Suggestions for HVX Green Screen Settings?

B

Brian_Broz

Active member
Hi,

I will be camera assisting/tech on an HVX200 Greenscreen shoot soon. There will be an experienced lighting person to make sure lighting and exposure are correct. There will be plenty of light, so that should help with noise issues.

Has anyone been shooting Greenscreen with the HVX....and has any suggestions as for scene file settings?

I have shot with the HVX quite a bit, but not Greenscreen. Noise is a bit of a concen, as it is for broadcast.

I was thinking Cinelike D or Normal Gamma with Normal Color Matrix (to minimize noise). How about sharpness with the HVX...would anyone suggest shooting with sharpness at +2 or +3...as my experience with the HVX looks a little soft...especially at wide angle. Obviously my concern is to get the best key possible!

Any comments or experiences would be much appreciated!!

Thanks everyone,


Brian Broz
 
If you're concerned about noise, don't use CINELIKE-D, that's the noisiest of the gammas. Consider CINE-V or B.Press instead.

I like using some sharpness/detail, but remember that the higher you set it, the more visible noise will be.
 
You also might want to consider renting a ReflecMedia Chroma Flex green screen system. It consists of a green or blue LED light ring that attaches to your lens, a small control box and a special green screen that has thousands of tiny glass beads in it.

I have been shooting lots of green screen with the HVX-200 system and with this system lately and it performs perfectly and is about 100 times easier to setup than a standard greenscreen setup. It's perfect for small rooms because there is NO spill.

Highly recommended. Birns & Sawyer in Hollywood rents it for about $75.00 per day or you can buy the system for about $2,800.00. The only "gotcha" is that it will not work with a teleprompter. So for our prompter standups and intro, we re still using green paper and a couple of 1k open faces. Regular green screen is fine when you have the room, time and crew to do it, but when you are in hurry, or have small space, the ReflecMedia system is a lifesaver.

Best,

Dan
 
Brian Broz said:
I was thinking Cinelike D or Normal Gamma with Normal Color Matrix (to minimize noise). How about sharpness with the HVX...would anyone suggest shooting with sharpness at +2 or +3...as my experience with the HVX looks a little soft...especially at wide angle. Obviously my concern is to get the best key possible!
Click to expand...

Brian, use -3 sharpness... there is a noticable difference between 0 and -3... with 0 giving too much edge enhancement for perfect keys... also make sure the DP has a vectorscope, and illuminate the greenscreen with enough light to put the green vector at the level of the green vector box. The lower the level, the harder it will be to keep your edge detail and the more the codec will show itself in the form of a windowscreening like effect on the edges of your matte.

Check out my thread here, though bluescreen, the same rules apply...

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=58926

My HVX altered settings were;

CineD
Detail -3
Chroma +2
Master ped -2
Matrix normal

I'll have to give CineV a try next time...

Jim Arthurs
 
Great timing. We are shooting our first big greenscreen with the HVX on Wednesday.

We painted our entire 36' X 48' studio Green. It's a big project and after more then a month with my HVX, this is the first paying job I'm using it on as I'm trying to wean myself from my BetaCam. :eek:

Wish us both luck. And thanks Barry, (and others), for all your quick educated feedback.
 
I shot a bunch of green screen with my HVX mostly in dVC pro 50 and A little in 720 Pn kind of standard talking head- interview stuff. Its really a no brainer . Certain things make keys more difficult than others but it was really the easiest keying I've seen done from recorded media in quite a while. Keys were done in FCP and in AE.
 
Green screen

Green screen

I just shot some interviews with a green screen backing with the HVX recently and they went great. I used green kinos that only emitted light in the green spectrum. The keys we were pulling in Shake were easy and fast. The best keys I've ever made actually.
 
In general, the only three screen concerns are illumination level, even spread, and saturation/tightness of the color... and those flouro tubes are the way to go for getting a tight color...

Jim Arthurs
 
Are you guys shooting this 720/24pn or what is the best res set up for key?
I have to say, I don't do much green screen that much, so any help will be greatly appreciated.
I need to shoot some GS for my AE graphics editor. What is the best HVX set up, and what is the best Quicktime wrapper to give him? (uncompressed I assume, or is there something better?) We are editing 720/24p, is it better for the AE guy to work in a higher res (1080) and compress to 720?

Thanks for you help

Tim
 
I've been shooting 720 24pn with cinema D, and have been very happy with my results. Everyone has posted good advice. I'll add to keep the greenscreen a good 8-10 feet behind the subject so you wont get any green reflecting on them.

I would also give your editor a uncompressed file to CC & CG.
 
Strange, this seems to be the only thread about greenscreen settings. I would have thought it to be a more popular subject.
Anyway, after reading this:

http://generalspecialist.com/2006/10/greenscreen-and-bluescreen-checklist.asp

I created a 'greenscreen' scene file from the cinelike-V preset with following changes:
Detail: -7
V-Detail: -7
Detail coring: 3
Chroma Level: 3
Matrix: norm1

Of course I have to sharpen the picture as well as take color out in post (after pulling the greenscreen). The results seem all right, but I am far from being an expert. As I don't really understand all the parameters and their relationsship between each other, I would like to hear if by now more people have experimented with scene file settings for greenscreen shots. There are so many possible configurations...
 
Jim Arthurs said:
My HVX altered settings were;

CineD
Detail -3
Chroma +2
Master ped -2
Matrix normal

I'll have to give CineV a try next time...

Jim Arthurs
Click to expand...
I tried these settings on my DVX and the results were quite good keying in FCP. The HVX will be here in a couple of days so I'm looking forward to experimenting with it.
 
I light the greenscreen 1 stop under key. So that usually placed it at around IRE 40-50.

When the HVX first came out some friends did a test and found that the 720P pulled a cleaner matte than the 1080P. Probably some of the video processing slightly blurs the edges at 1080p. Both are pretty good, but the 720P is slightly better.
 
Don't want to get into a "my dog is better than your dog" thing here . . . most modern NLE's are quite capable given decent footage to work with but I just thought I would share (mostly for Edius Broadcast owners), a few months ago I did some "down and dirty" quick trials using footage I shot in the Florida Keys last April with a talking head studio shot(s). Either I am just lucky or this is an amazing feature of Broadcast . . . no fringing whatsoever, did not require adjustment--tried it with multiple different shots. If you have Broadcast give it a try.
 
I've never tried any green screen work with Edius, but I've heard that before about it. Did you edit using a native codec or a Canopus codec?
 
THoff said:
I've never tried any green screen work with Edius, but I've heard that before about it. Did you edit using a native codec or a Canopus codec?
Click to expand...

Shot in 720/24pn, edited in DVCPRO HD.

Interestingly, until just recently I had been shooting EVERYTHING in 720 . . . just now doing some nature shots in 1080.
 
dregenthal said:
Don't want to get into a "my dog is better than your dog" thing here . . . most modern NLE's are quite capable given decent footage to work with but I just thought I would share (mostly for Edius Broadcast owners), a few months ago I did some "down and dirty" quick trials using footage I shot in the Florida Keys last April with a talking head studio shot(s). Either I am just lucky or this is an amazing feature of Broadcast . . . no fringing whatsoever, did not require adjustment--tried it with multiple different shots. If you have Broadcast give it a try.
Click to expand...


I didnt try greenscreene tests yet, but id be curious how Edius does it, if you like to test it, get the Trial version, fully working for 30 days, i am sure its worth it if Dregental says so..!

Good luck with the green side of life..!
 
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