fundamental understanding of compositing can be. I believe you mentioned your intention to try PixelConduit at some point… were you ever able to do that? Do you see PC as a viable alternative to the built in keyers for FCPX and Motion?”
Thanks, Shawn.
Obviously you will know that this is just scratching the surface of a huge and very complex topic (and hugely over-simplifying in the process) but I thought it would be useful for less experienced users to understand the concepts under-the-hood of their favourite keyers.
Knowing how to make it happen means you can get better results than just pulling the sliders around without really understanding what they do – an exercise in frustration for a lot of users I have encountered.
As for Conduit, I started using it many years ago and it really is an amazingly good thing – in terms of keying it really is a pretty high end tool quality-wise and from the perspective of being able to build really powerful keying tools from the basic building blocks. It is very definitely not a toy in any sense (unlike some of the rubbish that Apple offer up as professional!)
Pauli is a massive talent – it’s just a shame that he never seems to have attracted the investment to make something more of what he’s developed.
Sadly it’s not very performant in Motion (and hence FCP X) which is a shame. But I’d love to see it get some more attention.
I used to use Conduit Live for real-time on-set keying and that’s a really brilliant tool as well.
Have you used it much?
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com