Chroma key layer flickering and dropouts

Hi, I've searched this forum and the internet for assistance on an issue similar to the one I'm having and could not find anything close, so I appologize if there has been previous discussions on anything similar to this issue.
I am using Adobe Premiree Pro CS4. I have chroma key footage on my timeline with one layer of green screen footage and one layer of a static jpg. For some reason, while the timeline is playing back, the chroma key effect will begin to flicker and eventually drop out. Leaving just the original video layer with green screen background.Sometimes, just the background layer (jpg) will be visable. This effect flickers back and forth quite rapidly and eventually either the static jpg layer or the green screen footage layer will completly drop out.
If I stop playback, the stopped video will go back to normal, but once I start playback again, the issue starts again. I thought it might be a resource issue, so I restarted the coomputer and shut off as many resources I could in the task manager. Then I figured it was only a timeline playback issue and that it wouldn't show up in the final output, so I went ahead and rendered the project to an mpg file, and was disappointed when the effect showed up in the final output.
I'm running a Windows box with Win 7 Home Premium, I7 processor, 16GB RAM and an AMD Radeon HD 7800 graphics card.
Will I need to reinstall CS4?

Make sure that you check for those updates from the nVidia, or AMD/ATI Web site, and do not trust your OS, or any driver utitlity to tell whether you have the latest version.
Also, most manufactured computers use "master discs" to install the OS and all drivers. That master disc can be many months out of date. I recommend manually updating all drivers, and the OS, on a new computer.
I also remove any "bloatware," as many computer mfgrs. fill up the system with tons of useless "stuff."
Good luck,
Hunt

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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,
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+>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

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I know it's a simple question, but i had ¡Movie '08 and I bought the latest version, and it's really different, so I don't know, if i have like 150 photos (it's an stop-motion) how can I put the same duration? And do the chroma key effect? And I don't know why, all the images have the Ken Burns effect and I don't know how to quit it. Thanks for the help!
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I solved the same time problem, but now the problem is that when i use the chroma key it automatic uses the blue screen effect, not the gren (wich I want). Please help! Thanks!

Final Cut 7 Chroma Keying

I'm using green screen files that were mpeg-2 muxed converted to quicktime files using ffmpegX. I key them with a white background, but when I export to a Quicktime movie I lose quality and there is an ugly, pixelated white line around the subject. What codec should I export with? I've tried ProRes (LT) 60p and the HDV-1080i50 codec just to fool around, and in those the subject looks better but the background becomes pixelated and grey instead of white. It was shot on a P2 Panasonic, the original size of the media was 1920x1080, 75,000 bit rate. I'm sure the conversion of mpeg-2 to mp4 took the quality down a bit, but it seems quite bad now. Codec suggestions? Thanks.

If you shot with Panasonic P2 (DVCPRO HD or AVCintra? Guessing AVCI) then why do you think they are MPEG-2 compressed (they are not), and why did you use ffmpegX to convert them?
FCP 7 imports AVCIntra as ProRes directly via Log and Transfer. And it is best to use ProRes 422, and not LT, if you intend to Chroma Key. NEVER go to HDV...that's just horrible to do to nice AVCIntra footage.
What did you use to Chroma Key? You don't specify.
WHite background? Not green or blue? That isn't a keyable color. VERY problematic. You shoot with a blue or green screen if you intend to key. Not white.
Again...AVCintra isn't MPEG 2...WHY did you convert to mp4? Sorry, but do you know what the heck you are doing? Doesn't sound like do.
1) Shoot AVCintra P2. If you want to chroma key...CHROMA means COLOR. White is luma. And the two professionally accepted ways of chroma keying are green and blue. Anything else an you have issues.
2) Log and trasnfer that to ProRes 422. Not HDV, Not mp4. Do not use outside software. The P2 workflow in FCP is the easiest tapeless workflow, as it was the first one.
3) Key out the color with the built in Primatte keyer, or with good third party options (DV Matte Pro, Motion, After Effects and Keylight...)
4) Comp in your background.
5) Export to your delivery format.
Shane

Intermittent problem with cross dissolve and chroma key

It seems that in 1 out of 10 videos I produce in Final Cut Pro there is a problem with the cross dissolve effect and chroma key. What happens is that during the cross dissolve, clip A fades out with a green tint and clip B fades in with a green tint.
Today I am working with two videos that I captured using the same work flow on the same day. One project exhibits the tint while the second project does not. If I import the problematic footage into the good project the tint problem follows the footage. In the good footage, the cross dissolve produces a result that does not have a green tint. If I re-capture the "bad" footage the results are the same.
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Thank you.
Dual G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

In my project, both clips are source clips with Chroma, Color Smoothing and Matte Choker applied. A dissolve from non-chroma clip to chroma clip works fine. Only problem is with two chroma clips. In my dissolve, the error appears as red fringing in the area between the two masks.< </div>
You're using creative shorthand that doesn't help. "Chroma clip" means the clip to which you have applied all of these effects? What masks? Where are you getting the masks?
To understand what's going on with all them itty bitty pixels in a stack of interactive effects, do me a favor: render out a short piece, say 10 seconds of each of your chromaclips as separate movies over transparency using the Animation codec. Reimport them and put them over a solid colored Dissolve between them using different types of dissolves. Post back and tell us (me) what's going on.
I still consider this to be a bug -- nesting adds more steps to the workflow than if this bug did not exist. < </div>
It's not a bug. Your pixels are running down a pathway. It's a question of building the correct pathway and having the correct pixel wranglers with the right kinds of cattle prods.
bogiesan

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

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I'm new to iMovie. I did attempt to find the answers to the questions below here and on the web. Frankly iMovie so far seems to be pain....
setup for my testing purposes only:
a) borrowed chroma-key movie from the web
b) borrowed m4p from the web
I wanted to test my ability to use chrome-key and watermarks in making a short clip using 3 products...Screenflow 4, iMovie, Final Cut Pro X.
Questions and/or statements:
1) Green-screen:
Screenflow and Final Cut took about 5-10 minutes with zero knowledge of either...Over an hour with with iMovie and never could make it work.
2) Watermark:
Aganin 5-10 minutes with Screenflow and Final Cut, with iMove it looks like I could have either keying or watermark, but not both.
Screenflow is SUPER simple and cheep (on sale today for $70), I've seem it 50% off...
Final Cut is OUTSTANDING but super costly for what I wanted to do....Really a great product.
Anyway, here I am with a iMovie and so far it looks like it isn't a fit for me...Anyone know if a way to tweek it to make both chroma-key and watermarking work? I guessing it's just me, but the others seemed so simple.
Attached are screen copies of each...in order below are iMovie, Final Cut Pro X, and the output of Screenflow....
I want to thank those that I borrowed these images from...I will not use them beyond my testing....
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iMovie is designed with a very forgiving green screen feature so you can hang a green bedsheet on a wall and get a decent effect. It is designed for people making home movies. Perhaps for this reason, if you have a perfect green key in iMovie, then iMovie might think you used the green on purpose. It expects some variation. When people are doing computer generated graphics, or creating a green background with Photoshop or Keynote or Powerpoint, I suggest using a gradient between close shades of green, rather than a monochromatic green.
If you need sophisticated control of your keying, get FCPX. I am not familiar with Screenflow.
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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
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Thanks

Ron,
Here's a recent thread that may be helpful:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1893711#1893711
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This may be an expensive fix if it will work but me being colour blind is causing a few problems using the swatch tool. If anyone can shed some light on this that would be great, also any views on the boris keyer would be helpful.
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Dave.

Hi Todd as you can see from above I found that out the hard way,however I am experimenting just in case I fall across something that helps. In my case for now I am doing all the keying in AE then replacing the clips in PP with the rgb and alpha from rendered vid out of AE. Bit more time consuming but at least I can carry on with my project.
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What's wrong with my MacBook? It's flickering and beeps.

I bought my MacBook Pro 13" in October 2012. It worked fine and then on December 25 I was using it and a rainbow on vertical stripes started flickering and took over the screen so I had to hold down the power button and shut it down. I took it to the Genius Bar and she did nothing for me. About a month ago the screen started to flicker and was completely distorted. I took it in and they sent it to Austin where they reset the RAM. I got it back and yesterday I pressed the power button and the screen stayed black and it beeped three times then paused, beeped three times, paused, and continued in this pattern. And later last night I tried to turn it on again and it turned on but after about five minutes it flickered and the screen was completely distorted. So I forced shut down. The same thing happened again this morning with it working for about 5 minutes then distorting. This is annoying because I've taken it in twice and it continuously have the same problem. The only thing I have downloaded is Google Chrome. Before they sent it in and reset the RAM and to factory version I had Sims 3 on it but when I got it back Sims 3 wasn't on it because I was reset to factory settings, so Sims couldn't be causing it.

beeps http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1547
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You can run the Apple Hardware Test yourself
Reboot holding the D key
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1509
Not a definitive test, but will give you more information.
Genius reservation http://www.apple.com/retail/geniusbar/
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"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 object creates only an apha channel when a second object is blended

Hi there,
I try to use the chrome key effect to have a person speaking in front of a background.
So I have 2 objects.
Video 1 = background (jpg-image)
Video 2 = video object edited with chrome key effect.
Layering both levels I see the background with the alpha channel of the second layer on top.
If I decative the first level (Video 1 = jpg image) I can see the videoclip with the transparent backgound.
What am I doing wrong?
Can anybody help me with that issue?
Looking forward for ideas...
Thanks from Germany!
Tom

Ultra key is the best choice for chroma keying.
Video with ultra key set on higher layer. In Your Effects Control Tab , the Opacity Settings value should at 100 with the blend mode set to normal.
Ultra Key (UK) set up should be listed beneath the Opacity & Time Remapping settings. Use the color picker in UK to select the green in your source clip.
Then fine tune settings. I like setting UK's output the Alpha when I am adjusting the quality of Key, then back to composite for preview and normal viewing.
You can prep the footage for keying with fast color corrector, boosting the chroma saturation and heightening the contrast(watch out for over bright whites) a little bit.
Still image on lower layer with no keying added and opacity blending on normal.

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.

Chroma key layer flickering and dropouts

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