dvMatte: A FCP Keyer for everyman and his dog

dvMatte pro 1.5 is a plug-in keyer for Final Cut Pro (FCP). The keyer is designed to solve the tricky problem of keying mini-dv footage. FXG took the dvMatte for a road test, and we were impressed with the results.

The problem with keying Mini-dv footage is that the format is only 4:1:1 (ntsc – PAL MiniDV & DVCAM use 4:2:0) hence there is only half the chrominance bandwidth we are used to, in example say, Digital Betacam. This translates into major problems for chroma-keyers. Typically if you use a normal keyer on Mini-dv the results are extremely unsatisfactory as the edges seem to boil or flicker.

dvMatte from dvGarage is a specially tailored plug-in that address directly this issue and produces some of the best keys of Mini-dv we have seen. dvMatte is available as a plug-in for After Effects and Final Cut Pro, but given the enormous speed and popularity of FCP, we choose to test it using FCP on an Apple 17″ G4 laptop – a typical on set previz configuration or one that you might reasonably have at home.

As a test we shot a typical background plate,



and then a foreground against green – which had both motion blur and fine blond detail hair, of course our talent was a bit of a bitch but she worked very well for our test 😉



Note: that the quality of the green screen is not all it could be. We did this deliberately to test the keyer in less than ideal conditions.

Buying downloading and installing the plugin could not have been easier and dvGarage does an excellent job at providing quicktime tutuorials.


The way the dvMatte works is effectively very simple, and yet very well thought out. Once it is installed, there appears in the Effects tab a dvGarage folder containing the dvmatte plugin. When you apply it, the menu works from top to bottom.


The menu allows you to look at the matte, foreground,background or the comp.


The logic of the key is to first extract a chroma based key, this would normally fail due to the edge instability, – so dvmatte blurs and shrinks this matte. There are two keyer options at this first stage and the program blends between the two approaches fairly interactively. This is done by sampling a high and low background colour and then using a slider.


At stage 2, a second matte is pulled from luminance informtion only, as this is the one uncompressed piece of image data the MiniDv camera records, (the full bandwidth 4, in 4:1:1). This provides both the edge detail and stablity missing from the normal chroma key.



You can then adjust this key – not unlike the levels adjustment in Photoshop


And then combine it with the original matte for a master key.



dvMatte then goes one step more and allows colour correcting, balancing and spill correction. While the dvmatte tutorial itself points out that you could perhaps do this with FCP new 3 point colour corrector, the dvMatte tools are effective and fast.

At the end of the matte the comp is really fairly good, but there are still a few problems caused by the poor green screen -that being that there is still boiling under the dog’s neck, in the harder areas.


How does dvmatte compare to say Inferno ?
Well we tested the same material in the Mk and using the same approach we got very similar results, of course that is reason enough to want to buy dvmatte – if it can match a top of the line professional suite for a mere US$199. Some features do not directly translate, for example there is a edge blending and light warp feature – based on the background image which can only be approximated with Erode in the MK.

Below is a still from a matching MK setup, for comparison.


Does dvMatte produce better keys from Mini-dv than traditional methods upon 4:2:2 material – well no, the mattes are still not as polished as professional material, but if you have to use mini-dv material – then dvMatte is an outstanding solution. The software is logical, easy to use and very well documented.

One thing that was evident by our tests was that a good green screen is really needed, and light the greenscreen at least a stop below the foreground, or above depending on the shot.

Click below for the final comp:
Final Comp (3.8 mb Quicktime)