Yeah, vector based keying in Serious Magic's Ultra is outstanding. It seems not to mind the lower color space and creates great composites. Ultimatte's Advantedge is great as well.

Eesh
 

I thought it's quite obvious but if some don't seem to make a note of it... Both cameras feature the same sized CCD. So, it becomes sort of obvious, that when it comes to the resolution and sharpness one can expect approximately equal results from all the cameras. Here we are talking about the 1/3" chips which are producing a 1920x1080 image. Can you really expect the 60+ grand camera sharpness here? And besides, we indeed don't know the settings that were used to shoot the test. There is a big chance the sharpness setting was set to a low value.

Overall, you've got to be very spoiled to not notice how juicy in terms of colour the output from the camera is. And that is at 100mbit. Keying indeed becomes a breeze, so people, don't whine. A year ago the news of a camera to offer 1080P for 6 grand was like getting a Civic with a rocket engine.

2Jason - progressive is better for you each frame of the video clip you are working one is one full "picture". With interlaced footage you will be working with strips of the image, which indeed becomes a nightmare when it comes to rotoscoping, keying, trackibg, and pretty much any other post-production work.

They're all the same size chip but the Canon seems to pack more picture elements into it giving better sharpness although it's lens is less than great IMHO. Another thing that matters is how good the processing is inside the camera. With either one of these cameras you should be able to dial in the settings you wish regarding color matrix and enhancement. Also, when it comes to sharpness, the only sharpness that matters is the camera and lense's own sharpness without electronic enchancement (detail at 0). Less electronic sharpening = better keying.

screen shot
 

Thought I'd tack this onto an existing thread, its a screen grab from the latest round of green screen footage. This was a 720P clip. This was with AE and Keylight and was with very little tweaking. There's no matte softening or choking either. For how incredibly fast I keyed this I have to say I'm pretty impressed.

http://www.onlinecheckregister.com/green.jpg

(note that this is a highly compressed JPG file!)

Nice! I didn't get as much detail as you did on the hair, but very easy to key in general. :)

http://www.holyzoo.com/content/hvx20...0_Key2_02.tiff

http://www.holyzoo.com/content/hvx20...0_Key2_03.tiff

Well - I just tried a key right in fcp with an old copy of dv matte pro. Not too good - horsing around.

Then tried with dft z matte - which I've never had much luck with before - heh very quick, not perrrfect perfect but good enough.

Like you guys - normally I'd go to AE for this - but I was impressed and it was fast on the render too. Good stuff ...

Not good with DV Matte?!... You've got to be kidding me.
I have got good (or acceptable, depending on your scale) results with DV Matte when shooting against green poster paper on a $700 consumer camera.

Yes, I know - with dv yes. Easy.

Maybe it's the codec or 720p that it is stuggling with - I don't know. It seemed to be a lot of work ... maybe it's just me. z matte pulled the key easier ...

try it for yourself - what can I say.

Here is the key I pulled tonight in Shake:
http://www.gleb.zerobrains.com/dmitr...HVX_key_1.tiff
The screen wasn't lit evenly, the left side is darker, and realistically I would pull two different keys with Keylight along with Primatte for the base matte. Also, there was a bit of white outlining on the right side around the ear, I'm not sure if that's PNG or the sharpness setting set higher on the camera, but I had to chew in slightly on the ear with eroding (yum, lol). Other than that this is great footage, really. I'm quite impressed with HVX.

Hey Dmitry - did you try in fcp with dv matte ?
Not wanting to put you on the spot at all, don't get me wrong ... I'm interested.

It's a workflow thing as far as I'm concerned, as I said above I'd normally go out to AE - for me dv matte was a hassle in fcp, z matte was easier.

Anyone else as well, please chime in ....

No, I haven't tried it. I use DV Matte with AE for I don't currently own a Mac, to my disappointment :). I am however looking into those new Intel macs. Kind of tired of editing in relatively inflexible Avid Xpress.

EDIT: Tomorrow I'll try DV Matte. My expectations are that it should give even better results, since it utilizes the chroma and luma information.

After some time tweaking this and trying various combinations of keyers, I keyed the left side seperately with primatte. Here is the result:
http://www.gleb.zerobrains.com/dmitr.../HVX_key_2.tif
(Shake tree).

dmitry, u "shak"ing with linux?

No, Windows. The tree is on the screenshots.

what the hay? i thought shake was mac and linux only? please share how?