Vegas Built in FX outperforms NewBlue Chroma Key

ingvarai wrote on 7/29/2009, 12:55 PM
I like NewBlue a lot, and have purchased many of their blends, transitions film effects etc. Today I downloaded the trial version of
Video Essentials 2, and having tested the Chroma Keyer for an hours or so, I find that the built in effects in Vegas still are better.

For my green screen, I just use the Chroma Blur, then the Secondary color corrector. That's all. By carefully tweaking all settings, and adjusting and testing, the Vegas FX is not just slightly better than NewBlue - it outperforms it.

What NewBlue is having problems with, is my not evenly lit green-screen, and the talent's clothes. Either the entire green-screen is keyed out, together with parts of the talent's shirt. Or the talent's shirt is kept. all of it, and parts of the green-screen remains in the scene, not keyed out. The border-line where the talent's face meet the green-screen tend to be jagged in NewBlue, and when the movie runs, this borderline gives an unrealistic kind of pixel animation, like a noise effect.
I have tried to add the chroma blur FX effect before the NewBlue FX, still no improvement. Using the soft control in NewBlue gives an ugly result, so I turned it down to zero.

The Vegas built in secondary color corrector has none of these problems, the result is just stunning. I will now try the Boris FX and see what this can do, compared to Vegas.

ingvarai

Comments

Steve_Rhoden wrote on 7/29/2009, 1:23 PM

Have you tried the Noise Reduction filter ingvarai.....It is impressive, and
renders out really fast.
ingvarai wrote on 7/29/2009, 1:38 PM
Have you tried the Noise Reduction filter

Well, I do not have any noise to test it with, at the moment..
ingvarai
ingvarai wrote on 7/29/2009, 3:23 PM
New info:

I just tested the noise filter, and it is just great, on video that do not have any noise, except my own old face. I look 20 years younger, I think I need this plug-in!

ingvarai
Laurence wrote on 7/29/2009, 4:03 PM
Boris FX is miles better than anything else I've tried for chromakey. Fiddly, only 32 bit, and you have to use the wire removal tools for mattes that aren't exactly rectangular, but in the end, the results you can get with it are quite a bit better and worth the effort.

Plus, after things are set you can save everything as a preset and it's way easier the next time around.
ingvarai wrote on 7/29/2009, 4:16 PM
I tried Boris an hour ago, and it got thimbs down from me. It is obvious that I need a tutorial..

> ..and you have to use the wire removal tools for mattes that aren't exactly rectangular

I do not know what "the wire removal tools" are, neither do I know anything about mattes being rectangular or not..
Any link to a tutor?

ingvarai
Laurence wrote on 7/29/2009, 4:25 PM
I started with http://www.borisfx.com/tutorials/chroma_key.phpthis,[/link] but had to fiddle around quite a bit even after stepping through it. The settings I finally came up with still didn't make total sense, but seem to work well enough.

I posted my results with Boris FX chroma key in http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=662761&Replies=21this thread[/link] not too long ago.
Steve_Rhoden wrote on 7/29/2009, 4:27 PM
I have never sat well with Boris fx plugins for Vegas.....I always have issues with it
and added to that i dont really favor plugins thats almost as large and takes up
as much resources as its Host....you know.
Laurence wrote on 7/29/2009, 4:33 PM
No kidding. On that particular video, I started with a bunch of chromakeyed clips on the timeline: several takes from each kid, and a number of lines that got edited out later. Between Vegas and Boris FX, I had a bunch of memory error crashes. Finally I got it down to just the clips I was going to use and everything was fine. It's not like I really like Boris FX. It kind of drives me nuts. It's just that that was the only program (out of quite a few that I tried) that actually gave me the results I was looking for. There is one girl in my video that I never could get the hair right, and a few other places where it was sort of iffy, but overall, it was just much better than anything else I tried.
ingvarai wrote on 7/29/2009, 4:46 PM
I admire those who manage to make Boris FX do a better chroma key job, than the Secondary Color corrector in Vegas. I have now tried again, following the tutor Boris has on their website. And tried and tried. Nevertheless, the talent's head and cheek remains jagged against the background, I just do not get the same result as I do with the Secondary Color corrector in Vegas.

I admit that there are things I do not understand in Boris, and I really hope I will understand it. The only issue I have with the Vegas built in FX controls, is that I notice a small green line sometimes on the borderline between the talent and the background, I do not think this is spill, because it is heavy lit from the front.

So - when achieving great Boris results, do you use it as a plugin, or do you render out AVI files for Boris to work with? This allegedly "wrap background around edges" - does this happen also when used as a plug-in in Vegas?

ingvarai
farss wrote on 7/29/2009, 6:33 PM
I'm yet to try the Boris CK plug but I've tried quite a few others.

In general better tools give better results with well shot video. That means proper lighting of the screen and talent and a very good camera correctly setup. Ultra performs well with dodgy footage but it's now only available in the CS4 bundles.

If you stuffed up shooting your footage then indeed Vegas's primitive CK plug will do as well if not better than any of them. I'm currently using just it for exactly this reason. The client shot it and refuses to let me shoot it properly for them, even for free. The whole "fix it in post" mentality drives me NUTS, sorry to rant.

Now that I've got that off my chest my advice is to stop looking for a better tool and if at all possible go back and reshoot it properly. If that is not at all possible then stick with Vegas. If you have to, use multiple CK layers and masks, use garbage mattes to get rid of anything that doesn't really need to be keyed, use CK just for the edges of the subject. Even with the best shot footage and the best tools money can buy a good CK job is a lot of work, not one click and it's done if you want pixel level perfection.

Bob.
ingvarai wrote on 7/29/2009, 6:43 PM
> Vegas's primitive CK plug will do as well

I use the Secondary Color Corrector, not the Chroma Key.

> my advice is to stop looking for a better tool
I have come to the same conclusion. In this case, that is.

ingvarai
Tom Pauncz wrote on 7/29/2009, 7:45 PM
Bob,

Beg to differ just slightly.
...but it's now only available in the CS4 bundles

I believe it is no longer available in the CS4 bundle, only in the CS3 bundle. I think Adobe has killed Ultra!

Shame...
Tom
Laurence wrote on 7/29/2009, 8:06 PM
>I admit that there are things I do not understand in Boris, and I really hope I will understand it. The only issue I have with the Vegas built in FX controls, is that I notice a small green line sometimes on the borderline between the talent and the background, I do not think this is spill, because it is heavy lit from the front.

This is precisely one of the reasons I like Boris FX so much: because it has choke control which lets you trim out this sort of green halo.

I know that the secondary color corrector tool can function quite well as a chroma key filter. Better in fact than the actual chroma key tool. It's still missing the choke function though so you get green halos. Grazie was trying to step me through this a while back and it sort of went over my head. Do you know of a good tutorial explaining using the secondary color corrector as a chroma key tool
farss wrote on 7/29/2009, 9:21 PM
"I believe it is no longer available in the CS4 bundle, only in the CS3 bundle. I think Adobe has killed Ultra!"

Hells Bells, you're right.
Good thing I got it with CS3. Dumb move on Adobe's part if you ask me. If they didn't want to support it they should have sold it off. I'm certain someone could have gotten some more mileage out of it.

I still have a Serious Magic T shirt from NAB years ago. They were one of the most inventive companies in this game.
Bob.
ingvarai wrote on 7/29/2009, 9:21 PM
Laurence,
>Do you know of a good tutorial explaining using the secondary color corrector as a chroma key tool

No. What I do - I uncheck all options, then start with one after the other, adjusting and testing. Somehow I do not understand what happens. But it is the "Limit hue" I always start with. Then I try to turn on Limit saturation, and then Limit luminance. I use a Chroma Blur FX before the Secondary Color Corrector, and set the sliders 1/3 up.
It gets much better than the standard CK, but as I said - I do not really understand what I do.. I often save the setup, for other projects.

ingvarai

Steve_Rhoden wrote on 7/29/2009, 11:39 PM
Adobe took a beautiful application, and destroyed it.
Still, who knows, maybe Serious Magic would have folded anyway.
You can never tell......Look at "Shake".......
tsk.....Sometimes i really have to wonder what goes on in the heads of some management teams.