Vector Keyer like Ultra for Vegas?

Jim H wrote on 9/17/2007, 7:04 PM
Now that Ultra is the exclusive property/feature of the adobe suite, has anyone heard any chatter of a similar offering for Vegas? I can't say that I fully understand the differences between the current vegas chroma keyer and the Ultra2 keyer, but the results are night and day. I never could get Ultra2 to work great as an alpha channel generator but it works great if I do my background in Ultra.

Wish we had a vegas plug in like Ultra2.

Comments

[r]Evolution wrote on 9/19/2007, 6:26 PM
I just did a project Keying a Guy over his Powerpoint Presentation. I tried using Ultra2 but I didn't get satisfactory results. I had 'marching ants' that I couldn't get rid of.

I ended up exporting the BackGrounds from Ultra2 and doing the Keying in PP CS3 using Boris RED. It was too hard to do the 'Dolly' shots this way so I only have 1 in the beginning and the others are static shots that pop in on occasions. Most of the time he is over his Powerpoint.
TimTyler wrote on 9/19/2007, 7:38 PM
Ultra is easy to use, but you can pull a pretty clean key in Vegas with a little patience.

Idealy the video would be shot properly, and don't expect a perfect key from DV.

First use Vegas' Chroma Blur on the video to smooth out the green.

Then try using Secondary Color Corrector filter... Use its "Select Effects Range" dropper and draw a square over an all-green area of your video. With "show Mask" checked, mess with the bottom sliders until you've mostly isolated the green background, and then uncheck the "Show Mask". Grab the "Saturation" slider and increase the saturation so the green is a little more vibrant.

Then add the Chroma Keyer filterto the chain and start with the "Green Screen" preset. Check the "Show Mask" box and mess with the Threshold" sliders until it looks good, and then uncheck the "Show Mask" box.

I haven't tried this in 32bit color space yet, but theoretically it would greatly improve things.
richard-courtney wrote on 9/19/2007, 8:29 PM
There are a few patent hurdles for Vegas to overcome.

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5719640-claims.htmlPhilips[/link]
describes a vector method where the vector key "edge" is actually a full 8-bit range of
transparency values which serves to anti-alias the vector key edge.

Ultra does produce a beautiful key. I haven't upgraded to 32 bit Vegas yet due to
some projects that I need to finish, but I wonder if this will help the edge.

There is a group working on a paint program addon for GIMP that can blend the
edges but has not been released and requires your video to be separated into a
series of stills http://www.gromada.com/videomach.htmlVideoMach[/link] can do this step.
I will post more info as I find out more.

There also is http://www.stepok.net/eng/recomposit.htmRecomposite[/link] that I have used on stills so
If you have time you might be able to write a script to process one still
at a time and then use Vegas' ability to reassemble stills to video.
Cheno wrote on 9/19/2007, 8:31 PM
www.cinegobs.com

This is being discussed on another thread - vector-based keyer (stand-alone) app, but test out pretty darn well. Well worth a try.

cheno
Harold Brown wrote on 9/19/2007, 9:41 PM
Here is a clip from a DVD that I finished recently. Just available for sale on Monday. All of the green screen was done in Vegas 7. I think the key is pretty good. If you get into individual hair blowing in the wind I am sure that I would have some problems but then again I have never tried it in Vegas.
Thanks for the info Tim. I didn't do everything you mentioned but as you said the original video quality is so important.

www.edellismagic.com/movies/quake small version.wmv