compositing

Edward wrote on 11/15/2004, 12:22 PM
i'm working on a project that deals with green screen. is final cut pro better than vv5 in compositing? the footage was shot using a high end sony betacam, and an HD lens (which cost more than the camera). from what the techs say, the quality is better with their g5's and final cut pro's. i'm begining to feel a bit short-changed here.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 11/15/2004, 12:41 PM
Have you tried it to compare? Are you dissatisfied with Vegas' Chroma Keyer? If you've got a good key color then Vegas should able to handle it as well as anything else.
BJ_M wrote on 11/15/2004, 1:23 PM
it will be pretty close in quality with betacam source i think .. FCP is a little faster in this area to "dial in" , you could always use Ultimatte with Eyeon Digital Fusion or AfterEffects or Combustion also ...
winrockpost wrote on 11/15/2004, 4:42 PM
Depends on how you are getting the footage in,, Lots of FCP systems are set up for uncompressed, if you are comparing that to converting the footage to DV in Vegas,, then FCP will be better. If you are getting the footage uncompressed into and out of Vegas , wish i ould tell ya, have yet to be able to do it. though others are and say it works great.
BJ_M wrote on 11/15/2004, 6:08 PM
winrock - why cant you use uncompressed or lossless compressed material footage in vegas? i never use DV in vegas myself (well very very rairly)...
farss wrote on 11/15/2004, 6:33 PM
How may are ask are you getting uncompressed footage in Vegas or anything else for that matter?
ALL DV, be it DV25 or DigiBeta is compressed, period!
As the footage was shot with a good DB camera then the sampling is 4:2:2, to get that into Vegas or FCP you need an SDI connection. Offically Vegas cannot do this yet, unofficially it seems some are able to do it via the Declink or other cards using the supplied capture utility.
Certainly you can get the footage into Vegas as 4:1:1 or 4:2:0 via firewire. Simplest solution is a Sony J30. You will however be taking a small quality hit with the downsampling. On the average TV no one will notice however I'd suspect chroma keys work better in 4:2:2 but again if it was well done I doubt you'll notice the difference.
All said and done though Vegas does better CKs than FCP and that's from independant tests.
Bob.
Edward wrote on 11/15/2004, 8:57 PM
is there a way to get uncompressed footage into vegas? is it depending on what system (Mac or Pc) captures faster? or is that a separate hardware issue?
TheHappyFriar wrote on 11/16/2004, 12:03 AM
just import the footage into vegas. I've used uncompressed AVI's & TGA sequences before.

To capture you'll need a different capture program though.
Edward wrote on 11/18/2004, 4:17 PM
Does your hard drive have to be fast enough to capture uncompressed footage tho?
winrockpost wrote on 11/18/2004, 4:32 PM
You need a decklink card, and some pretty serious horsepower. I think you have to have a 10k rpm hardrive, and bunches of them in a raid deal . But then again I'm not doing it,so whatt do i know. we use FCP for beta sp unless my FCP editor(son )is not available ,then we use avid. My Vegas system runs on Athlon 2700 , and it is tweaked so sweet with Vegas not ready to build a new system and try uncompressed with vegas until decklink and vegas are "oficially" compatable.