GREEN SCREENING

working in FCP 5.1.4
and need to know what's the best option to do some well lit green screening.
should we use after effects or is there something in FCP that will suffice?

cheers,
IC

FCP's built in keyers for GS are utter CRAP IMHO. Others have had luck, but really, to me they are very weak.

ME? I use Shake and AE. If you don't have the money for those, CONDUIT is a good buy:

[www.dvgarage.com]


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

yeah, the look on my post super's face was utterly priceless when she said they green screened and then told me it was on 5.1.4. and i responded with, 'do we have after effects?'. they actually did a good job lighting the screen but my past experiences have always less then stellar with FCP's GS.
cool, thanks for your advice Shane.

I've used AE enough, never Shake for GS. Time for me to learn something new!

Cheers,
IC

i use dvmatte pro from dvgarage - love it!

Cool, Thanks Wayne!

The Foundry's Keylight in After Effects is my choice (comes FREE as a separate installer on the AE Pro disk):

[www.thefoundry.co.uk]

I am working on 3 spots for a major pre-owned Golf equipment company based on VERY tough to key shiny reflective golf clubs. A little tweaking in Keylight and...well...I can post some sample images tomorrow if you want to see for yourself.

Joey

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

[www.kenstone.net]

Shake green screen tutorial by the champ himself.

Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

Ultimatte in after Effects can't be beat.

Mark

"Ultimatte in after Effects can't be beat. "

-I'll have a look at that, have not seen that one.
From my experience, Shake does a hell of lot better job than AE in terms of green screening though.

Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

Johan Polhem Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Ultimatte in after Effects can't be beat. "
>
> -I'll have a look at that, have not seen that
> one.
> From my experience, Shake does a hell of lot
> better job than AE in terms of green screening
> though.

AE is just the means to using Ultimatte since it's an external plugin (an application really). And it works on Shake and, oh yeah, FCP too! ;-)

Personally, if you have the dough for Ultimatte, do it. I'm in agreement on its superiority. I've been using it for years. It's pulled keys on footage that would have been impossible on anything else. I've actually also used it to key colors out besides blue and green.

Even though it works on many host apps, I still prefer to use it in AE myself. In fact, I stopped installing it on my seats of FCP and Shake quite a while ago.

Marco Solorio | OneRiver Media | ORM Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Media Batch

"I stopped installing it on my seats of FCP "

Since ver 4.5, Ultimatte has NOT worked well with FCP. We've found it to be rather unpredicatable, therefore, we use it in AE, where it's awesome.

Yes, it's expensive ($1,500 I think) but if you do a lot of green screens (like we do) it's worth every penny. Just wish they got it to work well in FCP again.

Mark

This next lafcpug meetings we are showing Primatte Keyer from Red Giant. Not cheap but good rep.

Michael Horton
-------------------

Does anyone have a good resource for learning Conduit?

I have tried contacting DVGarage in several different ways and have never received any acknowledgment.

I have watched all the tutorials on their site, but they seem to assume that their key market of video editors have an intensive background in nodal compositing, so there is a lot of background information missing. I can't find a whit of information that gives me a starting point.

I have been unable to do a simple things such as crop out a C-Stand, so I end up going back to the "old, crusty" way of pulling keys in After Effects or Boris because I've never been able to make Conduit do the simplest of things.

So far, it's a waste of my hard-earned money, and I'm tempted to never purchase any of their products again because of this bad experience, although people swear up and down to me that they are "good guys".

All I see are guys who took $150 out of my pocket and gave me something that doesn't seem to be able to do what they promised me it does...

But I'm willing to let that opinion be changed.....I really WANT to like them......so far, it's not lookin' good.

anyone, anyone?

deb

This place looks like the guy knows what he is talking about [www.lacquer.fi]

Also - I think there was a 5.1.2 (?) bug that broke conduit at some point. Might be worth looking into version compatibility?

Thanks for the link, Jude! I'll dive into that as soon as I finish off the current project that won't die...

I'm running 5.14 on my laptop and 5.1.2 on my G5. I was having troubles before the systems were at those levels, however. As soon as this project is complete, I'll be updating the G5...perhaps that will help...

Thanks again!

deb