Re: Green Screen/Project Help

Sloane,

The advice I would give is to avoid re-compressing your footage 3 or 4 times. You should be able to import your captured DV clip into AE rather than exporting (re-compressing) the footage with lossy DV compression. Obviously, you'd want to replace the clip and tweak vs. redoing the project. I would also export from AE as something other than DV, as this adds another round of compression. Even if you can't play back uncompressed, you can still stick it in your timeline and export to MPEG2. You don't need real-time playback unless you're going to tape. Just make sure you change your sequence to uncompressed (or Pro Res, etc.) or you'll just end up compressing to DV again.

There's a lot of fine detail around the eyes and that information would be easily lost after 3-4 rounds of DV compression. Which could account for what you're seeing.

I'd also play around with your MPEG2 settings as these can also destroy any quality gains you make by using uncompressed footage.

Hope that helps,
Zak

"You can't fix coverage in post."