Shadows on a green screen

Hello
Recently i saw a clip where the main character was dancing against a white background (i.e. green screen )
curiously there was a black silhouette of the same character kind of mimicking her- like shadow but not in sync. How do you achieve this effect?
many thanks,
Peter

Damien13 wrote:
… How do you achieve this effect?…
you need two recordings:
Dance act #1 (could be done in front of an infinite white, or green screen)
Dance act #2.(has to be done in a green screen)
'Color correct' act#1 to be a black silhouette
use this as background for Dance Act #2 ....
=> elaborated effect, can not be accomplished in iMovie, asks for FCPX ... sorry to say...

Similar Messages

How do I make a shadow after I have green screened by actor?

Set the green screen up. Got the shot. Now i need to know how to add a shadow. Thanks -Nick

You could use the Drop Shadow options in the Motion tab. If you want more control, however, you could duplicate your keyed subject, add it to the track below (so you have subject on track 3, shadow subject on track 2, background on track 1) then do the following:
1. Add a brightness / contrast filter and adjust it until the person is completely black.
2. Add a blur filter.
3. Use the opacity controls in the Motion tab to adjust the opacity of the shadow.
4. Use the distort tools in the Motion tab (or use a Basic 3D filter) to position the shadow.

How to keyout harsh shadows from green screen footage tutorial

Hello!!
I have shot a green screen footage outdoors an two clips where shot with the sun making some very harsh shadows that are impossible to key out. I am attaching two photos so that you can see what I mean. I there any other way to go around this problem without rotoscoping because unfortunately it' s not an option for me to reshoot the scene. Maybe lume key could help but I am not sure...
Any suggestion would be appreciated!! The first image is the original one. The second is with Keylight only and the third is with Keylight and Luma Key together...
Thanks
Yiannis

Duplicate your layer, key once for the light green, key a second time for the dark green, Output the mattes and combine them to create the final matte. Pre-comp the two shots and use as a garbage matte for the final key by adding a matte choker and making the pre-comp a track matte for your final key.
There are a zillion other ways but Here's what the combined matte looks like from your screenshot.

Green Screen Problems, Please Help!

I'm experiencing problems with the greenscreen effects of iMovie 09. I really need help. What happens is when I drag the clip ontop of the other clip, I click green screen. Then play the clip and see just a few reen dots, not the green screen footage. If you need a link to the footage its http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAFMRKsoX5E. Please help, as this is one of the main reasons I bought a Mac.

LukesQueriesOnMacAndiOS wrote:
… see just a few reen dots, not the green screen footage.
the material you're linking to is in a .flv container (and downloading it violates the ToU of YouTube, just to mention that )
after re-wrapping it into a suitable format, works like charme:
… aside missing drop shadows, wrong perspective, missing highlights,
and somehow the dino is a lil' bit 'opaque'
how or into what did you convert the t-rex.flv?

Can't figure out why green screen is pixelating!

I had terrible problems with square pixelating on my production.
any ideas on what caused this... we played with saturations all day with no effect. I did have a empty green "last frame". It seemed nothing we could do would help!
I filmed with a Sony DCR-SR68 HandyCam in the highest quality and the background I chose from a Free Use source for greenscreen back grounds online.
I hope you can give me some insight here...every tutorial i have watched made green screen in iMovie look very simple... and yet we could not figure out why this pixelation was occurring!
reasons i wondered about:
green screen is too light?
...however i have seen screens look a lot worse and work
something to do with how i am filming?
...i realized that "facial recognition" was turned on which caused the camera shot
to move a little as i moved
am i too close to screen?
...i was about a foot away from screen (but no shadows) and camera was about a yard in front of
me
if anyone wants same rendering or screen shots let me know and I can email some!
Let me know what you think and if you need anymore info!
Thanks in advance for all your help!

Earl...
I know you said you reformatted the drive but just in case, how much free space on the startup disk?
Right or control click the MacintoshHD icon. Click Get Info. In the Get Info window you will see Capacity and Available. Make sure you have a minimum of 15% free disk space.
fresh install of 10.4.7
Most recent version for Tiger is v10.4.11. Have you tried updating the software from the Apple menu > Software Update?

Trying to composite from Lightwave 3D using Green Screen

Regards,
I am trying to do a simple picture crawl across the bottom of my video. First I tried using a transparent.png file that was 2240x540 and using the ken burns effect cropped it to move across the screen. This worked to an extent. The only problem is that imovie scaled the resolution to match the horizontal measurement of 960 pixels. leaving the image in a very low resolution. On that looked horrible.
Second try: I own a copy of Lightwave 3D 9.6. I love this program! I figured I could output video that had the crawling photos across the bottom, with green screen as the background. I output it in Apple Intermediate Format for ease of import. and when I place my crawl as a b-role/green-screen the entire image disappears.
Does anyone know what I am doing wrong. I would love to figure this out so that I can composite my 3D animations on top of my imovies. I love the simplicity yet accuracy of the new iMovie 09. I just want to figure this out.
Any help would be appreciated.

The green screen feature is designed to work with camcorders, so my advice would be to make sure you are using a frame rate like a camcorder (either 29.97fps or 25fps for Pal.
Also, a perfect green background doesn't seem to work very well. Try a gradient or shades of green like a real greenscreen would have (i.e. shadows, imperfections).

Can I make a DIY green screen or does it need to be an exact colour cloth?

I would like to try using the green screen effect in iMovie but as I do not own a specially made green screen background I wondered whether I can make one if I buy a large piece of green material from a dressmakers shop. Can i do this or does the shade of green need to be exact? Would it be better to just buy a proper green screen from a video equipment supplier and if so, what specification should it be?

The only thing to remember though is to have a lot of good even lighting facing the wall. If you use fabric it should also be pulled tight. Shadows from folds in cloth make darker spots of color on the screen and the software will not key (chromakey) out the darker spots. One thing that I have used in the past is a bright green table cloth. I got one from Party City (6'x9') for $3.50 two of those and you're good to go! I got a bright green snuggie for christmas that matches the color of my screen! Now I can do floating head effects. Have fun!

Using Green Screen tool after project roughcut complete

Hi peeps,
I know how to use the Green Screen tool in iMovie but my problem is I want to apply it to a project which I have already edited. So the usual process is drag your background into project then drag your clip from events on top... but I have already painfully edited my project and want to apply a background to it minus the green screens, can it be done at this stage?
cheers,
BB.

Also, try looking up the term "garbage matte." It's relatively simple concept that can be executed using many different tools and levels of sophistication.
Here's my workflow for standard greenscreen work, stuff that isn't too action-oriented, similar to conventional weather presentations:
1. Capture the footage in Final Cut Pro.
2. Seldct the takes.
3. IMport the best takes into After Effects.
4. Apply masking to the video to remove as much unnecessary stuff as possible using as few vertices in the mask as possible.
5. Apply Keylight.
6. Export to ProRes4444.
7. Import back into FCP.
Additional work might be required for wire or rig removal, rotoscoping for movement in front of or behind foreground objects, masking replacement layers to manage stupid costume errors like a green tie, light wrap, spill removal, reflection cancelation, shadow manipulation.

What are the Settings when doing Green Screen?

I had the green screen settings saved on my computer and somehow they've disappeared. I have been in the meantime just making an educated guess by using these settings:
Ultra Key Output Composite
Setting Custom
Key Color (eyedropper) the green just above the shoulder
Matte Generation
Transparency: 50
Highlight: 0
Shadow: 50
Tolerence: 100
Pedestal: 100
Matte Cleanup
choke: 0.0
Soften: 0.0
Contrast: 0.0
Mid Point: 50
Spill Suppression
Desaturate: 50
Range: 25
Spill: 50
Luma: 50
Color Correction
Saturation: 100
Hue: 0
Luminance: 100
This is my result so far, but I used to have different settings and these were just ones I had to experiment with as I couldn't find the original ones. Here is my upload to YouTube using these settings, I realize I need to invest in more lights which would probably make this process easier:
link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7mGYyQofOg&feature=share&list=UUxdGY8nhB7waymVljxwuEsA
and this is the green screen only, although this was done in Adobe Premiere Elements 11 and I can't figure out why it's got that black frame: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zEAOXB5lSQ&feature=share&list=UUxdGY8nhB7waymVljxwuEsA
This was the green screen shoot that I used the settings that I lost that was given to me from the Adobe Forum some time ago (again I'd have a better result if I had more lighting):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9_VNk8v0ks&feature=share&list=UUxdGY8nhB7waymVljxwuEsA

No one can tell you what settings to use, it is unique to every single scene (and sometimes changes during the scene as well!). Start with the eydropper, then tweak settings until it looks as good as possible. Move sliders and watch results. I'm sure you can Google up some tutorials on setting the keyer controls.
As a constructive criticism, I viewed the YouTube videos (keyed and original) and forgetting about keying for a moment, the quality of the clip itself as just a video is very sub-par. I would never even make any attempt to key such a poor quality of source clip. Sorry. And close the shade, the light coming in from the left on the subjects arm is apparently also glaring into the lens and causing the washed out area in middle of image.
One does not need to spend big bucks on pro lighting. Go down to the hardware store and get some of the those shiny metal bowl type of light fixtures that have a spring clamp on them, less than $10. And get "GE Reveal" bulbs, which create a nice clean light (standard incansdescent bulbs have a reddish cast).
Get your subject farther from the green background, and light the background separately. Throw some light at the background, as even as possible, such as one light angled in from each side, and then put another light or two on the subject. That is a good starting point. Use manual white balance on camera and get a good focus and you should be in business.
Good luck
Jeff

Possible to replace this green screen without masking?

So here's what I'm working with:
What I ultimately need to do is replace that green screen with some video footage. But there are a few problems that make this not all that straight forward...
It starts off with nothing on top of it, but the photos are gradually placed around it (all while the camera is "swimming").
I'm tracking it in Mocha, no problem. And getting the corner pin data in there to properly place the footage is easy.
But what I'm having issue with is replacing that green screen footage so that the photos show up "on top" of the video. I've got the drop-in video on one layer, then the source footage on top of it and I key it out so the video shows up underneath it.
But if I just do a basic key on that top footage, I end up screwing it up because of all the tweaks I need to do to get a good key while keeping details like shadows.
So, is there a way to do it, without creating a precise mask around all the green? The mask would have to be generated in Mocha, I assume, since all these photos are being laid on top of it...meaning I'd need to track them as well.

This isn't the most meticulously-planned shot I've ever seen, sad to say. For instance, one of those cards added to the shot actually has some green in it.
Think about trying to green screen Kermit The Frog.
To salvage it, I'd make a precision mask on a solid around the green card, motion track it into place for whatever kind of motion "swimming" describes, and use it as a track matte to fill up the green. I'd use Rotobrush to create masks for the cards being placed in the shot. I'd fake the shadows.
No keys.

Green Screen using AVC-Intra 100 ugly

Been using the hpx300 for approx two months mostly in 720p with great results. Just wraped our first true HD green screen shoot using avc-intra 100 at 24p with the intent of producing a white background mac-ad type, 5 min talking head corporate piece in SD. I had the camera mounted at 90 degrees to capture the 1920 pixels of subjects head-to-toe so I could then manipulate individual zoom and placement in post within a SD timeline. I've got two issues: one is that the images in post seem noisy, and any movement, as in subjects walking across screen, is a total mess - I say seem because all recording and playback on location looked just fine on a 1920x1200 monitor via blackmagic i/o box. I normally do basic editing in premiere with much help from AE for composting and color correction etc. Keylight has always worked great in the past. I must have something wrong with settings in the avc-intra HD content? Secondly, workflow is a bit convoluted... Keylight doesn’t apply in premiere, and AE doesnt do avc-intra. The workaround is to export avc-intra premiere timeline to AE and key that. In theory it should work just fine, but again my images are just noisy. Could this PR to AE workflow degrade image quality? Any suggestion greatly appreciated! Thanks, Matt

Poster must be busy shooting more stuff....
Found some info on that " hollywood camera " site.....
IS HD REALLY HD- GREENSCREEN ISSUES
These plates were all shot with an HVX-200, mostly with the 100 MBps DVCPROHD codec. This was good enough for us for Visual Effects For Directors because we had specific needs, but we don't consider them good enough for full film production.
Here's why:
COLOR SAMPLING: We      prefer all green screen to be 4:4:4, so every pixel has a unique color.      4:2:2 only updates the color every second pixel, but green screen      desperately depends on a sharp, accurate, scientific color transition.      With 4:2:2, you're operating in half resolution. But if you downsize, like      we downsized to 720x480, you're at full resolution again. So because we're      delivering in SD, the plates are 4:4:4 for us. They'll just be 4:2:2 for      you if you're delivering for an HD movie.
PIXEL ASPECT: When      a camera is listed as 1920x1080 HD, that's really stretching the truth.      You'll see that all our plates are in 1280x1080, which is the original      camera resolution, meaning that the plate has to be stretched 150% on the      X-axis to be in the right aspect. In other words, you're only operating at      66% resolution on the X-axis. Did someone say "smearing"?
NOT EVEN 4:2:2: By      the time 1280 has been stretched to 1920 to make up for the 1.5:1 pixel      aspect ratio, 4:2:2 has been stretched out too, basically becoming      4:1.5:1.5
LENS RESOLUTION: Nobody      besides DPs really thinks about the fact that a lens has a resolution.      Zoom lenses are made of many lens elements in a clever configuration, and      each element introduces some blur. That's why top-notch DPs like to use      prime-lenses cut from diamonds from King Solomon's mines, because if the      lens limits the resolution, it doesn't really matter how well you record      the signal after that. Some people have come to the conclusion that the      HVX-200 is really a 720p camera, because the 1080p resolution doesn't      really come through. We tend to agree, but we don't want to start a      religious war, and will say that it's just our personal experience. On top      of that, we've used a $500 wide-angle adapter on some shots, which really      butchers the pixel resolution, so even though we're recording at 1080p,      we're really not. But 1080p allowed us to record with the 100 MBps      DVCPROHD codec, which meant that we still got a very respectable resized      SD signal out of it.
BAYER PATTERN: Most      cameras use a Bayer pattern on the chip, so that every pixel is EITHER      Red, Green, or Blue — but not at the same time. A full Red-Green-Blue      pixel is derived mathematically by interpolation. It's no wonder that some      organisations are starting to call for an objective standard for what      really constitutes a pixel, because a Bayer pixel is definitely not a real      pixel — more like half a pixel. By the way, there are twice as many Green      pixels than Red or Blue in a Bayer sensor, so you're far better off using      green screen than blue screen on video.
HALO: Even      with the internal sharpness generator completely disabled, the HVX-200 has      a clear black fringe several pixels wide on the right side of actors on      green screen. Panasonic vehemently denies it, but it's very easy to see.      In this      picture, notice that white areas get a fringe, but darker areas, like      her legs or hair, don't. Panasonic's explanation has been that it's just a      shadow from the lighting (huh?), but the halo is on the KEY side — so the      only plausible explanation is a quantum singularity localized to the actor      which bends light as it passes by her body. We think it comes from the      Bayer pattern, but we're not sure. And Panasonic shouldn't feel bad. A Nikon      D80 does it too.
HEAVY COMPRESSION: Even      though it seems like a lot that we're recording at 100 MBps in the      DVCPROHD codec, if you calculate the bit-rate per true output-pixel, we're      actually still compressing at a whopping 15:1.
NOISE: Video      cameras in this price range tend to have rather high noise, and on top of      that, they're usually 8 bits per color channel. This can result in some      highly visible shadow noise that almost pixellates when the brightness is      just on the edge of a bit-threshold. You can see some of our plates doing      this.
An HVX-200 and all its brothers and sisters in its price range simply don't have the horsepower for full pixel, high dynamic range, high resolution, uncompressed production that you need to do truly professional green screen. Green screen is ultimately a scientific process, and is one of the most demanding things you can do with your camera. Regular live-action images are MUCH easier for your camera to handle, so for regular filmmaking, your camera is fine, don't feel bad.
We have nothing against the HVX-200 or its brothers or sisters — come on, we shot a whole DVD set about visual effects on it — but it's important to really understand what the limitations are. It's fine to own your own camera for regular filming. For green screen, you should consider renting the very best you can afford — and make every decision right, which is where we come in.
Thanks for reading!
Rod

Flipping green screen footage causes error with background

Hi,
I have created a short 30 second video using a green screen. I realised after that I needed to flip it (I was point the wrong way!) So I dragged it into my project and then flipped it. THen when I dragged the background picture in and choose "green screen" the image is all weird. I try to change the efects, colour etc but it doesn't seem to work.
If I drag the back ground image in first and then the green screen video they merge OK but I cannot flip the green screen video once it is in project with the background image already there.
Any one have this problem and know how to fix it - or do I have to reshoot the video and point the other way!?
Thanks
Cheers
Tracy

CantonVideoMan wrote:
Hi bogiesan,
Thanks for the help.
My footage is actually shot with a green floor. The problem I'm having is the final product needs to be an actor walking out with a transparent background, but casting a shadow on the floor. So that the shaow will show up no matter what background the customer decides to use the video with.
If I try applying a drop shadow or a Radial Shadow the shadow shows up BEHIND the actor not below. I must be making this 10 times harder than it needs to be.
Any Advise would be appreciated.
Thanks again,
Bob
I'm not grasping the issue, then, sorry. Just use the shadow you have captured. Setting a chromakeyer to pass the shadow is not difficult.
The problem with faking a shadow is, yes, it's ten times more difficult than getting it in the original shoot because of all the problems we've discussed. with a shadow layer there is not interaction with the feet and the 3D projection is not realistic enough to be accepted by an audience; it will always look fake. You CAN create a projected 3D shadow by carefully placing a light in a 3D scene and placing a copy of your matted character perpendicular to the light source and setting the layer to project the shadow only. But it still is not real.
bogiesan

Green screen in iMovie 9

This is related to my question about flying saucers.
Has anyone used the green screen effect? My techie told me that I have to go to Lowe's Home Center and buy a certain shade of green paint (called "Green Screen Green") if I'm going to utilize this effect properly.
Anyone want to weigh in on this? Thanks for any and all advice.

That sounds like a line from an infomercial
From what I understand consistency of the shade of green is more important than the shade of green itself. In other words a green background that is smooth, not rippled fabric that casts shadows. In other video editing and television environments blue screen is used for the same purpose as green screen. So, not only a shade difference, more, a color difference.

Scaling and green screen in premiere cs5.5

Some background.
Years ago we used visual communicator pro to do some green screen shooting. I frankly did not know what I was doing with the lighting, and got a lot of spill and shadow. I've been looking for a way to fix this. I recently bought cs5.5 to be able to do this with Ultra keyer.
I also have VC 2.0 running on the same computer.
Since I don't want to set the background, and since Pr does not know how to import visual communicator raw camera streams (please, does anyone know how to convert these into something that pr can handle) , I decided on this course of action.
I rendered the vidieos in VC using a synthetic green screen (basiclly a solid green image produced in painshop with a color fill).
I have rendered videos with this, and they have a solid green background with a lot of shadows in .avi format.
I have a background that was originally to be used with each clip. The backgrounds are smaller than the dvi resolution of the rendered videos, so need to be scaled. They may eventually be replaced, but not right now. I am trying to get these rendered into green screens. i've watched a half dozen youtube videos and have gotten part way.
What I have done is:
Imported this image into pr as track 1 and the video as track 2. stretched the image length to match the video track.
I have dragged the garbage matt onto the video. I have dragged ultra keyer onto the video. I can play the green screen video.
I need to scale the image. I've tried everything in all the adobe help files and nothing seems to work. Clicking on the transform icon and twirling the scaling open, I cannot get the handles to appear around the image in the monitor window, no matter what I try. If I change to the video window and twirl open ultra key and 8 point garbage map, and click on the transform button, the handles for the garbage matt do not appear. If I click on the eyedropper, I can select the key color, but it doesn't take effect.
I am sure this is pilot error,
What am I doing wrong?

I have it working. The panel is the timeline. In the effects menu you can click the double arrow and the timeline view opens up. THEN it works. Go figure.
At this point I was able to render a video. But even with a lot of tweaking of choke, alpha channel etc, I have not been able to get rid of the gray border around the figure. It is there in the original rendering from VC and I was hoping to be able to get rid of it. So far no joy. I did try using it as the key, but that got othe grays in the hair, so that is no good. I wish where was sort of a spline garbage map that you could use to tighly outline a figure, and then the renderer would be able to track motion and keep the spline garbage map with the figure outline. It would take a lot of computing but theoretically it could be done. Or even an auto-trace feature like the one in the old corel draw, which would autotrace an image, making a vector spline out of it. It would then be possible to create a mask that would follow the motion of the actor.
The shadows and such are cleanly gone though. So now if I can reproduce the ability to do this on another clip, I have a fighting chance. It is sad that Adobe has abandoned VC pro. The teleprompter was a nice feature.
I imagine that I can simulate one using some other adobe tool, but I'll just have to play with it. I can see that using a good digital camera on a green screen and shooting footage that way will be a better solution. The only problem is that in the past 6 years since the footage was shot, my wife has aged a bit, so reshooting these shots and trying to combine the good ones with the bad ones, might not be as cohesive as one would like.
I appreciate your time. I still don't know exactly *what* I did that made it start working, but I am pretty sure it was opening the timeline in the effects window.

Fine tuning Green Screen

Hi,
i have got down to this on my green screen work but there is a shadow which causes the green screen to be visable a tiny bit at the side of the cards.
[IMG]http://i29.tinypic.com/bgzm2a.jpg[/IMG]
is there any way to go through this footage frame by frame and take out the green in the shadow? it's only 25 frames long......
thanks

If you have CS3, Photoshop Extended can open QuickTime movies and you can use the standard editing tools to fix that. You don't mention if your camera (footage) moves.
As far as green screen goes, usually you'll have to add multiple copies of the key tool and focus on specific areas to get the best key. What tool are you using, Motion's built in? I use DV Matte Blast from DV Garage and it works great. Works in Final Cut too (FX Plug).

Shadows on a green screen

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