Halo problems / Green screen / HVX 200

Shooter--

Good points about the lighting. This was just a test shoot, so we didn't go the distance on lighting the subjects. For the real deal, I'll make sure that we get better light on the subjects.

We used green just because the studio was set up for that...

Thanks,

- Eugene
 
siniarch / Jorge / onedog:

I tried onedog's suggestion of using an adjustment layer. It works like a charm-- knocks off the fine white outline without any collateral damage. Very cool.

I also watched the tutorial that siniarch mentioned-- really useful. I had been using Primatte, but after the tutorial, I tried Keylight again, and jacked up the "clip black" to about 30. This seemed to do something similar to what onedog suggested. Looks really good.

Jorge-- those are nice looking keys. I will try to fiddle with the Keylight params as you suggest.

I'm getting some really good results with less-than-ideal footage. Once we set the lighting better and maybe dial down the detail on the camera, things should go really well.

The one keyer I haven't tried is Advantedge. I'll download the demo and see how it compares to the others.

- Eugene
 
KyleProhaska said:
Keyed fine for me, I just stuck them in here with some crappy CC and stuff:


- Kyle
Click to expand...

this isn't a fine key this isn;'t even a key I'd want to see on the local weather guy, he has white edge, and she has the black edge. I'm in the middle of dealing with this problem to, I've seen the hvx shoot without these edges, but I haven't nailed it yet, I have lowered it a lot, -3 on the detail, and use a tape measure for focus. dont use your eye, as its probably wrong with the hvx lcd or viewfinder.

also opening nodes, rgb to yuv, blur gb 10- 3, yuv to rgb, then start the key, you may also want to pull up the green a bit, get yourself a good core matte, then start working the edges, and keymix them in, once you get your finale matte, switchmatte it with the despilled version of the yuv to rgb node. there are other tricks to try, like using color plates that match that portion of the hair or clothing, and slide them in under the garbage matte,


this really isnt a halo, its more of a shift, note the whites on the left are ourside the man, but the blacks on the right are inside the woman.

keeps working on it if you find the sollution please post it, I will do the same.

Jason Miller
 
You might want to look at your RGB channels separately and see which channel got affected the most, it might give you some clues at what happened and what you could do to correct it.
 
the red and blue channels have it the worst, its very slight in the green channel, however once you key the green channel you lose luma and it shows up, and while it isnt visible, the info has to be in the alpha channel as well, as when we get a matte that should be good, and switchmatte with the full luma version, the halo shows up bigtime.

Jason Miller
 
the shot with the Pinnacle Composite Wizard "Smooth Screen" lost a lot of hair detail, keep in mind its not a great key if you hair. With this you lose a lot. If there is anything that the viewers mind might think thats not right, it pulls them out of the story, and the effect is lost.

Jason Miller
 
Yes, Jason, you're right. Now that I look more closely, I see the loss of detail. Not a great final solution. I will have to go back into the studio and do some fiddling to see if I can get the camera to do the right thing to start with.

It just looks like a combination of too much light on the screen, and too much detail on the camera setting, but I won't know until I do some real tests. If I figure it out, I'll letcha know...

- Eugene
 
I can tell you right off its not the light from the screen, I've already ruled that out with my tests,

my best results so far, detail -3 low light screen, but low or high the results are close, and use a tape to control your focus, do not depend on your eye, keep the forground in very sharp focus, which is hard with a detail of -3, and put the screen a bit out of focus. I still havent gotten rid of the halo, I'm not sure how others are getting rid of it. its killing me, while I've reduced it with these settings, I havent killed it yet.

Jason Miller
 
focus, lighting settings and luck, everyshot seems differant, so you have to shoot every shot at least 12 times. use a tape messure to focus, use standard green screen settings i.e. detail -3 thats te big one, and so on.

set up one. bright screen, and back light, focus exactly as the tape messure said, then just under then just over. thats 3 shots

set up two, bright screen, no back light, same three focus settings. thats 6

setup three, dull screen back light, same three focuse settings, thats 9

setup four, dull screen no back light, same three focus settings. thats 12.

I shoot all 12 because I do not have an 1080 hd monitor that i can flip through the rgb channels on.

I do find that the lighter the subject, clothing skin and hair, the brighter screen works better, the darker the subject the duller screen works better,

there are also a few methods in shake to deal with it in post, and still keep all the hair detail, and other details.

remember -3 drops the detail down, so you'll have to sharpen it up a bit on the rgb side of the switchmatte.



good luck Dan,

Jason
 
This is a 12x12 foam backed green screen laced onto an aluminum frame and stands. I asked for digital green screen and it might be...I begged and got the stuff for free so I got whatever the guys at William F White had lying around the afternoon I picked it up. It is being lit by 2 4x4 Kino flos with 3200k bulbs. Talent is lit by a 2k overhead on a Jr Mathews boom. and a couple (250? We had a ton in a variety of density ranges and i didn't pay attention to which of them the DP used.) diffusion frames boomed underneath. There is a 1k kicker with a diffusion frame. And an bounce reflector for eye-light and fill hanging in front and below him at just above knee height.

I had the HVX set to Cinelike-V but the DP just changed every value to 0
used a 180d shutter, and the talent and camera whip around a lot hence the motion blur you see.

THIS IS A JPEG with compression at 100 so there is some artifacting from the jpeg compression. There is less in the actual RAW image from the footage. This was a screen grab for another purpose.

The 2 4x4 Kinos lit the screen so well that it is perfectly evenly lit and even under the worst shadow circumstances it still keeps all the green within a few colors and not a larger range like.

Try Keylight or even better Ultimatte AdvantEdge.
I can't say enought about how excellent Ultimatte is. it can do cleanup in the greens with a mouse click. There's a reason the pros use it.
I have a test image that has 1000x more motion blur than this image and it keyed it beautifully.
RAW-%280-56-00-26%29.jpg
 
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Arson said:
Try Keylight or even better Ultimatte AdvantEdge.
I can't say enought about how excellent Ultimatte is. it can do cleanup in the greens with a mouse click. There's a reason the pros use it.
I have a test image that has 1000x more motion blur than this image and it keyed it beautifully.
Click to expand...

Ultimatte really is amazing. I've tried it a few times and was quite impressed. It's slightly better than Keylight and handles transparencies very well.
 
I have to tell you AdvantEdge does not impress me at all, and as far as the pros using it? I know everyone I know, at ILM, the Orphanage, GKR, and so on, no one uses it. I made a few phone calls at after reading your post.

Keylight is great, it along with primematte can give you some nice results. as long as you're willing to put in the edge work, its not like the local news where you push a button and get a good key, even for the best compositor out there with the best footage, to get a good key your looking at hours of work, If you lose a single strand of hair it isn't a good key

the program you use isn't as important as the quality of the footage, which is good, because with shake going the way of the DoDO, (thank you apple for killing it off, so you can produce a lower quality fcp version) most seem to be moving to Nuke, with its recent updates everyone seems happy with it, as many bugs have been worked out. there are a few places that still use after effects, but as its the imovie of the compositing world its not going to last much longer, unless they drop their track base and bring in the nodes. Parentless Children still uses AE, and I have to say they do some great work with it. and I'll rock my rotos with AE anyday over shake.



the better the optics and resolution on the camera the easier the key, I'm really looking forward to seeing the red in the GS, I think Film has gone as far as its going to go, and the red has brought us a step closer to true real time hdri,

any of you do it yourselfers out there want to take a shot at building an hdi real time video camera? I'll be more than happy to test your prototypes.

Jason
 
Go visit any of the vfx sites and see what people are saying. They use Primatte to pull an initial key and then Keylight to pull an edge matte. All of the people who say they've used Ultimatte are thrilled with it. It's not just a one-click program. There are a myriad of options to further refine a matte.

With Primatte, don't bother using it's built in spill-supression - you wind up with some serious crunchiness.

I've been playing with Nuke for a while now and I think it's great. I played with the IBK keyer for a few minutes but didn't really get a chance to see how powerful it is. I've heard people say it's the best keyer they've used and no negatives, except for the fact that there's not much documentation on it.
 
Primatte is for the corematte, then you work the edges with keylight, and few other worthwile tricks. i've only found one method that kills this edge, it involves sliding the mattes under itself,


as far as advantedge none of the major vfx houses seem to use it. maybe someof the smaller ones do, but I dont even think evileye does. maybe some editors who play at vfx use it, the make it for final cut pro, I think that was its first target, but really, you can't do this kind of work in fcp,

it may have something to do with the fact that man are moving from shake to nuke, and there is no advantedge plugin for nuke.

I'm going to keep playing around with it and see if it has a chance.
 
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