If you are new to Boris RED then I would recommend using it inside Vegas

Start with transition normally in Vegas , then add RED transitions use the templates from RED and play around with these
This will start to give you a feel for RED then move over to the fx. It takes a while to get into Boris headspace
Play around with it within Vegas this is a good place to start

Just remember your preview must always be on best in Vegas before you go into Red

I also use the control window and the comp window and key everything there instead of the drop down timeline window “like AE” which I use to see the overall comp


also checkout Creative Cow for some free tutes

But personally I use RED as a stand alone as kentwolf said

> But personally I use RED as a stand alone as kentwolf said

Ditto. The more powerful features like Motion Tracking can't be used from within Vegas but RED is still an awesome plug-in to Vegas. I like it's chroma keyer and matte choker, and the light wrap feature really helps place keyed footage into the scene and makes it believable. It's also really great for title work because you can easily have a multi-layered titles that are represented as a single event in Vegas.

As kentwolf said, Boris has some nice tutorials for free on their site and they even sell a tutorial DVD that is quite good. Also as xfx said, the Creative Cow has some great tutorials of all kinds.

~jr

Will Boris Red act as a better chromakey filter within Vegas? I've got a bunch of greenscreen kid shots that are giving me one heck of a time.

> Will Boris Red act as a better chromakey filter within Vegas?

Absolutely. The chroma keyer is really very good and it has spill suppression and several matte chokers and (as I pointed out) a light wrap that wraps the light from the background around the edges of the foreground key making it fit into the scene really well.

I have a chroma key setting with all the mattes and light wrap, etc. saved as one of the default presets in Vegas. Then I just drop it on a clip and fine tune from there.

~jr

I just looked up the price: $995 for the download. So much for that idea.

Laurence, you'd need to contact Boris Customer Support to confirm this but I think that you can get it for $795.
The only catch is that you have to own either Boris FX or Graffiti.
If you installed the free version of either of these that shipped with Vegas 6 or 7, I think you're eligible but contact them to confirm this.

Mike

Also checkout toolfarm.com
There's many specials there on Boris etc.

Bob.

If you have a previous version of Vegas that shipped with Boris FX LTD you are entitled to upgrade pricing for Boris FX and I believe that Boris FX has the chroma keyer. You might want to download the trail and make sure. I will be lots cheaper than RED.

~jr

I just checked and Boris FX does have the chroma keyer and I still have Boris Graffiti LTD and Boris FX LTD serial numbers, so I can upgrade.

I'm looking at the available upgrades. I can upgrade to Boris FX alone for $199 or Boris FX and Boris Graffiti for $299. It seems to me that I remember trying Boris FX when I was looking for a titler (before I settled on a combination of Heroglyph and Bluff Titler) and found that it's Vegas integration was so frustrating that I would never actually use it. Is that still the case or is Graffiti worth the extra hundred bucks?

Boris FX and Boris Graffiti share the exact same interface as RED. Graffiti gives you the ability to work with Text and Boris FX does not. If you learn one you've learned them all. It's different than Vegas but once you understand it, it is very easy to use. I think Graffiti is worth the extra $99 for nothing else than it plugs into Vegas and there is no additional rendering needed while Bluff Titler will always require re-rendering every time you need to change something. Graffiti comes with lower thirds and it does 3D text as well as just simple text that looks great (it has lots of styles to choose from). They also have a new mode that hides most of the interface and you just select from presets. This eliminates a lot of the learning curve.

As far as Vegas integration, it's the same as Heroglyph that you're using now. You get a snapshot of the timeline to work with and that's about it. This is a Vegas limitation for all plug-ins.

~jr

OK, I bought and installed it. I'm getting a sort of white and red jittery line around the edge of my keyed image. Any idea of what I might be doing wrong?

> I'm getting a sort of white and red jittery line around the edge of my keyed image.

Go into Boris FX and under Edit | Project Settings... set the Alpha Channel to Premultiplied Black. I find that this works better that Straight which is the default. Also be sure to change the Boris project settings to match your Vegas project settings. otherwise Boris has no way of knowing how to represent the footage back in your project. Dopn't forget you can stack filters in Boris so add a Matte Cleanup or Matte Choker above the Chroma Key in Boris to clean up the edges.

Note: to use Light Wrap you have to composite in Boris FX not Vegas! So add a track in Boris FX and drop your background footage in and use Light Wrap to have that footage wrap around the edges of the key.

~jr

Thanks JR. That premultiplied black alpha mode thing fixed my problem. I'm not that far into it yet and I'm already getting a noticeably better key than I could with the Sony chroma keyer. With the Vegas keyer I was getting a lot of jagged edges and no matter how I tweaked it, I'd either get a halo or some of the subject would be missing. This is way better. Better than what I can get with the Serious Magic Ultra stuff in Adobe Premiere Elements as well.

So you composite the background in Boris FX too? Boy I've got some serious learning ahead of me. Where exactly is the best place to start? For now I'm just interested in the chroma key and compositing stuff within Boris FX and only as it is used as a Vegas plugin.

Boy am I happy! I still have a bunch of learning to do, but already the Boris FX chroma keying I'm doing is looking really good. Comparing to what I was doing with the Vegas keyer is like night and day. There is just a world of difference in the quality of the results. This is just so much better than the Vegas chroma key filter. With the stock chroma key filter, no matter how I tweak, it looks like a cheap effect. With Boris FX, it looks natural and like it should. My subject looks like it is in the new background scene: not just some sort of haloed cutout with chunks missing from the edges superimposed over top of it. This is just so much better. And I'm doing it within Vegas too: not having to import and export clips between applications. This is definitely the chroma key plugin I've been looking for. ;-)

Laurence, I'm really glad you like it. I too think that Boris FX does a better job than Ultra did. There is a Chroma Key tutorial right on the Boris site. I would go through all of the tutorials on the Boris site as they're quite good and you will get familiar with the interface fast and be able to composite right in Boris FX before you know it. Don't forget you can still add the Vegas Chroma Blur before Boris FX in the chain and smooth out the edges even more.

One of the great things you'll find about using Boris FX for compositing is that all of the motion gets saved together. So if you have several keyframes of motion, it's all saved as one preset. You can't do this in Vegas. You can only save one keyframe which is really not that helpful. I use Boris to do things that Vegas can already do simply because I can save it as a preset in Boris and reuse it as apposed to creating it from scratch each and every time in Vegas.

Oh... and wait until you use the Motion Tracker! You're gonna flip out when you see how easy it is to track an object and have all of the keyframing done for you. ;-)

~jr

Be aware that because Vegas only supplies a single snapshot in time to the plugin, you can not refer to V1 within Boris FX or Boris Red when using motion filters (like tracking or deshake). Instead, you must point to a video file as your source media from within Boris. Sometimes this may require you to first render the clip from Vegas.

The reason why Chroma keyed clips look cut out is because the overall tone is not the same as the background
Adjust the mid tones in the clip to match and it starts to look more real

For example especially noticeable on darker skinned people when shot indoors then superimposed on an outdoor scene
The blue sky effects all the colours we see outside so whatever tones dominate the backdrop bring these tones into the ked subject “only a fraction”

When I was in Angola I used to really observe the Herero people who have very dark skin and how the sky refracted of there skin creating blue and maroon tones
Very attractive to look at “I couldn’t help but stare they must have thought this umlungu is a nut”

Anyway this drives the point home…bring some of the dominant background colour into the keyed subject
So in Boris sometimes using a sky blue as a light wrap has the desired effect