Chroma Keyer

ericd2003 wrote on 5/21/2004, 8:59 PM
Hello All, I am a newbie and I was hoping you pro's could help me. I have a son who is 10 Years old and one of the main reasons I purchased this product was for the special effect tool "Chroma Keyer". I was wondering if I could use a movie clip from Star Wars and add my son to a scene with a Lite Sabor and make it look real enough. Please let me know if I can and how. I would really appreicate any help you could provide. Remember I am a newbie so please explain in newbie language. Thank you, Eric

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 5/22/2004, 7:51 AM
Make it look real? That's a real tough requirement. Hollywood spends millions of dollars and thousands of hours making their effects look real. You're not going to duplicate that on a home video editing system.

You can still have lots of fun though.

You'll have to shoot the video of your son against a flat, even color. Green or blue are often chosen because those two colors don't usually appear in the person you're filming. Choose a color that isn't in his skin, hair, glasses, clothing, props, etc. Make sure it's very evenly lit. Have your son pose in such a way that he can match the frame and action in the Star Wars clip closely. Size and position aren't very critical, but make sure he's facing the right way, looking in the right direction, etc. Pacing and timing are also important. Have him rehearse to the video a few times.

Once you've got him on video, you can place him on an upper track and the Star Wars on a lower track. Add the Chroma Keyer effect to your son's video clip and select the background color. You may need to tweak the settings a bit to get most of the background gone without erasing him. Use Pan/Crop to move him around in the scene and place him where you want him.

Note that using this effect you are pretty much limited to placing him in front of the scene. If you want him to move behind the characters then you have tons more work using compositing and rotoscoping. This is probably beyond what you would want to attempt in MovieStudio.
dand9959 wrote on 5/22/2004, 11:52 AM

Ok...so now I'm intrigued, and I realize this is beyond the scope of the topic or MS3...but....

Can you explain - in whatever detail you feel is appropriate - how to use rotoscoping to place overlay video objectsso they appear to be behind objects in the baseline video?

Does Vegas have that kind of capability?
Moebius wrote on 5/22/2004, 7:15 PM
Someone had posted this link, somewhere, and I had bookmarked it. You might want to read it:

ADinelt wrote on 5/23/2004, 4:39 PM
Also, if you want to add the light saber type of effect, you could try AlamDV. I think JohnnyRoy first posted about this slick program. There is a downloadable trial version available.

Thanks...
Al
IanG wrote on 5/24/2004, 12:37 AM
I haven't seen it recently but v1 of AlamDV was released as a freebie.

Ian G.
ericd2003 wrote on 5/24/2004, 4:00 PM
Thank you all for responding and the links were very helpful. I will purchase the blue screen fabric and give it a try. I have downloaded the the trial version of AlamDV it's pretty cool. My son will love this. Thank you all again!
Eric.
ADinelt wrote on 5/26/2004, 9:58 AM
Since AlamDV version 1 is now or was free, if anyone happens to find or have a copy of it, I would be interested in getting a copy of it...

Thanks in advance...
Al
IanG wrote on 5/26/2004, 12:49 PM
Al, drop me a mail and I'll see if we can sort something out - I don't think it's a straight forward download. Ian.Gore@fshfc.org

Ian G.