Masking/roto scoping sports players

evm wrote on 4/22/2006, 1:32 PM

I am trying to key out the backrounds of sports players in Vegas. Most of the players are moving fast so I get roto chatter when I manually mask them out. What process or how should I go about making a general non-tight mask and using filters to do the fine edge work for me? Does anyone know of a tutorial for this?

Comments

GGman wrote on 4/22/2006, 1:57 PM

Yes, but it's for After Effects.

http://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=876687

Very much worth watching. It's a video tutorial and it explains auto trace in AE which is fast, simple and creates what you are asking. In Vegas, it's very tedious animating a bezier mask for the duration of the event if there is a lot of motion..

GG

Edit-My bad, it's for green screening, but still worth watching and it might work if your background is consistent to trace out. Apps like Combustion have much better tools for rotoscoping and animating masks.

Coursedesign wrote on 4/22/2006, 5:46 PM

AE has OK tracing, but its auto-tracking isn't that great.

Combustion is significantly better for this.

Still better is Silhouette Roto, which is specialized for this application only. It is available as a plug-in for AE/Combustion and as a standalone, and it has amazing tools.

Personally I think it is nuts to do complex roto in Vegas unless you have unlimited time or it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

With the proper tools you can do in an hour what might take a week in Vegas. And the one-hour job is likely to look better, thanks to features such as the ability to adjust the softness of the mask edge on a per node basis.