Keying A Bad Green Screen For A Feature Film
by Ayman Farahat
on
May 23, 2008 at 2:02:21 pm
Hi Everyone,
I have a major keying task to attend to over the next several weeks/months. It’s a feature film that was entirely shot on green screen, which was not the ideal green screen that we all see in demos and manuals. It was not always uniformly lit, sometimes had many creases and folds in it, and some other times the talent/objects were too close to it and bathed in its lovely green spill.
These are some project specs to give an idea about the footage and system used:
Production:
- Camera: Sony HDW F-900 HDCAM CineAlta
- Tapes: Sony BCT-40HD
- Shooting format: 1920x1080 25p
Post-Production:
- Workstation: Mac Pro 1 (Dual-Core Intel Xeon 3GHz processors –16GB RAM – NVIDIA Quadro FX4500 graphics card – MAC OS X Tiger10.4.10 operating system)
- RAID Storage: G-TECH GSPEEDXL12 Dual Host 4Gb FC with ATTO Celerity FC-42ES host adapter card
- External monitor: JVC DT-V24L1D broadcast LCD monitor
- Software: Fincal Cut Studio 2, Shake 4, Studio Artist 3, Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Production Premium.
- Capture card: Blackmagic Decklink HD Pro PCIe
- Capture VTR: Sony HDW-M2000
Now, I have been looking for the most effective keying applications for the past few weeks and I ended up with the aging Primatte (in Shake) as well as the better Keylight (in both Shake and After Effects) and Zmatte (as a plug-in to After Effects). I’m also using Power Mask from Digital Film Works/Tools, which comes handy with shots with minor/no camera/talent movements where I can easily and effectively mask without having to struggle with keying a bad green screen. Adobe Ultra is not compatible with my Mac system and I’m not sure how helpful/superior it is to the other keyers like Keylight, zMatte and Primatte. I’m also thinking about Nuke’s IBK keyer, but again I’m not sure about how superior this keyer is to the other ones.
Going with Adobe Ultra or Nuke IBK is an expensive solution for me, given the system I already have, but I’m willing to take the plunge if they will add significantly more power to my keying operations beyond what I already have (Keylight, zMatte, Primatte, Power Mask). I’m also wondering if there are any hidden (or so obvious) keying gems out there that I’m missing here.
Any thoughts/experiences/comments/tips on this will be much appreciated.
Re: Keying A Bad Green Screen For A Feature Film by Danny Hays on May 27, 2008 at 2:35:53 am
If you have Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Production Premium, you should have Ultra and Onlocation for windows. I use Ultra and I'm very happy with it. It's not your typycal NLE type software and may take a little practice timing the forground and background video but it's fantastic with poorly lit or wrinkled green screens. In fact thats what it's beauty is, the ability to get a good key with what can be considered unkeyable footage. PC's are cheap these days and the CS3 Pruduction premium ships with Ultra. If you want send me a few seconds of the worst green screen footage and I'll show you what it can do. Your only a few hundred bucks away from it anyway. A PC.
DanHays2004@yahoo.com Danny
