Chroma key filter...

hi,
I just need a quick rundown on how to use the chroma key filter in Final Cut Express 4. i'm a novice and have read the manual but i don't really understand it..
any help would be great
Jess

Try here and then go to Part 2:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/chroma_key_part1.html
Al

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Problem when add Chroma Key filter to DVCPRO HD

I ingested some DVCPRO HD 720Pn footage into FCP. The footage was shot against a green screen. I started by creating a 4-point garbage matte around the person and then I added Color Smoothing and when I add the Chroma Key filter, the green screen comes back and a large grey area appears on screen. What is going on?

Ok, I just tried it again by creating the 4-pt matte and as soon as I drag the Chroma Key Filter to the clip, the points disappear, and the entire green screen comes back. Is this the way it is supposed to behave? Is there some type of apply button that I need to select after adjusting the last point of the garbage matte before doing anything else?
Thanks!
Message was edited by: rick.pearl

Very bad interlaced effect on Chroma Key filter

Hallo everyone,
Does anybody know why when I try to apply a croma key filter on Motion the image I get is like this ?
while when I use FC I get best result? Like this:
Is there any option to set in Motion Prefs? Thank you
iMac G5, CD, C2D, MB Mac OS X (10.4.8)
iMac G5, CD, C2D, MB Mac OS X (10.4.8)
iMac G5, CD, C2D, MB Mac OS X (10.4.8)

DV has a basic problem when trying to do a chroma key - that is it achieves its compression in the color channel - its color information is 1/4th that of its luminance resolution.
This is a quickie - using Conduit to key in Motion:
You can find out about Conduit here:
http://www.dvgarage.com/prod/prod.php?prod=conduit15&sub=samples
Check out the movie on keying DV for some insight into the limitations of keying DV. dvGarage also sells dvMatteBlast that handles all of this - a very nice product and they have a test version you can try...
post back,
Patrick

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 problem

can I completely customise a colour selection? I have a shot with a lot of blue in it, deliberately, and a small area of green, basically a mini-green screen, that I want to key out. whenever I add the chroma key filter to it it seems to automatically remove the blue. I've tried using refine key>sample colour to choose the green, which works, but only adds the green to the blue. using the colour selection produces the same effect, I can't move the blue line beyond the blue section.
what I'm assuming is happening is that FCPX is automatically detecting the blus in the shot and "deciding" for me that this is the colour to remove, which it isn't. I can't find a way to use chroma keyer without this incredibly annoying automatic feature turned on. I've tried to 'reset parameters' in the chroma key inspector which just removes any adjustments I've made.
I'm new to FCPX having had to move from FCP7 because all our college computers got upgraded. I'm used to being able to use the old key effects where you could select very specific colours and have complete control over range, spill, etc. so this new lack of control is incredibly frustrating.
thanks

I've tried reseting every one of the seperate selections and nothing happened. playing around with it more I've found that dropping the strength to 0%, effectively removing the key and then using the refine key to select the green works, which seems weird to me. I can't adjust the strength beyond 0% though as that still effects the blue in the shot.
it's the automatic nature of the keyer that is bothering me, it seems to select the colour from the shot before I've done anything. in a previous green screen shot, where it was a more standard setup it automatically selected all the green in the scene. the control with the sliders, refine key, etc. are great, I just wish there was a way to turn off this initial auto-select.

How to protect an area in a chroma key?

Hi Folks,
I'm having a bit of a problem performing a key on a section of footage. There's an article in the foreground that unfortunately is the color of the greenscreen (bluescreen actually). Is there any way to 'protect' that area so that the chroma key filter doesn't affect it? The closest solution I've come up with is to duplicate the section of footage and move the copy to the next higher video track, then use a shape mask to frame the small section that is problematic. This works for the most part except that during the cross dissolve at the beginning and end of the clip. During the dissolve you can clearly see the shape of the mask as it doesn't 'dissolve' at the same rate as the dissolve on the underlying original clip.
I would imagine that there has to be a simpler way to accomplish this, but it's eluding me.
Thanks,
Chris

If you have to dissolve between composites, which is what you're creating with holdout and edge mattes and keys, you have to merge all the layers into one and then you can apply those transitions. You need to either key all the video you're using, export animation + which will maintain the alpha and edit into your sequence or export selects to Motion with sufficient handles for your dissolves and then import those Motion projects back into FCP.
You could create sequences of any selects, do the key in FCP with your mattes, import those sequences into your master which would also take care of any dissolves. However, Motion has a superior keyer and matte tools over FCP.
At any rate, this involves some organizational strategy over just applying a keyer to a layer in FCP.

When I chroma key what do I work on? Files in the browser first? Canvass?

...or timeline? If I have two 3 minute sections of green screen do i edit them first in the timeline sequence or do I first edit out the green screen and then create my short? Very unclear, it seems that I can chroma key but when I look at the movie in the timeline the green is still there!!!!! Check the two files I imported and chroma keyed and they look like the key was successful so I am seeing two different things Infuriating that I can't figure this out after 3 days!\\Thanks
Don

The way most people do it is to first add the clip to the timeline, then apply the chroma key filter to the clip. Double-click the clip and edit the filter settings in the viewer.

Chroma Key and Rendering

I've having issues with the video quality once I apply a chroma key filter and render the video. We film everything on a black background, but we still have to key some of it out to make it look smooth. Once I do this, the video loses quality and becomes slightly blurred. I then have to render, and the audio and video no longer match. The audio is just slightly ahead of the video. I'm kind of new to FCE and completely self-taught, so I'm guessing this issue is simply a setting I need to adjust. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I'm tired of all my videos looking blurry and unaligned with the audio.

For sequence properties,
Compressor:DV/DVCPRO-NTSC
Frame Size:720x480
Vid Rate:29.97 fcs
Audio Rate:48.0 KHz
Format:32 bit floating point
For the clip,
Compressor:DV/DVCPRO-NTSC
Frame Size:720x480
Vid Rate:29.97 fps
Audio Rate:48.0 KHz
Format:16 bit Integer
I do add audio files for background music. They are generally a wav format and the audio rate for them is 44.1 while the format changes depending on the piece. Thanks and hopefully this was the info you were looking for.

Chroma Key problems with Final Cut Express 4

I had no problems with the Chroma Key in Final Cut Express 4 before. It was working perfectly fine untill I brought anther Macbook Pro last year in August. I installed it on the new computer and then the Chroma Key didn't work. Final Cut opens up and the other filters work fine but I can't get the chroma key to work. Any possible reasons?

I am experiencing an interseting problem with Final Cut Express on OSX Lion. I teach in a Mac Lab at my school. Today I was trying to teach Chroma Keying- which I have been doing for years - but for some reason the color selector would just not key out anything. I tried it on four or five different machines, and it turns out that ONLY my machines that were running OSX Leopard would allow the Chroma Key to function. I have two machines running Lion and the Chroma Key would not work on EITHER of them. I followed the exact same steps, and all of the settings were identical. The hardware was also the exact same package from machine to machine. I feel like there must be an issue with OSX Lion that is breaking the Chroma Key filter. Can anyone help?

Chroma Key not rendering

My foreground is on V2 - it is a graphic on a green background I created in Photoshop.
My background is on V1 - footage.
I wish to key V2 over V3 and have used Chroma Key filter. Everything looks fine until I hit Render.
At that point everything inverts and it is like I am keying the green screen over the footage instead of the graphic.
Weird, as I can play the timeline and everything is fine - graphic keys over background no problem It is only when I hit Render I have a problem

I asked because there is no V1 and V2 nor Chroma Keyer nor even filters for that matter in FCPX.
I don't understand what V3 is doing on top of the Photoshop file? If you have photoshop it would be much better to knock out the transparency there and bring in the file with transparency and overlay it in the timeline.

Tip for chroma keying.

Hi
I am on CS6.01 and have a greenscreen clip. I have used the 16 point garbage matte and the croma key filters to remome the green background.
There are still some dark green spots left because of my somewhat bad lightning setup, even after keyframing the garbage matte, so it moves according to the persons movements.
If I turn up the similarity higher, I start getting "holes" elsewhere, which I rather do not want.
I was thingking if it would be possible to export this clip including the keying as f.ex. UT/AVI with maximum renderquality, reeimport this clip and put another chroma key filter on the "last" spots, which are quite similar in colour, to make them go away, or could I even drag this sequense into another new sequense and add the new chroma key to this one?
Thanks for any input on this issue.
/Ulf

Well I just tried the "drag seq. into a new seq." and it worked like a charme.
Love Premiere
/Ulf

"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

Chroma key, dv

I want to make a video with 1-4 musicians. I´d like to have no background (=color white), "chroma key" seems to be the word. I´m using a dv camera. Would this work with the chroma key effect in FCE?

Ok, so here's a voice from the other side.
I do chroma keying all the time. It's nowhere near as fussy as people make it out to be. I've even used wrinkled green fabric with less than stellar lighting and still got acceptable results. OK, it's not videophile hi def on a big screen, but it's quite acceptable for most viewers on a 'regular' TV.
You would shoot your musicians against a green screen background (make sure they don't wear any green or blue). Put a white slug on your base video track. Then put your actual video on the track above it, apply the Color Smoothing 4:1:1 filter, then the chroma key or green screen filter, and you've got your musicians on a white background - kinda like the Morpheus & Neo 'loading program' scene in The Matrix. Depending on how it looks you might also need to apply the Spill Suppressor and Matte Choker to clean up the edges.
Will you like the results? You'll have to try it and see for yourself.
While it's true that the DV codec isn't nearly as good at chroma keying than other (higher end) codecs, it's not terrible, either.

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.

Chroma keying and color correction on same clip

I have an image, with some people shot on a green chroma key background. I want to key it on another image, and desaturate it, except the yellow color.
I have no problem keying out the green. I can also desaturate the image, with the deaturate filter, but if I apply the color corrector, and work with it to only keep the yellow color in the image, then my chroma keying is lost.
It kinda turns of the chroma key completely.
What is the easiest way to chroma key out the green of an image and desaturate everything except the yellow color of the image?
I have Final Cut Studio, so if it's easier to do it in Motion, then I'll do that...?
It's shot on HDV, so it's already a little tricky to key out the green perfectly.
thanks for your help.

After you key the image, export it as a self contained QT movie. Then re-import it, and color correct it to suit your needs.
Shane

Chroma key filter...

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