Thanks jetdv. I will give that a shot as soon as I get some chroma-key background somewhere.

I think you're thinking too hard. ;)

Almost all the sizing should be done when you shoot the subject. Plan the camera angles, positioning, and zooming so that the subject will be the right size on the screen while taping. It might help if you shoot some of the dollhouse scenes first and print out a few frames to have with you while shooting the subject. While taping the subject, refer to the dollhouse scenes and imagine them being placed in your camera's viewfinder. This should help you shoot the subject so that he will fit properly. When done well, you should require very little resizing during editing.

The easiest way to get chromakey is to buy chromakey paper in 8' wide rolls. Check the internet for potential suppliers, although I am sure that B&H photo will have a supply.
You will need a way to hang the paper from the ceiling, or you can unroll it from the floor and staple it to a wall. Be careful when you unroll the paper to not "crink" it, fold it or smudge it. Don't walk on it with dirty sneakers. Your talent can put masking tape on the soles of his/her shoes to protect the paper. Don't use a floor with carpeting, it will tear and crink the paper.

Light the background evenly with lights from each side of the paper. One 1,000 watt light on each side should be more than enough.

Then light the subject with another two lights, but don't let any shadows fall on the blue backdrop.

DO A TEST BEFORE THE "REAL" SHOOT.

Use the Event/Pan to crop out any extraneous stuff and make sure to turn off "Lock aspect ratio", or the image will resize to full screen.
Then add a video effect to the scene - use ChromaKey. Use the eyedropper on the original bluescreen image, and select the bluescreen. Jiggle the two adjustments to drop out the blue, and leave the talent.

Then use the Track Motion (on the track) to resize the talent into the dollhouse.
You can make your scenes even more realistic if you actually have some real furniture on the blue screen for the talent to interact with, ie, a real couch, or chair or desk. Then you key them into the scene where they would actually be.

Last thing. Don't have the talent wear a blue sweater or you will be in for a nasty surprise.

TEST IT ALL FIRST - IT WILL WORK!
good luck.

In addition, by using Chienworks method, you lose very little image quality which might come about by excessive processing (resizing).

sorry wcoxel, i have to disagree -
the larger the image that you are going to "key" into the background (miniature) scene, the easier and more precise the key will be.

in fact, sometimes cameramen will turn the camera sideways for a known vertical shot, to increase the size and therefore resolution of the image.

With interlaced video, any resizing at all can degrade the image badly. Starting with a larger image cannot give a better result than starting with a 1:1 image, although it is better to start larger and reduce than to start smaller and enlarge. The best possible image will be achieved with no resizing.

This is exactly what I needed to know. I found a source for affordable paper and experimented with the chromakey feature with results that exceeded my expectations for a beginner.

Thanks very much for everyone's help

well... actually... since he will be sizing the image down, i wouldn't think you would risk losing any quality. if he was sizing the image up, i could see where that might be a problem. am i off on this one?



hey, another question...

why is it that if you resize the whole track, the track gets bigger when you pull it out larger, and smaller when you make it smaller. BUT.. if you are resizing a single event, it's the reverse? if you resize the box larger, the image in the fram gets smaller, and vice versa. what is that all about???

-craig

Yes, it is very confusing. Look at it this way:

With Track Motion, you change the size of the picture (bigger square = bigger picture)

With Event Pan/Scan, you change the CAMERA (bigger square means you pulled the camera away so the picture gets smaller)

If you think of it in terms of Track Motion = Image and Event Pan/Crop = Camera, things become easier.

AAAAAH! much better. thanks for the explanation. :)

-craig

RE: Sizing
Although what you are saying about changes in size adding to a degradation may be true, it has been my experience (and I have done a lot of key work) that the bigger the image on the bluescreen, the easier it is to get a "great" key. Smaller images tend to bleed around the key, and it just doesn't look good. You can blur the edge of a big key image and get it to look great.
Further (and I very well could be technically totally wrong on this part) I have never noticed any degradation on a decreased size image. Generally speaking decreased images look teriffic.

Further, I have never been aware of interlacing at all in anything but rendered graphics that are moving at a high speed. That is, I've never really even seen interlacing on live video. Now technology is changing at an amazing rate, so I am ready to learn something here, but my experience stems from online 1", BetaSP and AVID MC editing. I have never seen any type of interlace at all. So I don't believe it is an issue... but again, I could be totally in the dark here.

Just my two cents, but I've had much more success using a green background than a blue one. Seems the green is so unusual a color, that it rarely shows up on your talent, or their clothing, making chroma keying a much simpler process.

Michael

Absolutely - but as an aside...
it's not the color that counts, at all.
You can use red, purple, fuscia, whatever color suits you. The computer doesn't care, as long as it's consistant and heavily saturated.

Blue screen came into use in the old days of black and white technology. The old tube cameras couldn't see blue, so it was a natural for keying.
Later, many folks switched to green screen because so many business men wore blue suits and blue shirts. Plus you'd inevitably get a beautiful girl with strikingly georgeous blue eyes - not noticed until the closeups were to be shot...