Total Newbie question about compositing in Shake vs. other softwares
by RobbyPK99
on
Aug 16, 2007 at 1:20:14 am
(I am a total newbie here, and I don't have a copy of Shake...yet....)
I have read multiple reviews on Shake 4.1, and every reviewer says its a 'must-have', but I have a question about the keying features. I've heard it said that Shake is the best at keying out footage for compositing....yet I see that the keyers it ships with is that same keyer that is in After Effects - Keylight.
Is there something about Shake the allows the Keylight (or some other keyer in the software) to give superior results to AE, or will any AE Keylight and Shake Keylight give the same results and its all up to the user to achieve a good effect?
Also, I have a camera that is a couple years old and shoots interlaced footage. Is Shake going to be able to work with this, or should I just stick with AE?
Re: Total Newbie question about compositing in Shake vs. other softwares by Lars Bunch on Aug 16, 2007 at 1:33:30 pm
Hi,
It is not so much the keying plugin that makes Shake so good at keying. There have been times when I have found AE can do a faster, easier job for a really simple key. But if you want to modify the key or combine keys (a hair detail key plus a course outline key with garbage and holdout masks) AE can be fairly hard to deal with, whereas with Shake, combining keys is very flexible and allows for a great deal of control. And since Shake comes with two really good keyers plus a couple of really basic keyers, you can use the keyer that is right for a particular shot (or part of a shot) and combine them to create one really good key.
While I suppose you can do much the same thing in AE, it is much easier to create your own keyer in Shake using nothing but the basic nodes. Once you understand the node based workflow, Shake provides a very intuitive method of controlling image elements.
And yes, Shake can work with interlaced footage, but the deinterlacing process can really slow you down. AE does it faster and possibly better. Sometimes deinterlacing in AE and rendering an iff file sequence for Shake makes for a better workflow. It all depends on how much control you need within Shake. There is also the trade off of softer video that comes with deinterlacing.
