Comments

farss wrote on 6/12/2010, 4:02 AM
The "best" seems to be Ultimatte, doesn't run in Vegas and it's around $1,300.
I've found the basic CK FX in Vegas quite functional. No advanced features like spill suppresion but with a well lit screen and subject and no spill problems it can be very good, better than Ultra I found. Ultra is better for problem keys.
There's also Keylight which is free aith After Effects which is quite good and has spill suppression. Boris also have a very good CK'er that does work in Vegas.
From my testing of worst case keys (fly away hair and lots of motion) lighting it right is the key. Sorry about that :)
One tip with the Vegas CK'er. Don't sample the key color. Using the green preset seems to work better. Use daylight to get a pure green screen and get the screen well light then it gets much easier regardless of the software.

Bob.
LReavis wrote on 6/12/2010, 10:49 AM
Before I got heavy into CK, I read and tried all the posts regarding Vegas CK, adjusting secondary color correction, etc. Tedious, and still had problems with frizzy hair. After reading a lot more posts, I chose New Blue and never looked back. Especially now that I shoot with a 3-chip 60fps progressive camera, it's so good that I'm not wanting anything better.

I've found that success depends in part on pre-processing the image. First in the chain of FX is CCV Colorlab, where I saturate the green (I haven't noticed any effect on skin tones - check carefully) and add a chroma blur of 3. Usually I follow that with a touch of New Blue's Noise Reduction with sharpening (included with CK in New Blue's Essentials II, for around $100 U.S., as I recall). Because these are slow to render, I usually render them out to Cineform and then put the rendered clip on the TL so that my preview of the CK, and the final render, will go faster.

The setup with New Blue only requires the key color (I use the eye dropper), adjustment of Sensitivity and Color Range (low values work if your lighting is good), spill suppression (I never could totally get rid of the green tinge with frizzy hair in the Vegas keyer), plus 0-to-3% softening, and a similarly slight shrink. The result is little loss of hair detail and no dark halos.
Tom Pauncz wrote on 6/12/2010, 11:04 AM
Vic and others who really like Ultra II ...

Here's the link to download the activation program from Adobe.

Worked for me a while back on my new system.
Tom
Jim H wrote on 6/13/2010, 12:23 AM
I just bought After Effects CS5. I played around with Keylight and it seemed to work pretty good on a poorly lit green screen with no backlight. I also have Ultra2 and like others, can no longer get a key for it. But considering the fact Adobe bought Ultra2, does the code show up in any of the After Effects keyers? Seems like a waste if they just let it die.
farss wrote on 6/13/2010, 1:36 AM
"I also have Ultra2 and like others, can no longer get a key for it. But considering the fact Adobe bought Ultra2, does the code show up in any of the After Effects keyers? Seems like a waste if they just let it die. "

They didn't let it die. I don't know if it's in AE but Adobe were certainly showing it off in Ppro CS5 during their roadshow.


Bob.
Jim H wrote on 6/15/2010, 10:40 PM
Here's what AE offers in the way of keying plug ins:



I new to AE, but it seems like Keylight is the one that is most people use. But I doubt it's the Ultra code. I never really got Ultra to work that good for me due to rendering problems. But withing the app I was pulling some great keys out of crap. Ultra also had some powerful compositing features, virtual sets, etc. which I never used.

Keylight seems to work pretty good especially in combination with the advance matte edge effects.