Anyone try to Chroma Key in FCP X?

I do a lot of work with green screen and was wondering if anyone else tried this? Did this feature get streamlined too? I guess what I am hearing were my fears, that this was going to be a beefed up iMovie (which I don't like)
thanks
Aaron\
NEVERMIND- found it in the manual
Message was edited by: Aaron Strawn

http://www.dvgarage.com/prod/prod.php?prod=conduit15
Saw a demo of this at MacWorld from PixelCorps. Not sure they used FCP, but it was indeed all live and very good. Had an HV20 hooked up via HDMI to a decklink card and was cranking in some un-godly number like 190 mbits of dataflow. Beautiful keys.
CaptM

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Live chroma key in FCP??

Need a solution for live chroma key in FCP to be output to the web. I am really new to FCP and wonder if there is a way to do live chroma key. I have a bunch of cameras D-9, DV, Beta, and a green screen stage and a DSL web link. Also, have a Kona AJA LHe card. If anybody has the time would appreciate some input.
Thanks
John

http://www.dvgarage.com/prod/prod.php?prod=conduit15
Saw a demo of this at MacWorld from PixelCorps. Not sure they used FCP, but it was indeed all live and very good. Had an HV20 hooked up via HDMI to a decklink card and was cranking in some un-godly number like 190 mbits of dataflow. Beautiful keys.
CaptM

AVCHD Sony footage has lines in chroma key in FCP

My footage shot on with Sony Nex-fs700 will not chroma key with placing blue vertical lines in the final key. The line appear only after I render. My sequence settings match my footage. Can anybody help.
Stinson

I shot in 1080 24p FX and I set the sequence to 24 fps and I was getting the vertical lines, flicker and lag in the image with any quick moments. So I created a new sequence and placed a test clip on the timeline and FCP asked if I wanted match my clip to the sequnce and I said no. I applied the color smoothing 4:2:2 and chroma key filters and played the clip and it was fine but still with the vertical lines. I then removed the color smothing 4:2:2 filter and no vertical lines. Still might send you a short clip just for kicks.
Yes I have After Effects and Motion and I will give them a try when I finish this project.

Chroma Key for FCP on my wedding video

Hi, I have my wedding video I am trying to edit. I have a video clip of my wife walking in and I want to make her be in color and make everything else black n white. As the video piece has so many different colors in it how do I achieve this?

Ideally you need a rotoscoping application, such as Shake, Sillhouette, After Effects, Photoshop CS3 or higher, or Motion.
It might be possible to use multiple instances of the Chroma Keyer to generate a rough matte, but you will need a roto app to make it look convincing, plus a lot of time, skill and patience.

Chroma Key ...

Hello All,
OK, a somewhat tricky question for you experts out there today ...
I have been handed 3 rolls of rushes from a studio which uses a green ring-type overlay system )attached to the camera lens). All rushes are pre-keyed, that is to say that the keying was done in the studio and the ready-mixed output was recorded to tape.
The background they used was wishy-washy, a mix of orange and burnt red - quite revolting, to be blunt. Due to the mix between the green ring keying light and the awful background, everyone in shot has a slight 'ring of confidence' about them ... a slight green 'tinge'.
In order to try and I remove this, I placed the rushes in V1 and I and slotted in a tiff of the original background into V2. Then, by selecting the chroma key in FCP, I clicked my dropper over a patch of green by the presenters ear. Thinking I could re-key the outlines (and then softening them up), I played around with the settings; luma, saturation, the colour itself, but to no avail.
I then tried the green suppressor. Again, nothing.
Does anyone have a good or at least feasible solution to this?
Thank you for your time and expertise ...
sp

If the tiff file you have exactly matches the background - (the way to test is this is try cut the tiff into a small portion of the pre-composited clip and verify that there is no size, position, luma, chroma, gamma, etc. changes when the cut goes through, the foreground keyed element just cleanly disappears at the cut) then you may have some luck by using this -
On VI place the tiff
On V2 place your pre-composited clip.
Drag a Luma Key Video Filter on to the pre-composited clip on V2, open the filter tab for that clip and switch the Key Mode to Key Out Similar. You now should have some fudging ability by adjusting the threshold and tolerance. This may help minimize the green ring.
See if this helps - I hope it does.

DVCPRO50i and Chroma Key

Now that I can produce 4.2.2 footage what difference should I see when using chroma key and has anyone got any good tips on creating a good chroma key in FCP-6

4:2:2 sampling will produce cleaner keys than 4:1:1 or 4:2:0 due to increased color sampling, but the real "key" to keying is lighting both background for "evenness" and forground for separation. lighting angle is critical in the composite so that the keyed object matches the background it is being composited on to achieve a "believable" composite

Plug-in or 3rd party for Chroma keying with DV footage

We shoot Betacam SP, captured to DV with a DSR-45P DV/DVCAM deck.
From what I learn on the web, green is preferred if you edit on DV, due to the color sampling. (4:1:1 for PAL?).
However, it also depends on what background you have. Use green if you are in the forest, use blue if you are at the beach. Sort of.
The built-in chroma keying in FCP is OK, but not more than that. What do you recommend using?
I've found the dVMatte from www.dvgarage.com - is it good?

Just for DV media, the AdvantEdge plug-in from Ultimatte has a preset. It has a resampling method for 4:1:1 (or 4:2:0 if PAL) media like DV.
Take a look:
- http://www.ultimatte.com/products/product_mac.jsp
- http://www.macuarium.com/actual/especiales/2004/12/18_chromadv.shtml (analisys in spanish)

FCP Chroma Key requires re-render after any changes

FCP: version 602A89
In an HD 1080i60 sequence - there is a clip - the Chroma Key video filter has been applied to a pretty-well-lit 'stinger-green' backdrop. By making adjustments anywhere in the Chroma Key filter visual dialog, the entire green-field returns and cannot be eliminated except by re-rendering the clip.
See EXAMPLE IMAGES at http://www.glorioski.com/fcp/chromakey.html
I guess this could be submitted as a bug - but I am thinking there MUST be something I am not doing or have inadvertently set (or unset).
Any ideas?
Thanks! Lance Drake

Hi Jerry,
Hey thanks for your response to this question - but, I do not believe that this has always been the behavior with regards what has been presented in the canvas - at least for the current frame.
It's quite reasonable that re-rendering will be needed to apply the changes to the entire clip. However, my point is that, as adjustments in the Chroma Key filter are made - the results of the previous setting of the filter are completely abandoned and the single frame displayed in the canvas reverts to the case as if the filter had never been applied.
The BIG drawback to this behavior is that you cannot see how slight changes in filter settings affect what will be the result were you to go to the trouble of re-rendering the entire clip. Having to re-render with every adjustment sticks you in a huge time-hole.
I wish I had a system with FCP 5 on it - it would be interesting to see how FCP used to behave. Am I nutzo? Somehow I don't think so. It's my recollection that it was possible to make changes to the ChromaKey filter - see the effect of those changes rendered into the single frame of the canvas - and then it was up to you to cause the rest of the clip to be re-rendered.
Unless somebody kicks in with specifics regarding the error of my ways, I am thinking this should be submitted to bugreporter.

Chroma Key--iMovie w/3rd party vs. FCP vs. FCE

Apple's pro audio and video tech support department can't seem to answer this question and they thought someone here in the FCP forum might be able to give me some guidance.
I'm an independent trainer and I've been trying to put a "simple" head and shoulders shot of me in a nice backdrop using iMovie HD and various 3rd party green screen / Chroma Key plug ins. The results have been disappointing. I evenly lit a green background (a piece of green fabric), shot the video, and adjusted the tolerances. The background dropped out ok, but so did tiny bits of me, and the green was still visible along the edges of me. Any further adjustments would make me transparent. I know it may be a lighting issue (or the fact that I'm using a generic green cloth background), but I'm a fine art photographer as well and I'm being pretty careful about the lights.
Are there any pros who do Chroma Keying who can tell me if buying FCE or FCP will solve this problem? Does FCE have a dramatically improved way to accomplish this green screen thing or is it likely using the same math as the iMovie 3rd party plug-ins?
Really, I'm hoping that FCE will have the same features in this area, since FCP is out of my range right now and hard to justify since I only want to do this one thing.
If I buy FCE, will I be missing some project-critical Chroma Key features only found in FCP that will force me to upgrade or are the features in this category identical?
For example, a tutorial on Chroma Keys for the Pro version says that it has a Chroma Smoothing 4:1:1 filter that might help when using mini-dv cameras.
Any thoughts on this from people who understand both versions of Final Cut and get good Chroma Keys would be greatly appreciated. Any other approches or software to get this done would also be appreciated. Thanks.

Hi Bob - this is a copy of the answer I sent you in the FCE Forum.
I have never used iMovie for Chromakey as I believe that once you start buying third party filters etc. you can soon end up paying as much as if you had bought FCE outright!
FCE has numerous additional features (besides the Smoothing Filter) for fine-tuning the picture to get rid of colour fringing and other extraneous nasties. I would imagine that iMovie plugins would not have as many - though I do not know that for a fact.
As Tom says FCE and FCP are virtually identical in most respects. FCP's main differences are connected with the way professionals work - like feeding video from several cameras simultaneously etc. Most of us can manage without that!
Ian.

Noise reduction on almost chroma key edges

I have a footage of a person in a white tee shirt in front of a very intense bright yellow backgroung (It looks like a chroma-key).
On the edges of the person and specialy on the edges of the white tee shirts (that is a over-exposed) there is some noise / artefacts.
I desaturated in FCP with the 3 way filter for the yellow to get less intense.
I checked plugins sites like: Natress, CHV, Kurt Hennrich and revisionfx and they have noise reduction plugins.
But I was wandering if anyone knows what's the best plugin (or filter) for this kind of noisy / artefact edges problem ?
Also, is there any setting in Compressor that could help to reduce this ?
I filmed on DVCAM NTSC, and this is for a DVD (replications).
Thanks.

Wow, you've got a bunch of problems here starting with your camera of choice which I'm assuming since it was DVCAM, was something like a PD150/170, the choice of video format which is extremely compressed, the exposure.
I think your main issue stems from video format and exposure, however. Depending upon the camera model, you probably should dial down your chroma settings and for something like this, I may have been inclined to under-expose a bit.
There is a very good reason that good lenses cost as much as cars or houses. Cheap cameras with cheap lensing exhibit a bit of chromatic aberration which you've also got going on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_aberration
Your best solution would be to reshoot with a more robust video format if possible. You can try creating an edge matte for the yellow background and applying a light blur/defocus to the edge matte.
If Goggi comes up with a suitable solution be sure to post the details for future readers.

Color correction and "sudo-chroma keying"-can they be done?

So I just wrapped my cousin's wedding, but the ceremony and reception were both held in a bar, which made for less than optimal conditions. Besides the prolific dim lighting, there were neon signs, specifically Miller and Bud Light. Those signs were both blue, so if I put on my outdoor color corrector, the video looked nice, but then if I panned, the regular ambient lighting looked off. If I applied my indoor color corrector for the ambient lighting, it looked good, but as I got close to the neons, it again looked bad. My question is, can I keyframe the 3-Way Color Corrector so that when I'm by the neons, it's as good or the same coloring as when I'm looking everywhere else?
My second issue came during the vows. Being a bar, there was a Budweiser sign on the wall, and it was paper and had just gone up, so it couldn't come down. I knew I was gonna be framing that perfectly, and unfortunately I was. However, the sign has a nice white boarder to it, so my initial and current thought is to chroma key it out and replace it with something like "Congratulations." I wasn't using a tripod, so the image moves slightly and there's 2 people in front of it, the bride and the groom respectively. Would it be easy to chroma out the white boarder which then would give me some space to matte the rest out. But what about around the people? How good of a matte could I do there? I'm thinking of something like the Magic Wand tool from Photoshop, but FCP doesn't have that. The sequence is only ~5 minutes, so not that long, but what would make it easier on me?
I don't have FCS2 yet, but if all goes according to plan, I'll be wiping my system on monday, installing Leopard, and going to FCS2 which means I could smoothecam that clip, so then my matting would be easier. In theory, I also will have Color at my disposal, but from the time I played with it at an Apple Store, it's too much for me, at least at this stage of the game. This wedding was done on the cheap, hence why I'm doing the video for them, so if I need to leave the color as-is, and the Budweiser sign in, so be it, but I'd really like to make this the best that I can, and neither of these experiments have I had much of any really experience with, so the more the merrier.
As always, any thoughts or help is much appreciated,
-Brian

+>can I keyframe the 3-Way Color Corrector so that when I'm by the neons, it's as good or the same coloring as when I'm looking everywhere else?+
good news, yes you can keyframe all the color corrector filters and it should work handily for your situation
+>I'm thinking of something like the Magic Wand tool from Photoshop, but FCP doesn't have that.+
try these, might be just what you need: http://www.lyric.com/fcp-plugins/lyric-effects/index.html
+>The sequence is only ~5 minutes, so not that long, but what would make it easier on me?+
your Brother got married in a bar under a Budweiser sign Brian, I'm guessing he won't mind having his wedding video reflect the reality of the surroundings, so why fake it? ... easiest on you would be to leave it as it is 'cos theres nothing worse than a dodgy effect.
hope that helps
Andy

PP CS5/5.5 chroma key better than AE CS4?

Hi everyone.
I think I read somewhere a while back that the chroma key in PP CS5/5.5 is better than AE CS4's Keylight. In fact, the PP effect may be an improved Keylight , but I can't recall this for certain.
Can anyone verify this?
Thx.
Paul

I've keyed with the same camera for a couple of years now, and it's got a pretty narrow band in which greens are easily keyed. DVCPRO HD is not well-reputed for its handling of greens, or at least as a result of it's use with an older 1/3" sensor. I've gotten the best results with the exposure on the screen at about 50-60IRE, but that's just in my scenarios. Most of my material is recorded to P2 cards (though I did one long shoot with OnLo and a green screen), but the footage encoding is the same--it's all DVCPRO HD. I've got some stuff that I did recently that keyed like buttah with Ultra--I literally had a solid key in 20 seconds with just picking the background color and tweaking a couple parameters.
So, since "brightly lit" and "lower lit" are subjective terms, it's hard to give you any specific recommendations other than to try to stick in a particular exposure range. All I know is that when your green screen footage is evenly lit and at mid-range exposure, Ultra does a pretty good job with minimal effort.

Reco for 3rd party Chroma-keying software (Ultimatte or better)

Does anyone have any experience of working with Ultimatte AdvantEdge Chroma Key Software? I'm looking for something that will key nicely in post and perform better than the built-in doo-dah in our beloved FCP (not that there's anything too wrong with that). Meanwhile footage-wise, everything is stunningly lit (flat where it should flat, even where it should be even, excellent color temperature, etc). It couldn't be shot any better. God, it is soooo beautiful. And the costumes, simply breathtaking... wonderful color balance and choices. This was shot and designed by true creative geniuses.
But I digress. So, if anyone has an info about Advantage or any other chroma-keying software drop me a note.
Oh, and please no "should ofs" I'm just the bleedin' editor. And by the way... did I mention the footage is stunningly beautiful?
Thanks

I have five keyers including Ultimatte, which is pricey.
I prefer dvmatte pro from dvxgarage, which isn't pricey

"Photo Booth" Chroma key

anyone know of a plugin in FCP that will do a "chroma key" like the way photo booth does its' chroma key effect?
pretty much instead of keying out blue or green, photo booth asks you to step out of frame then saves the image, when you step back into frame it keys out the background the same way you could key out the color green.
I haven't seen it, but I'm wondering if there is a way to do this in FCP.

ok so most of my experience is w/ chroma key, so that is how I think of this. I understand that FCP takes the difference layer & thinks of it similar to a green screen. you adjust tolerance & threshold to fine tune the matte / key. I also know that there is a little bit of noise in the video (I'm shooting these tests on -6db gain to get the cleanest image) which will make the same pixel "NTSC" (never the same color frame to frame.
but this is the best I can get it w/ my tests
http://i30.tinypic.com/2dt3k3b.png
http://i31.tinypic.com/2hg6b2q.png
http://i28.tinypic.com/15eju4o.png
this is w/ the threshold at -90 & the tolerance at 0. is this filter really this poor, because I've hit the wall in the parameters and it feels like I should have more room to move around. is this the best FCP can do? if so is there a third party app that can actually do this better?
or are there any more tricks, like progessive vs interlace, DV vs HD, etc.
these are some of my first attempts that were creating more of a blended key.
http://i30.tinypic.com/k53fo2.png
http://i26.tinypic.com/9saplg.png
http://i31.tinypic.com/fvdxth.png

Unable to Chroma Key in FCE

I am having a devil of a time trying to get FCE chroma key to work. I have followed every tutorial I can find on Youtube, all with the same result, nothing.
It doesn't matter whether I use a still picture or a video clip nothing happens. I can use the eyedropper to select the colour. I can manipulate the bars but all to no effect onscreen. This is obviously very frustrating for me.
Would anyone be able to help?
Thanks,
Brad

Well, I guess you have already the “background-clip” on V1...?
Drag the “green-screen- (or blue) clip” on V2 above the background-clip...
Select the clip on V2 / go to Effects / Video Filters / Key / Chroma Keyer...
Double-click the green-screen-clip on V2 / the clip should open in the Viewer...
Select the Chroma Keyer Tab / Select the Eyedropper and click the green colour
in the Canvas / hold down the shift-key and use the Eyedropper again,
until all green colour has disappeared (or nearly)...
Fine-tune with Saturation and Luma if necessary...
Switch to the Filters Tab / Chroma Keyer / and try further adjustments...
Regards
Nolan

Anyone try to Chroma Key in FCP X?

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