greenscreen stills at DVinfo.net

Art Willig · November 12th, 2014, 02:31 PM

What's a good way to grab a frame with the background already made transparent via chroma-key? When I click copy to clipboard, I get the black background in my graphics program (paintshop). It also suffers from the jaggies and looks like it has anti-alaising turned off. I've also tried turning the field type to none but not getting very good results. Looking for high-quality stills from an AVCHD source. Running VP10c. Thanks.

Paul R Johnson · November 12th, 2014, 03:03 PM

It sounds like the keying you used made a poor job of it - it's the matting out process that is critical not what you do after. If it has jagged edges the keying was poor. Could have been so many things - if you post a pic from the original green screen we can have a look.

Art Willig · November 12th, 2014, 07:57 PM

I noticed it's worse when I saturate the green.
Here's a raw frame with the fields set to none.

Seth Bloombaum · November 12th, 2014, 08:17 PM

Caveat: I've never tried this. Does Vegas support transparency in still caps?

Here are a couple things to try:

1. Make sure you're capturing to a still format that supports transparency. JPG doesn't. PNG does.
2. Be sure you're set on best/full when you cap. I know it was important with older versions of Vegas Pro, but IIRC this might have been fixed at some point.

Art Willig · November 13th, 2014, 12:33 PM

Yes, I did all that initially.
I'm very surprised it doesn't support transparency.

Seth Bloombaum · November 13th, 2014, 03:57 PM

Well... it does for video rendering.

For the very few codecs that support transparency, Vegas works. Not sure I've gotten DNxHD to work with transparency in Vegas, but I've had success with uncompressed.

Which may be a possibility for you, depending on the goals of your project. How about a 1-frame export uncompressed AVI?

Possibly MOV in animation + / millions + might work as well. The codec supports transparency, but not sure about how Vegas works with this.

Paul R Johnson · November 14th, 2014, 04:18 AM

I'm confused - is that a full resolution image? No way that is ever going to key properly. There aren't any clean edges in the image - has something gone adrift in the still capture?

Art Willig · November 14th, 2014, 11:37 AM

It's a frame copied to clipboard from VP then compressed in paintshop for an example.
I'll have to stay in VP, evidently, and perhaps use a better plugin.
I don't think any are free, though.

Paul R Johnson · November 14th, 2014, 11:52 AM

It's mangled in Paintshop, the frame size is still pretty high as is the file size - can you extract a frame and not compress it - because whatever you did looks really bad, not clean at all. Not sure what happened?

I think I just realised what you did - you need to export the image as a frame, not a screen capture because that isn't the real image quality at all.

If you can't do that, how about just exporting 5 seconds of the video from the camera - then we could try the image on our suffering systems and see how it keys. Difficult to see from the screen grab, but there don't appear to be shadows, but there could be a bit of green spill from the screen on the edge, which might account for it?

Mike Kujbida · November 14th, 2014, 12:17 PM

You can render an image sequence in Pro 10 (several formats to choose from) so that's another workaround for you to consider.
BTW, Pro 10 went up to 10.0e at the end so I recommend an upgrade to that just for the bug fixes alone and there were a lot in 10.0d and 10.0e.
Sony Creative Software - Download: Updates: Vegas

Art Willig · November 15th, 2014, 01:06 AM

Not sure what happened but I rendered an image sequence of one frame as a png and it shows a transparent background in Windows picture viewer. I then open it in paintshop and the transparency doesn't display. I think paintshop may be a little wonky.

November 12th, 2014, 02:31 PM	#1
Art Willig Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Colorado Posts: 104	greenscreen stills What's a good way to grab a frame with the background already made transparent via chroma-key? When I click copy to clipboard, I get the black background in my graphics program (paintshop). It also suffers from the jaggies and looks like it has anti-alaising turned off. I've also tried turning the field type to none but not getting very good results. Looking for high-quality stills from an AVCHD source. Running VP10c. Thanks. __________________ "Shoot first and ask questions later"

November 12th, 2014, 03:03 PM	#2
Paul R Johnson Inner Circle Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Lowestoft - UK Posts: 4,045	Re: greenscreen stills It sounds like the keying you used made a poor job of it - it's the matting out process that is critical not what you do after. If it has jagged edges the keying was poor. Could have been so many things - if you post a pic from the original green screen we can have a look.

November 12th, 2014, 07:57 PM	#3
Art Willig Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Colorado Posts: 104	Re: greenscreen stills I noticed it's worse when I saturate the green. Here's a raw frame with the fields set to none. Attached Thumbnails __________________ "Shoot first and ask questions later"

November 12th, 2014, 08:17 PM	#4
Seth Bloombaum Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Portland, Oregon Posts: 3,420	Re: greenscreen stills Caveat: I've never tried this. Does Vegas support transparency in still caps? Here are a couple things to try: 1. Make sure you're capturing to a still format that supports transparency. JPG doesn't. PNG does. 2. Be sure you're set on best/full when you cap. I know it was important with older versions of Vegas Pro, but IIRC this might have been fixed at some point. __________________ 30 years of pro media production. Vegas user since 1.0. Webcaster since 1997. Freelancer since 2000. College instructor since 2001.

November 13th, 2014, 12:33 PM	#5
Art Willig Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Colorado Posts: 104	Re: greenscreen stills Yes, I did all that initially. I'm very surprised it doesn't support transparency. __________________ "Shoot first and ask questions later"

November 13th, 2014, 03:57 PM	#6
Seth Bloombaum Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Portland, Oregon Posts: 3,420	Re: greenscreen stills Well... it does for video rendering. For the very few codecs that support transparency, Vegas works. Not sure I've gotten DNxHD to work with transparency in Vegas, but I've had success with uncompressed. Which may be a possibility for you, depending on the goals of your project. How about a 1-frame export uncompressed AVI? Possibly MOV in animation + / millions + might work as well. The codec supports transparency, but not sure about how Vegas works with this. __________________ 30 years of pro media production. Vegas user since 1.0. Webcaster since 1997. Freelancer since 2000. College instructor since 2001.

November 14th, 2014, 04:18 AM	#7
Paul R Johnson Inner Circle Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Lowestoft - UK Posts: 4,045	Re: greenscreen stills I'm confused - is that a full resolution image? No way that is ever going to key properly. There aren't any clean edges in the image - has something gone adrift in the still capture?

November 14th, 2014, 11:37 AM	#8
Art Willig Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Colorado Posts: 104	Re: greenscreen stills It's a frame copied to clipboard from VP then compressed in paintshop for an example. I'll have to stay in VP, evidently, and perhaps use a better plugin. I don't think any are free, though. __________________ "Shoot first and ask questions later"

November 14th, 2014, 11:52 AM	#9
Paul R Johnson Inner Circle Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Lowestoft - UK Posts: 4,045	Re: greenscreen stills It's mangled in Paintshop, the frame size is still pretty high as is the file size - can you extract a frame and not compress it - because whatever you did looks really bad, not clean at all. Not sure what happened? I think I just realised what you did - you need to export the image as a frame, not a screen capture because that isn't the real image quality at all. If you can't do that, how about just exporting 5 seconds of the video from the camera - then we could try the image on our suffering systems and see how it keys. Difficult to see from the screen grab, but there don't appear to be shadows, but there could be a bit of green spill from the screen on the edge, which might account for it?

November 14th, 2014, 12:17 PM	#10
Mike Kujbida Inner Circle Join Date: May 2005 Location: Windsor, ON Canada Posts: 2,770	Re: greenscreen stills You can render an image sequence in Pro 10 (several formats to choose from) so that's another workaround for you to consider. BTW, Pro 10 went up to 10.0e at the end so I recommend an upgrade to that just for the bug fixes alone and there were a lot in 10.0d and 10.0e. Sony Creative Software - Download: Updates: Vegas

November 15th, 2014, 01:06 AM	#11
Art Willig Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Colorado Posts: 104	Re: greenscreen stills Not sure what happened but I rendered an image sequence of one frame as a png and it shows a transparent background in Windows picture viewer. I then open it in paintshop and the transparency doesn't display. I think paintshop may be a little wonky. __________________ "Shoot first and ask questions later"