How good should A1 be with greenscreen?
 

I've heard that HDV can be problematic with this. When I was thinking of Sony's V1, I'd decided that I'd shoot greenscreen out of the HDMI connection straight into a computer.

Now being drawn back to Canon by the low light comparisons, am not want to pay the extra for the G1 to get the SDI HD output for the direct computer recording but Canon chips are supposed to be better for this application than Sony's CMOS.

Therefore, how well should the A1's greenscreen taped footage perform in post?

Gene

I don't think HDV is any more problematic for keying than DV. Neither format is going to be perfect, but if you do it right you can get very acceptable keys. If you're shooting Digibeta, you can be pretty sloppy and get a good key, but with DV and HDV you have to be much more precise with your lighting and with your keying software. I personally prefer the Canon because of its bigger chips. If a really big percentage of my worked involved studio chromakeying, I might consider the HVX200.

If HDV isn't good enough for the key, then there's always the uncompressed analog component video output.

True...is there any magic box to get that into a laptop with FCP, I wonder. If so you could do live keying, maybe.

I ordered some eefx green foam and will be doing a lot of greenscreen work in the near future.

Seriously, shouldn't HDV be much better than DV?

I will be happy to let you know what I discover.

What really makes a difference is Magic Bullet's de-artifacter. I have tried to key DV and HDV samples with and without the de-artifacter, and the difference is very clear. Good thing is, it is now also in the cheaper version of magic bullet (editors version).

Steven

Even cheaper, faster and smarter (for FCP at least) is "G Nicer" and "G Chroma sharpen" from Nattress. (www.nattress.com) Dropping HDV clips into a uncompressed or Sheer codec timeline and preprocessing with the Nattress plug-in will help yield better keys.

This has become an important question for me: what is a good, economical way to get the component video into a Mac (desktop or laptop) and FCP? I'm wanting to edit it as DVCPRO HD.

What's the best way to handle the audio in this scenario?

gene

Or you can just use your NLE's chroma blur, which does the same thing.

According to this test, de-artifacter is better (which would also explain why it takes longer to render)

http://pilalitos.blogspot.com/2006/1...vs-chroma.html

But enough OT, maybe if someone can do a greenscreen with the A1, not all HDV-cameras process the data the same, so maybe we'll be suprised...

Steven

I will be happy to post some footage for people to play with from the A1 as soon as my green screen arrives.

Sorry for the old thread-reanimation, but did you make some greenscreen footage with your A1 already?

Just remember that no matter how much great software you have to save yoru ass...if you dont shoot the greenscreen elements well (meaning well and evenly lit) your going to have trouble from day 1. DV if you light things evenly and you key it right works just fine, HDV even better like I said (if you light it right) then it shouldn't be that big of an issue. Obviously if you can go for capturing to the laptop for a better overall picture instead of capturing in HDV of DV

- Kyle