Hey Everyone,
I have some very good news. Let me first just say I have no experience with chroma keying. I've never done it before in my life. I read a webpage about HDV keying that was put up by Fredrick (Lumiere HD). He basically says it sucks and it may just be worse than DV. This inspired me to try it out for myself. Here was my process

1) I headed out to office depot and bought a bright green poster board.
2) Hung it off a mic stand and lit with 2 1k's from home depot, 1 300watt for hair light.
3) Filmed myself wiggling around....:)
4) Brought the footage in and converted to 10bit uncompressed.
5) Got an image from the internet of a highway by the beach.
6) Pulled the key using primatte. (Never used before in my life)

For my test I chose to show a moving frame because I've heard that the interlacing makes it harder on the keyer...a better test.

Here are my results:
Starting Image:
http://www.expertmagic.com/dvinfo/keytests/raw.jpg

Key:
http://www.expertmagic.com/dvinfo/keytests/alpha.jpg

Final Comp:
http://www.expertmagic.com/dvinfo/keytests/comp.jpg

Video Crop of key 720x480(not scaled but CROPPED, still full res):
http://www.expertmagic.com/dvinfo/keytests/keyvideo.mov

Now is it just me or is that a great key?
Again I've never done this before but I couldn't be happier with the results.

Final Note: This isn't even using a smoothing filter such as Gnicer, just the raw 4:2:0

Let me know what you all think.
Thanks,
Eric James

Really well done! Great key indeed!
I have to try this also.
What program did you use?

Good gravey!

Whatever you did, you did it right!

(Bryan plans a trip to Office Depot for green poster board...)

You're hired... looks good to me......

In order to find the best color to key, I suggest that you take your camera into the fabric store and hardware store and shoot a bunch of material. Take it home and see which keys out the easiest and buy that.

That's great news - I was worried about having to hire a 750WS every time i needed to key... Perhaps that's not going to be the case!

BTW, great work for a first key - congratulations!!

Hey Guys,
Thanks for the kind words. I think the secret is in the primatte keyer.

MORE NEWS:
I ordered a 9x20 chroma cloth so in the next week or so I'll be putting my findings to the real test. Anyone have any ideas for what to shoot? Sci-fi? Action scene? I would love any ideas.

Thanks,
Eric James

Hey guys. Here are a couple of examples I tried with FX-1 footage. You can get awesome results by downrezzing to SD and then keying....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v58/PixelMagic/bluescreencomp01.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v58/PixelMagic/bluescreencomp02.jpg

Holycrap I'm on Couruscant!

Nice work there Daniel.

-Steve

Gotta love this stuff!
Great keys Daniel.

-Eric

Daniel,

What did you use to key?

<<<-- Originally posted by Eric James : Hey Guys,
Thanks for the kind words. I think the secret is in the primatte keyer.-->>

First off that looks incredible!

Secondly, I have no experience at all keying... What is primatte and what exactly does it do?

Thanks alot!

Thanks for the responce guys. I'm using Primatte for keying. I've had LOTS of practice keying because I am studying to be a feature film compositor in college.

I need someone to get great keying results with something that doesn't cost $500.

:p

how did you do that, and what program did you use?