Ditto on everything Bob said. It never hurts to try other keyers though too - Cinegobs makes a great little freeware keyer that in 90% of the jobs I'd use Vegas keyer for, completely outperforms the Vegas built in keyer. Again though, the right tools help greatly. Very rarely have I been able to use Vegas to key out poor green screen work without pulling my hair out. If you have access to Keylight or even dvMatte Pro on the Mac, both handle poorly lit stuff a bit better. Still though, like Bob said, a seasoned pro may have to do it. The guy I use for most of my comp work builds each keyer from scratch in Shake most of the time. Each specific to the job it needs to do. Crazy but very efficient and he's saved stuff that normally would be unusable in most other keyers.

cheno

Use more than one key. Use mask(s) to comp back together. It's quite common for the pros to use several different keys on the one shot.

I have seen reference to this technique in the past. Anything you could expand on, or a thread to point a rookie too that would provide more detail?

Thanks,
Mike

I just downloaded and installed the Cinegobs program. It doesn't seem to work on m2t or Cineform avi clips. Is that correct or am I doing something wrong? I installed AviSynth but when I try to import using the Avisynth import function, I get an error message saying:

The video file could not be opened. Make sure that AviSynth is installed properly.

"Anything you could expand on, or a thread to point a rookie too that would provide more detail? "

Nothing I could refer you to, the only tutorial I've seen mentioned that goes this deep is for Keylight and is part of a paid for series. Not that watching tutorials for other systems is a bad idea, the trick is always to understand the techniques, using the tools is really the easy part.

A few tips.

Before you start look and think the task ahead through. WIldly twiddling knobs can be a huge timewaster. Don't be afraid to start again.

1) Don't worry about keying static onjects. These are trivial to mask using a bezier.

2) I would first try to get a good basic key on the easiest parts. Say the body of the talent as that has pretty hard edges.

3) Then if things like the hair is not working, duplicate the clip onto an upper track and try to get a good key on just the hair. Then use a mask with a feathered edge to select that part for the frame. You may well need to keyframe / rotoscope the mask. Repeat as needed for other parts of the frame.

Bob.

There are some good suggestions in this tutorial:

Solving tough keying problems in Vegas software

You may well need to keyframe / rotoscope the mask. Repeat as needed for other parts of the frame.

Sadly this is the part that I cannot justify the time required considering my stuff is strictly personal work. My last effort had approx 20 subjects x 10 seconds each X 30 fps. OUCH. I assure you my lighting will be better next time.

There are some good suggestions in this tutorial:

I am anxious to give this technique a try on footage from my last project. Thanks!

One of the problems with the Vegas Keyer is that you can only select square continuous areas of the screen.

I've been messing around with selecting several areas around the screen one at a time, writing down the RGB values, then averaging the values on each primary color and entering it back in manually to get a shade of green that is more in the middle. It seems to work OK.

Would you mind telling us what kind of a green screen shoot it was? There is a little difference in technique as to both the amount of motion, framing of the shot, and how bad the screen was lit.

I guess what I'm asking is was it full body walk-on, head shot, loose seated, etc... and were the people fairly still or busy with movement, using hands to aid in the message, etc..

Maybe this isn't news to anyone else, but I just found out that Serious Magic Ultra 2 was bought by Adobe and a scaled down version is now the stock chroma keyer in Adobe Premier Elements. With this in mind, I downloaded a trial version of Premier Elements last night and played around with it a bit. The chroma keyer really is quite nice. It uses the same "vector keying" that Ultra 2 uses and seems to have no problem with the varying shades of green that seem to plague all but the best lit green screens. As much as I hate to say it, the Premier Elements chroma keyer is much better than the one in Vegas and I am going to start using it for that sort of shot. It seems to work well with the kind of poorly lit green screen that this thread was originally about.

Does anyone know if Premier Pro uses the same keyer? I imagine it must.

Here is an article that talks about Premier Elements use of Serious Magic Ultra chroma-key technology:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2344269,00.asp

With Videomerge, Adobe adds the chroma-key functionality formerly found in Serious Magic's Ultra, which Adobe acquired in 2006. Chroma-key, for the uninitiated, refers to the ability to combine video, typically by shooting one video with a green-screen background and then replacing the green with a separate background. In Ultra, the technology was very powerful and very easy to use. Adobe leveraged both benefits when it integrated the capability into Premiere Elements. If you insert a clip with a solid background over another clip on the timeline, Premiere Elements asks if you'd like to apply the chroma-key effect. If you click Yes, Premiere Elements automatically chooses and removes the background color. On my tests, clicking Yes was all I ever had to do, since the default setting worked very well with my two test clips. Few consumers use chroma-key-related features, but if you're one of them, you'll appreciate the power and simplicity of Videomerge.

Just a little more on the chroma key function within Adobe Premier Elements:

There are several chroma key effects with Premier Elements: one for blue screen, one for green screen, and a regular old chroma key effect.

With the blue and green screen effects, you don't have to select a shade of blue or green yourself. The program will look for the chroma key background and key it out automatically for you. From there you can tweak it a little. These presets look really good.

There is also a regular chroma key effect which looks very similar to the one in other NLEs such as Vegas. There is absolutely nothing special about this chroma key effect. It is as hard to get a good key with it as it is with any other NLE program.

The magic is with the specialized blue and green screen chroma key effects. This is where the Serious Magic Ultra technology is used. They don't advanced things like generated shadows and swooping into a virtual set, but for plain old regular green screen stuff they are really good.

I'm not leaving Vegas for Premier or anything like that, but I will be using this for my chroma key work.

There are some good suggestions in this tutorial:

Solving tough keying problems in Vegas software

Hello. This tutorial is not available since the switch from Sony to Magix. Anybody know where I can find it? Thanks!

 

Can you find the alternative-similar tutorials here ?

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/vegas-pro-tutorials--103245/

Would this work?

https://web.archive.org/web/20160711030744/http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/solving_tough_keying_problems_in_vegas_software

courtesy of Nick's FAQ