AAHHH!! I'm so mad I could spit!

OK- so the wife put me on lockdown for a while which means I had to shelve my latest project so I can be a better Father/Husband- you know the drill.... anyways, I decided I still wanted to keep my fingers in the creative stuff, so I put up a green screen wall in my garage and put about 1000 watts of lights in there. I shot Jedi Ryan against the wall and brought the footage into After Effects. After several hours of fiddling around, I finally got something close to a decent key, but to get rid of the green spill I had to use Difference Keyer, Spill Suppressor, Matte Choker, Shift Channels, and Color Balance in heaping helpings. The problem I have is now the foreground footage looks like poodoo and the key eats into Ryan's ears at the beginning. Also, at about 7 seconds when he raises the saber above his head, you can see big chunks of grey splotches (which used to be big chunks of green splotches before all the tweaking).

copy/paste link:- On2 codec- 900K- 10 sec clip

http://homepage.mac.com/powerofthesith/greenscreenhell.mov

I'm frustrated and wanting to know if blue is easier to get a cleaner key or should I just sell some junk on EBay and finally buy the DV Keyer from DVGarage. Since they don't have a trial, I can't tell if it will do that much better of a job than the built in keyer in AE. Or perhaps I just suck at keying and should forget about fanfilms and work on my golf game more. At any rate, if you have any suggestions on how I can make my keying life easier, please let me know.

Oh, and I know the saber stinks and the lightning is laughable- I was mainly going for a keying test.


Later- Jeremy

Now, where's that pitching wedge?

 

"OK- so the wife put me on lockdown for a while which means I had to shelve my latest project so I can be a better Father/Husband"

-Is fanfilming that big a part of your life?
Yikes!

No offense intended,
-Kol

 

That looks fine, unclepain. You're right, his ears flicker a little, but that's nothing that a little rotoscoping in photoshop can't fix.

 

unclepain: Couple of thoughts...

First, the matte choker is the enemy, and it must die. Okay, maybe that's a little strong, but I avoid the thing like the plague. Whenever you can, get the keying as tight as possible, and use the matte choker as sparingly as possible (typically, I only use it on core mattes). You may want to key the footage in a couple of passes (on separate, layered pieces of footage), once for the edges, and once for the core.

Second, dvMatte is probably a good solution for the footage you've got, however it's tough to really know without seeing the original footage. Any chance you could post it? Even a single frame at full res would be informative to me about what exactly is going on.

Oh, and that doesn't look like anything I'd want to clean up in Photoshop.

 

It sounds like you're trying to key it all in one go. Like Rive said, try doing it in several layers. Beyond just the core and the edges, you might want to "garbage matte" separate body parts, like the arms, legs, head, and torso, and key them all separately (on separate layers with dedicated loose mattes drawn about them) to get an even better composite.

M. Scott

 

Thanks guys- I will try killing the matte choker and make separate layers for my problem spots. I will post the original footage later so you can see what I'm fighting against. So, does anyone have an opinion on if I am wasting extra energy because I'm using green instead of blue?

Oh- Fan films aren't that important in my life, but I have a tendecy to get "lost in my work". I need reminding to step away from the keyboard every once in a while. I have no regrets for giving up my grandiose fanfilm dreams in order to spend more time with my family. Sorry if it came off like I resented having to do that.

 

no need to apologize

 

For what it's worth, I've keyed DV sources using green and blue screens and neither was any easy than the other.

From what I've seen, the DVGarage CTK is a great tool. Well worth the eBay sales you'll need to do to buy it. (Can't really speak first-hand though. I don't have AE.)

Good luck.

Have fun.

 

I am also a proponent of the dvMatte keyer. I was amazed at what I could accomplish with no keying experience at all. It really is a great tool.

 

the dvmatte keyer is a great keyer, much better than all the built in ones. The only thing that i found it difficult if not impossible to use it for is bad lighting

 

All I get is a white screen. And I have the ON2 codec!

 

One possibility is that your lighting when filming on the greenscreen needs a bit of adjustment. You need to have the lights directed at the greenscreen, without getting your actor lit by the screen lights, otherwise he'll be really bright and the spill problem may occur.

In otherwords, you need to make sure your actors are separated from the screen or they'll blend in.

Hope this helped.

 

the dvmatte keyer is a great keyer, much better than all the built in ones.

Actually, I have to disagree with you. dvMatte really isn't better or worse than any of the built-in AE keyers -- it's just different. Each of the various keyers have situations where they shine, and others where they don't function as well. At this point, even with access to dvMatte, Primatte and Ultimatte, I do at least 60% of my keying using the Color Difference Keyer. Footage that is problematic for the CDK, I usually tackle with the Build Your Own Keyer method outlined in the Composite Toolkit. However, there are situations where dvMatte really is the best choice (like Primatte or Ultimatte). I think that the key (heh-heh -- get it? ... no? ... sorry ) thing about dvMatte is that it's fast and easy.

With respect to blue vs. green, there are a lot of people that will tell you that green is superior to blue when it comes to keying when using digital -- the truth is, though, from a practical point of view, the difference is really negligible.

 

yeah rive, the cdk is a great keyer, but hard to use at first. I was mostly refering to the standard version of AE.

 

Right, but even within the standard version, there are other methods that stand up to dvMatte on a situational basis: all the tools necessary for BYOK are in the standard version (Build Your Own Keyer is about the most powerful method for keying I've seen in AE -- it'll handle really problematic footage -- in many cases the technique can even be used to get things like fine hair on DV footage), and then of course there's Color Range, which is quite a powerful tool (another of the tutorials in the CTK covers Color Range).

 

OK- the frustration continues. Here are some examples.

First, here is my original green screen footage.
http://homepage.mac.com/powerofthesith/ryanunkeyed.jpeg

Now, here is my attempts at a key after hours of struggling.
http://homepage.mac.com/powerofthesith/ryankeyed.jpeg

Now, to add to the frustration, here is a key I did in 5 minutes with a bluescreen shot I got with Creating Motion Graphics book by Trish and Chris Meyers.
http://homepage.mac.com/powerofthesith/girlbluescreen.jpeg

The picture of the girl isn't perfect, but that was with 1 layer of color difference keyer and moderate Spill Supression and it came out pretty good. The key of Ryan was done with 3 different layers and I cannot get the green out, plus the outline of the key is all blocky and I can't seem to smooth it out. So my question is... what is my problem? Is it an issue with my lighting? Is the green too intense? Is the camera just not picking up a good image? I'm not sure what to do at this point.

Thanks for all the advice so far. Any further advice would be really appreciated.

Later-
Jeremy

 

OK- after looking closely at my original footage and the image of the girl that I keyed, I'm noticing something about my footage... it's crap. The outline of Ryan's arms are just a big smear of greenish color and there is no discernable separation between the foreground and the background. On the image of the girl, the background clearly separates from the foreground. What's the best way to solve this? Move the actor closer/further from the wall? Have less light on the background and more specific ligting on the subject? Can anyone get a decent key with a Sony 1 chip Digital 8 camera?

Later- Jeremy

 

Moving the subject is a decnt way to solve it. Also just as important is to light the subject and the greenscreen seperately. That should help a bit. If you still have a litte bit of trouble with it, you should use the spill supressor in AE, it's in the pro bundle, not sure about regular.

 

unclepain: I plan on taking a crack at this to see what I can come up with for you -- just a little busy at the moment... I'll let you know if I can figure anything out.

 

Thanks guys. I plan on doing some more tweaking to the lighting in the next couple of days. I will try several tests and see what is optimal for my setup. I'll report back later this week. I will try any suggestions you guys might have and let you know how they come out.

Later-
Jeremy

 

I've worked in TV studios so I've seen guys lighting bluescreen - here are some observations:

• Get some distance between the screen and the subject. This will reduce any 'blue spill'
  corrupting your subject.


• Light the screen well. It's easier to key off a consistent colour.


• Backlight the subject. A yellow gel on the backlight will also help separation
  (yellow is the opposite of blue).

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks Darth-
I will try moving my subject away from the wall and I was using a backlight, but it didn't seem to help much. My background was green and not blue and I'm really fighting the green spill. I have a feeling I would be fighting blue spill less than green, but I have more issues than just spill. I'm thinking I might need to lessen the intensity of the lights on the green wall and increase the lighting on the subject. Hopefully this will cause him to stand out better. It just seems like WAY too much light is coming off the wall and is eating into the foreground subject.

 

UPDATE-
Well, I think I'm on to something now. I have tried several suggestions listed in this thread and it has improved things dramatically. It's still not perfect, but I've discovered techniques that I think will really help me key things properly.

Here's what I did. I created a lighting truss in the garage with some screw-in hooks and PVC pipe so I could properly mount key and back lights. I lessened the intensity of the green screen lighting and pulled the subject about 6 feet away from the wall to lessen the spill. Green is still hard to get rid of. I garbage matted the body and arms separately and learned about duplicating layers that weren't 100% solid keys, but they dramatically solidified after duplicating. Rive is right- Matte choker is the spawn of Satan- I had much better luck with duplicating the layer and applying a gaussian blur to the background layer to smooth out the jaggies I was getting. After very close inspection of my DV footage, I am confident that I am fighting more than I need to because of the low quality image of my camera. There are just WAY too many green smears on places that should not have any green in them at all because of the lighting. I think this is causing most of my headaches getting a good key and getting rid of the green halo around my subject. Man- this was quite a learning experience. Thanks to everyone who contributed! I really appreciate everyone who takes time to contribute positively on the board.

Here are some links to some new sample footage. It's not perfect, but it's going in the right direction.

240K- On2 codec- 3 sec mov clip
http://homepage.mac.com/powerofthesith/newgreenscreen.mov

I need to adjust the lights more and I haven't used any colored gels yet. I have no idea what Tyler was doing in the video either so don't ask.

Thanks!

Jeremy

 

unclepain: Can you post your background plate by itself somewhere?

 

The background plate of the CG room?