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PLEASE, can anybody tell me if there is any book, site or kind of information about how an what we need (equipment, arragment) to make a profesionall semi/professional Keying STUDIO (green/blue BOX)???PLEASE, i’m a professor of film and video in art school, and we have a great space and “green light” from administration to make KEying STUDIO, BUT only if we provide plans and equipment of at least semi/professional keying studio… i have tryed to find some information on internet but i didn’t make it… 😥
by the way we work on HDV
THANX a LOT
genido
Hi,
The first thing you need to know (and I think most of the other people on this forum will agree) is that it’s really tough to get a clean key shooting in HDV, the MASSIVE amount of compression that takes place makes it just about impossible.
Secondly, lighting a blue/green screen is an art in itself.
However, you might want to investigate going the “holo-ring” route. It’s a blue/green light emitting ring which fits round the camera lens and works with a pure reflective “cloth” material which you place behind your “actor”. Manufacturers claim it creates a perfectly flat, reflective surface which is easier to key. The cloth itself consists of millions of tiny reflective balls.
I’ve seen these things in action at trade-shows with terrible ambient light and results are fairly impressive.
Maybe some of the other guys on this forum can shed some light on their experiences.
The closest I could get to a weblink is
http://www.broadcaststore.com/store/model_detail.cfm?id=660728cheers
TWReflecmedia are the people who do that: http://www.reflecmedia.com/
I built to rooms by myslef in the last 5 years. It was a painful, PAINFUL experience.
I created a soundstage with green floor, green walls, black sound deadning ceiling, hangling pipe light drop and some storage areas under the stages.
After it was all said in done, we started shoooting 4:2:2 and DV
NOW, the problem seems to alwasy come down to lighting. There is never enough with DV.
With HDV such as the hdr-hc1 i suggest shooting with manual focus, turn sharpness off, and turn color S on for indoors. I also say flood the green areas with as much nutral light as possible. it gets very difficult do to bouncing light.
I was building a tutorial on this subject last year when i lost all the footage of the build to lack of organization of my OLD business partner.
-c
It’s quite easy to build a green/blue screen stage.
You just need a floor and a(some) wall(s) with rounded corners and painted with the good paint.
You must use special paints to have good results (i don’t remember the manufacturers names, but you can easily find then on the web or any good video store).After comes the lighting. First the background has to be lit as evenly as possible with diffuse light sources (like space lights). Of course, it’s rarely impossible to have a perfectly lit background, that’s why keyers have a good tolerence, you can use multiple keyers at the same time, and garbage mattes are your best friends.
Once it’s done, you place the lighting for the subjet you wanna shoot, and hunt unwanted shadows.
Any DP can do that very easily.
Concerning a special lighting depending of the shooting format, I don’t agree with you Netviper. No matter with what format you’ll be shooting if you have set your camera properly, a good lighting is a good lighting. So double check you white balance and iris aperture and it’ll go fine.
Maybe you have watched the horrible shake DVDs training set of CMI where the instructor says that the subsampling problem is caused by the “lightning guys”! Laughing out loud!Next, the shooting.
As the others said, don’t even think using a HDV camera (too much compression).
A DV camera is the strict minimum, but you’ll have to deal with the 4.2.0 or 4.1.1 subsampling. There are some tricks in post-production to get rid of that and to extract very good keys. (Better to shoot in progressive scan of course).
To work in good conditions, use only 4.2.2 formats like BetaSP, digiBeta, HDcam, or DVCproHD (even if this on has more compression, it works really well).
Working in 10bits can also be really helpful.For the post production, in 90% on cases, keying is not a one click operation. It requires a lot of work and patience.
So to facilitate your work :
1- Shoot in progressive scan
2 – At least 4.2.2 subsampling
3 – Avoid compressed formats
4 – 10 bits is betterOn the set :
1 – of course, don’t mix different lights temperature (use gels if necessary)
2 – check shadows
3 – Autofocus OFF ALL THE TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Never use this function anyway…)
4 – Do your white balance on a white card where the main subject will stand
5 – To avoid motion blur don’t open too much your iris.You misread the original question
They are not shooting 4:2:2
they have to shoot HDv
So please keep your extra comments to another topic
they are not going to be able to do all those things you say.
Someone should put flgb’s post in another category.
NOTE they are going to be students lighting this. not a pro DP
You really need to read before posting.
before i forget to tell you:
when using hdv, you will want it to go to dvcpro at 4:2:2
you can conver it with this great little utility:
HDVxDV.com
it captures then converts it. I use a tone of other methods to get that kind of footage into something quite nice.
Once its in 4:2:2 you can run it through grading in lustre or scratch. (or iff, fusion or shake)
I am not sure what your final destination is… but there are some new cool keying apps PLUS things like chromaflex that can attach to your HDV cam or any other cam
they show it at NAB every year and it always draws a crowd. Of course there is usually a hot babe in view of the cam.
AND FLGB, please keep negative comments to yourself until you make your own keying dvd. That way you can back up your knowledge. If you do have one, id like to see it.
I’m sorry, if I didn’t answer right to the first question, English is not my primary language so sometimes, I may understand something different than written.
So, I’d like to complete my first answer with this :
I did a quick search on internet entering the words “chroma paint” and here is a link where you can find a couple of products that coud be interesting to you :
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/cinemasupplies/chromkeyfab.html
And then, because you’ll be using HDV… I also suggest you to use a green screen instead of a blue screen. It’s easier to lit (it’s far more bright than blue). And because green is very close the the luminance channel, you can use this to help your keyer.
Hope it helped!
I think we need to recognise that these are students, not seasoned pro’s so every suggestion probably has merit (even if seems off-topic)
The original poster doesn’t mention which HDV camera they’re using but another “trick” that might help ease their pain is, if the camera has an HD-SDI out (as several HDV camcorders do) would be to capture directly to disk. It bypasses the compression going to tape and lets them monitor the shot in realtime. A G5/FCP/HD capture card combo isn’t that expensive (and they’ve probably got something similar lying around)
It’s not going to give them the same results as shooting on film, but minimizes the inherent headaches of trying to key 25mbit footage.Just 2 more cents worth
TWturbo, good show on that comment capture to disk
Im assuming that they are using a sony solution of HDV because of popularity
I cant recall, but which capture card would you recomend to them?
An AJA Kona or Blackmagic Dexklink card would do the trick…
The thing that turbo proposes seems like the optimal solution. Because the camera serves only as a bridge, it doesn’t compress the signal but passes it in full.
I remember someone from South Africa did this for professional projects.I guess you wouldn’t have the problems related to the 4:1:1 compression…
Camera >HD SDI > Uncompressed capture Card > Editing software (FCP it seems)
thanks bro. good info.
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