Chroma key work....which is better, FCP7 or Motion4?

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DVX100Shooter

Veteran
What is better for Chroma Key work - FCP 7 or Motion 4? I shot some stuff against green screen and now Im trying to see which of the two is the better choice.
 
I wasn't happy with either of them. I use Keylight in After Effects for my Green Screen stuff now and it is absolutely awesome.
 
I went ahead and used the Chroma Keyer in FCP and its okay but if I want to be real nit picky, I can still see a tad bit of green after I laid in the background. I need to really learn AE!!
 
Haha, yes, my editor resisted for a long time and finally he tried it and he is in love for VFX shots. Now we work together in AE on some pretty heavily modified stuff. It is worth learning, and if you know photoshop, you are kind of already half way there :)
 
Yeah you really want to go to a specialized compositing program for hardcore greenscreen shots. You can pull of a lot in FCP/Motion but it's not in use in the big VFX movies so much. That's AFX, Shake, Nuke, etc.
 
+1 for DVMatte Pro 3 - excellent results and fast using FCP plug-in. I like it better than Keylight in AE.
 
Like it- but it seems like abandonware i.e. developer doesn't actively support it anymore...
 
NoahK said:
Like it- but it seems like abandonware i.e. developer doesn't actively support it anymore...
Click to expand...

Hadn't had occasion to notice that, but you're right. Just visited their kinda empty forum and there's a couple of people pleading for help and asking about whether it's still being supported. The posts are within the last few days, so it will be interesting to see the response, if any. Hopefully, it will be good news, but am not overly optimistic given that most info seems to be from around 2008.

Still think it's a great program and am using it in FCP 7 without any problems, but definitely have to temper my recommendation based upon possible abandonware. Thanks for pointing that out, Noah.
 
I should have just spent the money on Keylight. I bought the new Noise Industries plug-in called Phyx and that mess is a joke. I was able to pull a half way decent key on 2 of my clips but I just got done fooling with 3 clips that gave me all sorts of trouble and wouldn't key out completely! We lit the screen evenly and all. I had to use garbage mattes and mask shapes to get a section of the green out that wouldn't key out for nothing. Phyx swears in their tutorials that it can key with a few quick adjustments. So I am highly disappointed that I spent $190 for Phyx and it doesn't work as they said it did! I am going to try and get through this project with that and the FCP Chroma Keyer then sometime down the road get a much better keyer like Keylight or one of the others you all mentioned.
 
You can download from Adobe a trial version of After Effects CS5. You can use it for 30 days I believe. You can probably use that as a good test to see if it works better.

It also depends on the camera you are using. With 4:2:0 color space, color contamination makes it difficult at the edges and with fine detail to get a good key sometimes as well.
 
We used a Canon 5D Mark II so maybe that could be part of it. Now if I download that free trial will Adobe put a watermark on it because I am cutting a music video for a client.
 
Not that I am aware of. I own CS5 but my editor wasn't sure if he wanted to buy it so he downloaded the trial and he's sent me material he worked on in AE and there is no watermarks that I can see or any indication they added anything. Of course, now he's purchased the whole suite he's been so happy with AE. :)
 
You mentioned you are using DVMatte Pro 3. I just bought it (not having read this post and realizing little to no support). Getting fantastic results EXCEPT if I use the Wrap filter. Then it crashes FCP during rendering, whether using FCP or Compressor. Do you have that issue? If not, I need to see what problem I might have. Done it a bunch of times and when I remove that filter it works great. Although I would like to use the wrap feature to give it that little better look.
 
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