What's Your Favorite Keyer To Use With FCP?

Hi all:

I work at an AVID facility and everyone here has been raving about how great Keylight is as far as a keyer. What is your favorite keyer for FCP? Why is it your favorite keyer? Are there any good ones at a reasonable cost without shelling out $800.00 or so for AE?

Thanks,

Dan

Hey Dan,

I was going to say my favorite keyer to use with FCP is After Effects. The method I choose depends on the shot to be keyed. How badly is it lit? Is it green, blue or (what I like to use) "screaming magenta"? I'll use a different combination of plug-ins to tackle different scenarios.

Keylight does kick a$$. With a well-lit clip, usually one click and the matte is pulled. I usually end up tacking on the Matte Choker & Spill Supressor for clean-up.

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Hi Joey:

We shoot mostly with the ReflecMedia ChromaFlex system, a ringlight/reflective screen system that creates literally perfect greenscreens with NO spill.

The bottom line is that I don't know and don't want to learn AE, I am so not a graphics guy so something that can function from within FCP would be great. I produced an animated series for a year with six AE animators and AE is a bit too deep for me to learn, I would have to take a class or two and don't have time and I suck at design basics anyway.

But I do need to do really clean, killer keys, we are beginning to shoot ALL interviews with green screen since our clients are so wishy-washy about BGs. Green screen is the way to go since it gives you so many options.

Best,

Dan

Dan,

If in FCP Pro...shooting in DV

Two best options DVGARAGE's DVMATTEPRO
or

VKEY2 from [www.oakstreetsoftware.com]

Both under 100.00 I like VKEY it's a vector keying program (don't ask me --it just seems to work) and compensates for the swiss cheeze holes in the compressed DV color

Better Bet - shoot in Beta SP and key it uncompressed using the built in FCP keyer or one of the above...much cleaner and easier to key results

Andy

DV matte garage. Fantastic results for the price.

Kevin



"A problem can never be solved by the same consciousness that created it"
Einstein

Hi Andy:

Actually shooting mostly in 1080 24P with the CineAlta and a lot of 720 24P with the HVX-200, if that makes a difference in your recommendation...

I will check out both of these keyers, thanks for the recommendations guys.

Dan

not sure what the colorspace compression ratio is in those formats...less compressed the better for keying Have a feeling the HD will key better than the highly compressed HDV Andy

Hi Andy:

Both formats (HDCAM and DVCProHD) work in 4:2:2 color space.

The new Kona 3 that we purchased also works with Thompson Viper or Panavision Genesis, both which are 4:4:4 formats. We had an HDCAM SR deck in here last week but we have not shot with the Viper or Genesis yet.

Thanks for the input.

Dan

Have you even tried the FCP Chroma Keyer? It's not bad for free.



Kevin Monahan
Social Support Lead, DV Products
Adobe
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro Community Blog
Follow Me on Twitter!

FCP Chroma keyer is actually fine. You need to add a plugin, like some of the ones I make, or even the in built ones, to fix subsampled chroma that you get from practically ALL video sources.

HDCAM is, in my opinion, harder to key than DV. It's 3:1:1 chroma, and more compressed than DV, making it much nastier to get rid of the artifacts. DVCproHD is 4:2:2 chroma sampling, but again, very heavily compressed.

Other thing I do is use my Alpha Expander plugin from Set 1 to clean up the edges of mattes. It works great. That's pretty much it for free / cheap.

next level up I'd look at DVMatte, or Vector Key as both seem to work very well. I guess I should write a keyer one day.....

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

Keylight and/or primatte in Shake.
The best in my opinion



Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com