JVC - Green Screen
 

Is there any JVC footage out there with tape-captured green screen? I have a video next Saturday and curious on how well it does.

Matt:

I shot a video with the HD100 @ 50p HDV on a blue screen. I'm wrapping up the video, should be done in a few days, will post it as soon as it's done...

Actually, I just directed and edited four commercials for a local grade school that were shot with the HD-100 on green screen. They turned out beautifully. Of course, it helps to light well and use Keylight in After Effects. But other than that, it's much easier to key HDV than it is DV. These were shot in 24p (as were the backgrounds).

The four spots are viewable at half-res here: (H.264 QT)
http://www.ethreemedia.com/bss

Those look great, Eric. Simple, yet effective. I did notice a green tint where the kid's hair is sticking up, but you have to feeze it to see it. Believe me, I'm not being critical at all. They look wonderful.

As for Nima, please do post that footage, or at least some snapshots. I am doing a JVC HD-110 shoot on thursday and we will attempt to run a blue screen. I too will try to post some photos / video up when I get a chance after the shoot.

Yeah - the hair was a last minute thing on that one - the producer threw it in at the last minute - we hadn't even lit for it. So, we're lucky it looks good enough to air, frankly. Sometimes, it's better to be lucky than good.

Incidentally, this was a green fabric backdrop, and shot behind a stage at the school. So conditions were hardly ideal. We even had a terrible fan noise than I had to reduce - it's still in there, but barely. Notice the school color is a dark green. The kid with the hair had a green shirt on! Let's just say it was not a simple key.

I did notice that? I was like, "wow, that screen must have been really bright to not key the shirt out". The hair thing was really a good touch though, and the commercials are as good as you're going to see for that type of commercial with a screen. Looks very clean too. I've been doing audio for 16 years and missed the background noise, so I highly doubt if anyone will notice. Then again, I do have 2 computers sitting right next to me at ear level with 8 fans each cooling duo cores and tons of Hard drives - not the quietest things in the world

BTW, How do you guys record your audio?? Sounded good.

The whole screen was lit with two Lowel DPs each lamped @ 500W. So, net wattage of 1K. The key was a 500W DP with small Chimera and 1 stop baffle. The back light was a 300W Arri fresnel, and we also used one 100 Arri fresnel as a kicker. Both back lights had in-line dimmers. We had about 15 feet from the talent to the background, and about 10 feet from camera to talent. It was shot with the stock Fuji lens.

The audio for the kids was from a boom mounted directly overhead - it's a Sony ECM-672, phantom powered by a Shure FP-33 mixer, snaked directly to the camera for recording. I've been thinking of upgrading to the relatively new Shoeps shotgun at some point. The Sony is a reasonably good microphone, though, and very rugged. It's been abused for seven years now.

It looked like the kid was wearing a green shirt? How did that work out? I thought you couldn't do that.

Yeah, with most keyers, it's impossible. But Keylight is something special. :)

Mind explain your workflow
 

Looked wonderful! I am pleased to know that JVC HD100 can make a good greenscreen. Was it shot to the tape? Edited in FCP in native HDV codec? (Or use AIC or DVCProHD?)

Joseph

Yes, shot to tape, edited in FCP using DVCPRO HD (Kona LHe, analog component input). I wouldn't want to do the same job using the HD-100 in DV mode, of course. Since I knew the keys would be difficult, I stacked the deck by using the higher quality DVCPRO HD codec.

hd-110 HD + Ultimatte + Greenscreen = awesome
 

i just finished shooting and editing a training dvd all greenscreen with the hd-110 in hd. i used Ultimatte to key with, and man, i can't say enough about that software. excellent keys with just a few clicks. works in FCP, AE and Photoshop. it's expensive ($1500), but if you're gonna be doing a bit of it in the future, it easily paid for itself with this one project.

i don't have samples with me, but will post on monday..

something else, i shot 30fps HD, and man, rendering took much long than i could have imagined. something to keep in mind if you're on a deadline...

I've heard good things about Ultimatte. But Keylight is exceptional and FREE - the plugin is included on your After Effects install disc. You have to install it separately, but it's there.

AdvantEdge is nice, but PriMatte and Zmatte do a better job for a better price IMHO. Keylight is my all-time favorite keyer but it does not uprez the 4:2:0 chroma, so there are situations where it will show a stairstepped edge.

My new book on bluescreening will be out in April from Focal Press, many samples of HD100 footage.

How does Serious Magic's Ultra 2 compare to the others?
Thanks.

Shot this green screen too...

http://modernartpictures.com/commercialAmFund.html

Marc

There are four greenscreen shots in my recent production, "The Container Adventures: The Rescue". (See if you can tell which ones!)

Marc, that looks awesome. The audio was clean, although the one where she is standing far away sounds far away, and IMHO, shouldn't. Grest use of time, great visuals.

Is it possible for you guys to post some Green & Blue screen footage? A few seconds is enough.
I would like to do some test with some software packages to see what gives the best results.
Thanks

I don't understand comments like this. For starters I believe you meant the HDV mode not DV right? If not then yes DV would be a drop in quality for sure.
All right. Now you say you recorded to tape which means HDV compression. So taking this out and converting it to a codec like DVCproHD hardly seems beneficial to me. Why not simply (I'm a PC guy so I'm not mac experienced but..) edit in apples HDV intermediate and render out to Sheervideo or some other lossless codec? Converting HDV to DVCproHD just seems counter productive to me. I can respect the workflow simplicity and speed especially being in a Mac world where your software is geared for DVCpro, but converting a compressed codec into another compressed codec with a lower resolution all in the name of quality seems goofy to me. Are you saying component out and DVCpro combine to make the chroma edges smoother? I just picture a 4:2:0 HDV frame down rez'ed and stuffed into a 4:2:2 frame with that original 4:2:0 inside it.

Very true. Trying to convert footage to a higher data rate is not going to give you a better picture - it's like dropping 24p footage onto a 30p timeline - you only recorded 24p, so that's all you will have. Same thing with HDV .m2t files. You're recording the information at 19Mbs, you're still just putting the 19Mbs info into a 40Mbs stream. And changing the color compression is not going to necessarily yield great results either.

this is filmed in greenscreen via hdv tape.
http://www.andreatoniolo.com/test/jb/FINALE.mov

these are all great. Can any of you tell me what scene file you used, or what your settings were?

Okay, not the best of the lot. Easy to use but doesn't truly uprez chroma the way that PriMatte, Zmatte, and AdvantEdge do. Works fine for its primary function - talking head -- but doesn't handle blur well so dramatuc/action stuff is less than satisfactory.

John Jackman

Just wondering if you still plan on posting your sample?
I am curious myself...

How did it go?

No, I meant DV. It was an obvious comment, I guess.
Well, I never meant to imply that I was improving image quality. But DVCPRO HD, being an I-frame codec, stands up better to multi-pass post. Since Keylight was necessary in this case, I had to go to AE - so, would I have been better served by digitizing native HDV, and then outputting back to HDV with composited graphics? I didn't test it, but I know that HDV isn't the best choice for post-production since it's clearly an acquisition-only format, so I doubt it.

Or are you saying that I should have used HDV to capture natively, and then deal with the rounding and concatenation errors when I rendered to another HD codec in AE, like, oh, I don't know, DVCPRO HD? It seems to me that it's smarter to know what you've got on the front-side when it comes to green screen material, especially.

Additionally, the digitizing process (at least in FCP) is a lot smoother and faster using the Kona LHe vs. the HDV firewire input. You shouldn't overlook the workflow part of the equation as a critical element in terms of productivity.

I suppose it's safe to say that it wasn't "all in the name of quality." I'm sorry I didn't make it clearer.

Actually, there's another advanteage for working in a DVCPROHD timeline, which is: you can apply to your HDV 4:2:0 footage, an artifact removing filter, in order to bring it closer to 4:2:2 - it will never be perfect but certainly will help when keying. Besides tho other obvious reason you mentioned - ''lossless'' rendering.

In fact, converting footage to a higher data rate will often give you a worse picture. For example, although DVCPRO HD has a higher data rate than HDV, it has a lower spatial resolution for the luma channel: HDV 1080i is actually 1440 x 1080, whereas DVCPRO HD 1080i is actually 1280 x 1080, so even if both formats were lossless, the conversion would add a lot of horizontal blur.

But converting to the same data rate also gives you a worse picture, unless you're using a lossless (or at least idempotent) codec. For example, decompressing HDV and recompressing back to HDV significantly degrades the picture, as does recompressing DVCPRO HD to DVCPRO HD. And in codecs using interframe compression, such as HDV, the degradation propagates through a whole group of frames.

These two considerations have to be weighed against each other. If your HDV footage is going to go through a lot of editing cycles, it may be that the initial quality hit by converting to DVCPRO HD will be more than offset by milder subsequent degradation through repeated decompression and recompression in that format.

Even converting to a lossless format such as SheerVideo won't give you a better picture - at least, not right away. But after the initial conversion, sticking with a lossless format will give you a better picture than you would otherwise end up with, because you'll avoid all the generational loss from subsequent recompression cycles. In other words, if you're starting and ending with a lossy format, using SheerVideo in between won't give you a better picture than the original, but it will preserve the original quality from getting ever worse.

Andreas Wittenstein
BitJazz Inc.
http://www.bitjazz.com/

Andreas-

Would sheer video increase the size? If the HDV materials converted into sheer video (720p codec at 4:2:2?), would it maintain same size as HDV or add more size? Could I have the same size as DVCPRO HD without robbing my computer space?

Joseph

I think I have to agree with Eric... and actually I feel like I should have imported all my footage that way. We shot a movie trailer to send out with the script to get the whole idea of the feature across to investors. The thing is, it's 80% special effects. We shot it on the HD-100 as a last minute deal because I found out they were going to use the sony f900 and record to tape (at 3:1:1). I figured the 4:2:0 on the JVC would be far better to deal with.

It wasn't until after we shot and captured all 15 hours of footage that I realized Shake didn't like HDV at all. I had to export the final takes from FCP to DVCPro HD before I could work on them. I would have re-imported them that way but we didn't have the Kona and we were pushed for time.

Now we are ordering the Kona LH so we can take it to controlled shoots do capture live through the tower (yes we will be lugging it around) for green screen shots. And I don't think HDV is easier to key than DV. Isn't DV 4:1:1?

Speaking of greenscreen with the JVC, here's a short I shot a few weeks back for a competition that required the film to be made in one week, including a list of ten items that was only released on the first day of the comp. My entry is about 90% greenscreen.

It's a rush job, some of the keys worked better than others, and the conditions weren't ideal, but I'm pretty happy with the result and it created a bit of buzz in the festival, and has since screened twice on different local TV stations.

Enjoy :-)

http://www.caliburnproductions.com/SecSoc.html

Cheers
Pat

Very nice!

I have a question about the actors... where are they from (training wise) and are they amateurs, professionals, other?

For my future use, I am trying to to see what things in the production make the difference between a believable scene and a scene that is not believable, then, too, what the difference is between a good performance and a very good performance.

I have noticed in movies that sometimes the first scenes are not believable, or the acting seems bad, but that changes after about 5 minutes when I get used to the character. One such film for me was Sideways.

There are some elements that immediately kill the illusion. One for me is obvious lighting... no matter the level of production. Another is characters that do not look the age of the character they are playing (playing outside their age range, even though the character could be the age they appear to be).

In feature films a little desbelief in the beginning that wears off is okay... such as getting used to Dicaprio's accent in Blood Diamond. However, in short films the believablility has to be instant, or you've lost the viewer for the whole film.

None of this discussion is meant to comment directly on your short. The opening to yours was very believable for me and held my interest.

Leah (the lead), and Dallas (the guy with the gun) have both trained with a school called the Actor's Centre in Sydney (I'm in Australia, in case you hadn't guessed by the accents in the film ;-) )

They're just starting out, so are willing to do a lot of free work with people they know in order to build their show reels, but they do get the occassional paid gig, so I guess you'd class them as semi-pro.

The others are local amateur theatre actors. I do a lot of local theatre, so the rule about not using your friends as cast in your film falls by the wayside a bit, as most of my friends are actually actors :-)

Cheers
Pat