Opinions on Red Giant Primatte with Final Cut Pro X and Motion

Howdy folks!

Was curious to see if anyone here use or recently used Red Giant's Primatte with either Final Cut Pro X or Motion, and to see if they're experiencing performance issues. I'm on a 2016 MacBook Pro with 16gb of ram, and I alternate from my internal Radeon 460 gpu and my Sonnet Egpu with a Radeon 580 RX. When it comes to rendering, Primatte is astoundingly slow and creates graphical issues. When I use the built in keyer instead for both Final Cut Pro X and Motion, the render speeds are significantly faster.

I know typically Red Giant favors Adobe products, and the coding may not be fully optimized for Final Cut Pro X or Motion. But wanted to confirm to see if anyone else here is experiencing performance issues.

Hi Timothy,

I agree that Primatte renders are terribly slow. As a test, I exported a 1-minute project out of FCP X 10.4.4 on a recent MacBookPro (no external GPU). With the built-in keyer, the project exported in 1'06", with the Primatte keyer it took 18'46". That's a huge difference, especially considering that the built-in keyer produced a similar quality key in much less time than the Primatte Keyer.

However, I had no glitches or graphical issues in the exported file. That may be related to your external GPU.

I don't think it's a matter of RedGiant favoring any kind of software. I have the same poor results in Premiere. Primatte is old technology in a new dress (I have used Ultimatte hardware in my linear days), and the underlying rendering engine does not seem up to par with modern workflows. For extremely difficult keys, Primatte will produce better results than the built-in keyer in FCP X but at a very significant time-cost. Both at the keying stage as at the rendering stage.

- Ronny

If I have clips that need something better than FCPX's keyer, what is recommended?

That's a tough one to answer because it all depends on what particular issues these clips have. I have had very good results with Hawaiki keyer ( hawaiki.co/keyer.html ) especially when dealing with transparent foregrounds (glass, glasses, silk dresses...) and with thin hair.

This plug-in includes many advanced controls for matte density, edge control, and even garbage-matting and secondary mask tracking. I have found it better than Primatte and Keylight, but there will always be a steep learning curve with any of these keyers if you want to get maximum results with poorly recorded greenscreen footage. Once you learn all the ins and out of the built-in keyer in FCP X, you will see a dramatic improvement in your keys even with that keyer.

The really good thing about Hawaiki is that Simon Ubsdell (the creator of the plugin) is a first-class compositing expert and he is very responsive to feedback and questions. Certainly worth giving it a try, but don't expect any miraculous results out of the box. That is something that no keyer in the world can do.

- Ronny

Thanks for the input, Ronny.

As for the graphical issue, I did some testing and discvoered it occurs with the match color with the background setting. That setting alone also turns a 6 second clip into a 30 min render

+1 on Hawaii Keyer. I've had great success with it and use it frequently. I love the built in secondary keyer for troublesome hair or shadows. Saves time and processing verses adding separately keyed layers.