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keying problems.....HELP??!!

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amalgamstudioskeying problems.....HELP??!!
by on Oct 9, 2007 at 2:47:06 pm

I am trying to key a commercial I shot and my problem is that I have is that my actors look like something out of Ed Edd N Eddy. They have a shaky look about their edges. Does anyone have any advice for me?
Tom


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Dave LaRondeRe: keying problems.....HELP??!!
by on Oct 9, 2007 at 4:12:47 pm

First question in the diagnosis: did you follow the accepted guidelines for lighting when shooting chroma key?

Second: what did you shoot on -- DV, Digibeta, DVCPro 50, etc.?

Third: what AE effect are you using to do the keying, and are you utilizing any additional techniques beyond a straight chroma key?

Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV


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amalgamstudiosRe: keying problems.....HELP??!!
by on Oct 10, 2007 at 1:39:31 am

I am shooting on mini dv. I have backlighting on the actors and mostly even lighting on the screen. But I think that is my problem. I may not have enough back light. When I use the key and make my proper adjustments, as in adjusting the egd e and the clip white and black, I still end up with some green when i look at the status view. I also end up with, what seems like, a light that bounces on and off the edge of the actors, like noise or something. I am shooting 15 commercial and over half of them are in front of the screen. I can reshoot if needed, and perhaps I need to re-light. I am a self taught effects guy and I seem to be falling a little short here.
Tom


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beenyweeniesFixing greenscreen issues
by on Oct 10, 2007 at 7:16:47 am

The #1 problem is that you are shooting DV, which is notoriously difficult to key. the #2 problem is that since DV is so unforgiving, your lighting of the greenscreen itself needs to be spot on, or no amount of post production tweaking will save your shot. The lighting on your actor is important, but nowhere near as important as the lighting on the screen itself since this dictates how much pushing and pulling you will need to do in your keyer app to remove the backdrop, and all that pushing and pulling ultimately degrades the quality of your edges. I typically light my screen with two KinoFlo fluorescent light banks and a 2,000watt Arri light bounced off of a white card on the floor just below or above the screen. here's a still from a shoot I did last week that, when using the high res source footage, practially keyed itself even though we were only using DVCPRO 50, one small step up from DV:



Your greenscreen should register 50-60 IRE on a waveform monitor (in the image above it is about 53 IRE, I prefer 60). If you don't have a waveform available (who does), another option is to shoot a quick test clip on set and pull it into Final Cut Pro (maybe on a laptop), which has a reasonably accurate waveform built in.

Also, the lighting must be PAINFULLY even. Variations that are barely noticeable to the naked eye will cause you to push the keyer much harder just to get rid of the entire backdrop. This will cause your edges to get uglier and uglier, from which there is no pleasant workaround.

----------

In answer to your actual question (tangent? Who, me?) here's a few steps to try that should help your keying:

1. Precompose your greenscreen footage. Within this new comp, create an adjustment layer above the footage, and apply the "Median" effect (Effects > Channel > Median). There is only one value to play with, change it to 3 or so. Put the layer in "Color" blending mode. Now apply Keylight to the composition itself (you will need to nest it within another comp), NOT the source footage. Right off the bat, this will help a LOT of your edge problems.

2. Do not apply any color correction to your plate before doing the greenscreen extraction. Many people try to "cheat" the keyer by boosting values before they key, but it will NOT work and will make your key worse.

3. Break your key up into zones if needed, as this is how the pros do it on feature films. To retain fine hair detail you typically need much more delicate settings than are needed to remove the fringe around sleeves or pants, and one keyer setting applied to both will force you to compromise the quality of both. Duplicate the footage for each area that will need its own treatment, using masks to separate out each element. This way you have one layer that is just the head, one layer for the clothing etc. Then apply different keyer settings to each layer to suit its needs. You will need to animate these masks (depending on what happens in your shots) but again, this is how the pros do it and if you want the best results, this is a good place to start.



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epontiusRe: Fixing greenscreen issues
by on Oct 10, 2007 at 3:38:42 pm

Also there are a couple of tutorials that can really improve the quality of you keys. I find Aharon's "super tight junk mattes" technique to be extremely valuable in eliminating the majority of the background allowing you to key just a small area around your subject. That way you don't need to do multiple passes or clip to much of your subject trying to rid yourself of the background.
Andrew Kramer's basic color key tutorial can also help get you started.

Keylight is an extremely good keyer, but in order to pull a good key from even a well lit scene can take some tweaking. It's rarely as easy as just picking a background color and going. It's also going to be complicated by the fact that was shot on a fairly unforgiving video format. My advice would be to spend a little time reading through the pretty comprehensive PDF Keylight manual and run through some of the tutorials in it as well to get really familiar with and an understanding of features like screen balance, alpha/despill bias, screen matte, foreground and edge color correction.

Here are a couple of useful tuts from the COW:

Andrew Kramer's basic color key tutorial
http://library.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/colorkey.php

Aharon Rabinowitz's super tight junk mattes tutorial
http://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/junk_mattes.php



Erik


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