Keying with Primatte or Keylight HELP!!! NEW TO SHAKE and KEYING!!
by jujuelliot
on
Feb 13, 2007 at 2:09:55 am
I am new to Shake, somewhat new to using color keys. I can never get a key to be crisp and clean without any blue. In shake I have failed to find any decent tutorials on how to key. I shot 12 hours of HD 1080p footage in a studio blue room for a project im doing. I cant seem to get a clean key. I know its something im doing wrong because the lighting and everything is correct. I have looked for apple pro trainers, but the only ones are in Chicago, and i live in texas. I cant find anyone in my area that even knows what Shake is. I just need some help with getting a key to work correctly. And any other tips since the footage was indeed shot on HD, it should make it easier to key. Either reply to this post or contact me below.
Re: Keying with Primatte or Keylight HELP!!! NEW TO SHAKE and KEYING!! by Michael Buday on Feb 13, 2007 at 3:43:14 am
Elliot,
I was in the exact same boat as you a couple of months ago. I'm a veteran editor and have used every non-linear/linear system under the sun. I had a chance to take on a major editing/compositing job, but the client had already committed to an FCP Shake workflow. I took a three day course here in LA by Damian Allen which helped a lot, then I hired Damian for a day to come to my home to get me started on the "real" footage.
Shake is unusual in that every single tool (node) is independent, and therefore it's not terribly obvious how to pull a great key (unlike most other systems I've used that have a congealed set of controls for a color keyer). There was no way I could have figured out how to combine every node/control to get a great looking matte without have an expert show me - there are just too many "under the hood" tweaks that can be used in Shake, but most are not terribly obvious. Also, you HAVE to know your way around iMults and Mmults or you're gonna go nuts.
I would suggest you either get some training (if possible), or send someone a couple of TGA stills of your footage and your backplates. Let them pull a key for you in Shake and send you the Shake script so you can see what they did.
I'm not an expert, but I'm now pulling fanatastic keys on some pretty questionable footage (thanks Damian). Feel free to contact me offlist or send me a couple of sample stills and I'll see if I can help.
Re: Keying with Primatte or Keylight HELP!!! NEW TO SHAKE and KEYING!! by Andrew Shanks on Feb 13, 2007 at 5:45:30 am
I'm working on getting my keying series of video tutorials done and online in the next couple of days (fingers crossed!), until then here is a basic example of keying (doesn't talk about spill suppression techniques though, ...I tend to go outside of keylight for colour correction and spill suppression)
http://safari.peachpit.com/0321256093/ch13lev1sec3
here is another tutorial, but it is more for those wanting to experiment with building their own keyers and spill suppressors (something you will want to do on some jobs but usually not when starting out).
http://www.tahlniran.com/tuts06/Keying.htm
Likewise, if you can post a single still image of one of your foreground elements I can make up a shake script for you (as a template to get you started).
Re: Keying with Primatte or Keylight HELP!!! NEW TO SHAKE and KEYING!! by Andrew Shanks on Feb 13, 2007 at 9:19:27 pm
Okay, I have done a very very quick key of that test shot, if you download the following:
www.peopleinpost.com/cow/testing.zip
I have zipped up your original jpg and a shake 4.1 script. I haven't done anything with aspect ratio or anything, just basically gone quickly through the different elements I'd do if I was tackling the shots, ...obviously your footage will have less artifacts than that jpg, and things need a lot more tweaking, but you can get an idea of what I've done. There is a tutorial coming (first one, which goes over the DV/HDV processing part of it, should be online today hopefully, the other 3 parts to follow soon).
I have tried to group the nodes into sections and label the groups to make sense. The spill supression options are two possible solutions (the ignored/unplugged spill supressor is one option, the one that is being used is huecurves which basically desaturate the blue part of the colour spectrum, and a 3rd option (that isn't in there) is to use colour replace.
I hope that at least give you a starting point to go from.
Re: Keying with Primatte or Keylight HELP!!! NEW TO SHAKE and KEYING!! by jujuelliot on Feb 14, 2007 at 4:50:42 am
dude this thing is like a huge masterpiece i can alter the main image and the background but i dont know where to start on adjusting my key... im such a newbie blah... its amazing though i envy you
Re: Keying with Primatte or Keylight HELP!!! NEW TO SHAKE and KEYING!! by Andrew Shanks on Feb 14, 2007 at 6:50:29 am
ah, its no masterpiece thats for sure, but don't worry I've managed to get the 3 part tutorial recorded (which that script is based on) and just have to compress them to flash in the next day, ...so hopefully my explanations as I make the script will make everything come clear (well if you can understand my kiwi accent and my mumbling "I hate being recorded" voiceover ;-)
Re: Keying with Primatte or Keylight HELP!!! NEW TO SHAKE and KEYING!! by dane frederiksen on Feb 15, 2007 at 1:23:07 am
I too am new at this and having trouble keying in Shake. We shot HD with Varicam on greenscreen and am keying out over still images. Thought the kgreen screen was lit pretty good. After keying, there is still a lot of noise and spill, even if I use primatte or Keylight. The other issue is that when I render out a quiktime movie, it plays in slow motion. I can't figure that one out! please feel free to contact me off list if you can help, I can hire you if you can really solve all these issues!
dfrederiksen@futureus.com
Re: Keying with Primatte or Keylight HELP!!! NEW TO SHAKE and KEYING!! by Andrew Shanks on Feb 16, 2007 at 8:22:25 am
Hi Dane,
DVCPRO-HD is a pretty good format (miles ahead of HDV for example), but you do tend to get a lot of noise in the chroma (maybe try a small amount of chroma bluring as described in my jaggies tutorial, ...shouldn't need very much though). I have uploaded the main keying101 shake tutorial tonight (almost 19minutes long) so hopefully that will be online sometime soon. Take a look at that and see if any of the techniques I discuss helps you out (I hope so). There is a spill supression tutorial soon to be uploaded (in which i have listed every way I can think of, for dealing with spill) along with a tutorial on adding light wrap and edge blending to help finish the look of a comp.
As for the Quicktime problem, that sounds very strange, I'd just check your output render settings are correct.
