Green Screening

[Rob Lohman]

That's like asking where you can buy a car and how expensive
that is (without stating anything else).

There are a ton of different blue/green/orange and whatnot
screens out there. You can even get official paint for the color
or try to get some similar color from a local paint shop.

One of our site sponsors (which has the main site down at the
moment, so I'm linking to their Yahoo store) has a small portable
version as well: http://store.yahoo.com/bhphotovideop...gc67g-reg.html

[Dustin Waits]

<<<-- Originally posted by David Woodland : Where can I purchase a green screen. I hardly know anything about green/blue/red screens but I would like to learn them so I can apply them to a new rollerblading film I'm working on. Also, how expensive are they? -->>>

I got mine from Ross. Bright green bed sheets were on sale. = ]

[Josh Brusin]

after effects benefits from the ultimatte keyer plug-in... the color key function doesn't serve very well... I bought Discreet*s combustion and was blown away by the keyer. Out of the box it rocks. I'd suggest looking at Combustion 3... if you're on a G5 it's 64bit to boot!
(Still like the timeline in AE tho!)

[Rob Lohman]

Isn't that quite a pricey package (combustion)? Some people have
reported good success with builtin keyers in NLE's if you first
color correct the greenscreen to flatten the color range.

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

Rob, occassionally discreet offers deals that halve the price in addition to bundling plugins and complementary applications, making combustion attractive to the same sorts of DV enthusiasts that would buy, for example, Premiere Pro or After Effects.

[Rob Lohman]

Interesting to know Robert, thanks! Combustion is a very nice
application. But quite complex, keep that in mind (not a one
button application so to speak).

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

I find it easier to learn, use, and manage than After Effects.

[Nick Jushchyshyn]

If you want to just start experimenting with bluescreen/greenscreen work, here's a tutorial for building a large, inexpensive screen yourself.
A portable version is also shown.

I'm planning on getting Combustion later this year myself, but for now, Media Studio Pro has been doing a fair job of processing the composites.

Have fun.

[Hans Henrik Bang]

The people behind the inexpensive special effects software AlamDV have also recently released "The Chromanator".

I haven't tried it myself, but just thought I would add a link. You can probably find someone here with experience with it.

http://fxhome.com/

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

Thanks for sharing your tutorial, Nick.

As much success as you've had with Ulead, I think you will love the step up from MSP to combustion.

[Nick Jushchyshyn]

Thanks for the feedback Robert.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Just need some time for my bank account to recover from a GL2 purchase back in Dec. :)

I have looked into Chromanator.
Looks like it would be good if you have only an editor like Premiere or Vegas (just basic compositing features) and don't want to invest much in compositing.
I tried the demo, though and found that it's pretty limited in functionality right now. My existing editor was able to pull keys with the same quality or better so I decided to just keep saving up for Combustion.

Have fun.

[Josh Brusin]

I got Combustion last August for about $800... came with a free upgrade to version 3.... great service albeit a weird authorizing process.... autodesk is the parent company.
For straight keying it buries FCP... Ultimatte is pretty good but since C* is sooo good I have no reason to mess with AE for keying (same thing goes for color correcting. C* rocks... would like to buy magic bullet but see no reason right now- look forward to exploring it as I'm a software junkie).
C* is more compatible with AE prod which is more expensive in the first place $1400ish not to mention ultimatte, magic bullet, other plug-ins... on the upside most plug-ins work in C*...

[Mike Rehmus]

What keeps me from doing any more business with Autodesk is what happened with my copy of AutoCAD. I'd been an Autodesk customer since they started the company. In fact, I jointly developed a product with them way back when.

Around AC 10, they decided that their customers HAD to upgrade whenever Autodesk told them to or they no longer qualified for upgrade pricing. Upgrade prices would then equal the price of a new copy of AutoCAD. Arrogance the likes of which I'd not seen since Ashton-Tate if you remember them.

Needless to say, I purchased my CAD software from a different company. May your experience with them be different.

Adobe, OTOH, willingly upgraded my Academic version of AE to a commercial license for just the price of an upgrade.

[Josh Brusin]

that sucks...
I just got off the phone with avid about upgrading a DV Xpress station that missed the "deadline" to upgrade... parallel dongle 1.5 NT version. I am a FCP user but figured I'd call them to see if they'd give me an upgrade as it was unregistered. No dice. As far as I can tell every software package - from Flash to Photoshop have upgrade rules. Did autocad restrict your use of your existing package? That would be odd an unacceptable.

[Mike Rehmus]

No but of course they provide no support whatsoever for that version so it is just a bit obsolete.

I don't/won't deal with Avid or Meda 100 for that same reason. When it came time to upgrade the schools Media 100 system, it was cheaper to buy a New G4 with FCP than to upgrade that lose system of unreliable programs that they called a Media 100. It wasn't cheap to start with, cost a fair amount for required annual maintenance (the only way one could get upgrades) and the reliability and performance was dismal. Nice video though.