Barry,

You are too close to the green screen. Five foot away or more is ideal, because as you can see you are casting shadows onto the screen which will affect the key.

Lower light would likely be better with what you have because as you increase the light you also increase the spill onto yourself.

Sometimes an overhead light that is between you and the screen will help kill the spill.

Try to either iron out the green screen wrinkles or stretch it tight.

Thanks Tim. Moving farther away is not an option simply due to the size of our space. I realize I will probably not have a movie quality key, but that is OK, looking for an acceptable key, within our limitations.

Barry, you asked for help and you got it. The number one process to getting better key is to be 6to8 feet away from the background. Unless you accomplish this task first, you will be ultimately frustrated trying to fix the problems that a lesser distance creates. Change your facility.

Would also like to know what your shooting with and capturing. You should be shooting 24F at 1/48 sec shutter speed on HDV or better.

Check out tubetape.net for many good training tools.

The whole reason for using green screen is to sell the surroundings as real. Otherwise just use a backdrop and be done with it. For training videos like you are doing it allows you to put interactive displays into the scene and make it look real.

Audiences know green screen so well that they expect good to great otherwise it becomes an annoying distraction.

Right now your key will be so bad that the artifacts around you will be.....well....horrible.

Might be time to clear out the garage and work from home for a few days :) Outside on an overcast day makes it easy too.

Can't really give you tips on keying since I use After Effects. Even then the requirements differ for every keyed shot.

@ VideoT I have to disagree on using 24fps. Having done a lot of green screen lately the motion blur causes issues. Most of my test shots failed and had to use 60i.

Video ITGuy, thanks. The quality of our videos is already acceptable, our key is working well enough so as not to be distracting, except to maybe the most discerning eyes, and changing facilities is not an option.

My hope is that someone with more chroma key experience can improve the key, but if not, so be it, understood, no frustration here.

We are using a Sony HVR Z5U. The settings are f3.7, 1/60 sec shutter, 30p, 0db gain.

Thanks for tubetape.

Since you can't change anything else, I have two suggestions.

Iron the backdrop, or stretch it tightly to remove the shadows caused the the ridges and valleys. This should allow you to put more cross-lighting on the backdrop, helping to separate it from the talent. This should improve the key considerably.

Try using a light orange or orange/red color medium (gel) in your back light. As the complementary color to green it may help to kill the reflected green on the talent's hair and shoulders.

Jack

Yes, get the background smoothed out. Beyond that, considering the limitations you are willing to accept, I have found the best chroma settings using BCC8 usually occurs taking your sampling from the darkest area of your key (the shadow).

The proper filter desigination for backlight or hair rimlighting on the green screen set is a Rosco Gel Minus 1/4 green - it will have a faint magenta appearance. This is a very useful feature to make greenscreen move from good to excellent.

Your shadows are created by the lightring itself because the lens is wider than the light source. I'd look into a larger diameter lightring if such a thing exists as the simples solution.

If you cannot move the camera and lightring back further or get a bigger one then I'd suggest giving up on the Reflectomedia altogether.
I'd also be very vocal in warning you not to attempt to iron that screen, I'm pretty certain any heat will destroy it.

Instead of the "reflecto" screen I would try the 3M / Scotch green safety fabric lit with UV lamps. Your screen then becomes a light source rather than a light reflector.

A better camera might also help, one that records 4:2:2 rather than 4:2:0 such as the PMW-200 or one of the Canon XF series cameras.

Regarding which of your tests is best, well you need the screen fairly well exposed. The lower it's exposure the more noise and the more work for the keyer. Ideally no more than 1 stop below the keylight.

Bob.

Thanks, all good suggestions. I will sample from the darkest area, and get those filters, although I am not sure what you mean by gel (sounds like something gooey). I assume they are placed between the light and the subject in order to change the color of the light.

I was content with a BCC8 tweak here and there, now my partners are discussing knocking out a wall for more distance. I may, unfortunately and with much aggravation, get what I asked for.

Bob,

I think you’re on to something with the lighting suggestion. However, new lights, camera, materials, etc., are not in the budget. Yes, reflecmedia specifically warns against ironing the cloth.

I tried a test shot standing less than one foot from the screen, and there were no shadows at all, none, even between my fingers. I think because, as you said, the screen is a reflector. However, that prevented me from using the backlight (no space between me and the screen) and I looked flat. As I moved between one and about five feet, there were shadows. As I moved closer to the camera, they disappeared, as everyone suggested they would, however, at that point I was too close to the camera, getting that horse face look.

This screen is unique in that when viewed from any angle except straight down the lens of the camera, it has a silver color. In fact, walking around the room, you have no idea that it looks green on camera.

So far, I think my best compromise is a slight shadow, but able to incorporate all three lights, maybe the filters will help also.

One more question, when wearing a black coat, for a better key, is it better to have a green or a blue light? Nice thing about this reflecmedia is that a simple swap in lights changes the color of the screen.

If it's a simple talkin' head I sometimes turn the camera on the tripod and rotate the head 90 degrees. Creating a vertical shot with more vertical..or is it horizontal.. anyway more resolution which you can then flip correctly in the Vegas timeline...might help and bit.

And could you could paint the wall green and gain a millimeter or two ;-)
mp

"

I'd stick with green. Blue was used for some technical reasons years ago but I've not seen a blue screen used in a very long time.

I'd have a go at using a flourescent screen with UV lights. I learned about this from reading about how some of the scenes in Avatar were shot and I've faced similar problems myself shooting plates of minature subjects. I've been trying to source some of the material to have a go at doing some tests but it's not easy to come by in wide rolls, only the tape seems available locally.

I do hope you end up with more space to work in. I have a fairly large space I can use out of hours and even then I'd love another 10 or 20M to work with.

Bob.

Barry,
I know you have seen some of my green screen work and let me just say your camera is fine. There is no need to go out and get a camera that shoots in 4:2:2 and you don't need to go buy a bunch of gels to make things work.

You do wan't to shoot in the highest resolution and shutter speed possible. The blur between frames can cause issues.

As for ironing that green screen.... It better be able to take an iron to get rid of the wrinkles or it is garbage. I have founnd they always want to build some hype just like the special green screen paint. That is tooooo funny as any green paint that is flat to eggshell will work just fine.

Having said all that here is my recent work with my own critiques. All were done at 60i and 4:2:0 sampling. Keep in mind that lighting is KING to good green screen.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/108085497/Image1.png

Ok this was done outside in overcast lighting. This is best because as you can barely see the fine hairs on the right side are preserved.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/108085497/Image2.png

This one was done outside to capture natural sunlight which caused some green screen/keying issues. Note the wine glass. It reflected the green screen and made the white wine appear invisible. Fortunately, it blended with the background and worked, but LOL see the ocean wave in the glass. Shinny/reflective objects in orginal footage will cause problems. You can also see some artifacts that just couldn't be keyed out...i.e. around the white chairs.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/108085497/Image3.png
This one was also done outside to capture the later evening natural lighting so that it would blend. Only the first few feet in the image are staged, The rest is the background plate.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/108085497/Stage%20Reference.png
This one was done all indoors with bright light to make it appear that the stage provided some of the lighting.. If you look closely, bottum up key lighting was used.

In closing, the point to all this is you don't need a camera with 4:2:2 sampling, a bunch of gels, etc. You just need some forethought and good lighting.

Reflecmedia is the right setup for a small space such as yours. I'm not sure if it emits enough light for longer shots in larger spaces. It also seems that it would be expensive for a Reflectmedia background that was the size of a studio cyclorama.

I had no problem pulling a key with the media. (No Shadows, No Spill)
I liked the Background once you were at Intensity +3, +4, +5... but certain surfaces may reflect light at those intensity levels.

There is NO Light Bounce! If you notice there is... dial down the intensity.

There are tiny little 'beads' in the fabric - Do NOT IRON IT... EVER!

With Bob’s suggestion, I thought about my lighting setup, and moved the lights farther to the side, moving the shadows farther away from me, less directly behind me.

I then moved the screen much closer, about one foot behind me, because I realized the reflection was not from the screen, but from the light, which is green LED. The screen is grey, not green at all.

I turned down the brightness of the light, because, again, the reflection was from the light, not the screen, and it is now working like a champ, at least enough like a champ for my needs.

So yes, [r]Evolution, there is no light bounce from the screen. Any green color is from the light itself, and yes again, I believe ironing the screen would melt it, one side feels plastic. Thanks for the advice.

Reflecmedia has a nice setup, great for amateurs and probably for pros too.

I have limited space as well. I'm no more then 2.5 feet away from the green screen. its not that you've to be far away its if your using decent delusion or not. I very highly recommend tungstin lighting using white printer paper as your delusion. check out the results for yourself. vnews.ca or todaysmarketingsolution.com if you need any more help contact me at Nathan@todaysmarketingsolution.com. take care