The Foundry Keylight for FCPX

Hi all,
I'm using chroma keying software for work every days.
I've tested every soft solution on this earth with FCP7 or AE like:
ultimatte advantedge, Boris effects, Noiseinc for the biggest and the integrated ones of course.
The only one who giving me the best of the best without spending one hour
to make the final composition is KEYLIGHT.
I'm sure there are other pro editor and artists from here who have tested or used it too.
I'm in communication with the Foundry support to get a chance for a FCPX upgrade.
The only way to get it faster is to send them a request at the support team.Only few words are needed: please could you upgrade Keylight for FCPX at support@thefoundry.co.uk

For people who still don't know this great plugin, i could make a video showing me working on a typical green screen example.

I hope we are a community where the first mission is to help each other " i will be very thankful"
Thanks for reading

Do try out the Conduit FCPX/Motion 5 beta version (see details elsewhere on this forum) - once you've built your own keyer from scratch you'll never get quite that excited about the "instant fix" solution ever again

Keylight is good (probably the best one-plug-in-instant-result-solution out there), but it only gets you half the way to a really professional key. Great keying is hard work (and lots and lots of practice) - there are no magic solutions. But once you start understanding the underlying principles, it is very rewarding. Conduit is a very good place to start.

Thank you Simon for your support,
I didn't see what you are talking about the Conduit FCPX/Motion 5 beta version but i will make a research after posting this answer

I don't want/need a magic solution since i know that it will never exist.
I hope to not be proud of myself saying that, but i think i know and i have at work the good setup to deal with green screen (we have just finished our shooting studio before this summer) and we haven't the money for the million bulk hardware solution when Keylight worked very very well.

Edit: i've just added to their Beta prog, tested their product for green screen and...sorry to say that, and i 'm very objective, this product give the same bad results as the others...there are only 4 parameters to control the chroma, how it is possible to work like that !!!??? unbelievable.It is exactly the same toy as the one integrated in FCPX

---

> 0 interest for professional production.
This is my personal feedback, don't take it for you of course

I have just started researching using Keylight for FCPX and stumbled on this discussion. Does anyone have an update? Where do things stand as of now (April 2012) with Keylight for FCPX? Thanks!

No news that I know of, except that in the meantime the keyer in FCPX has become one of the best standard keyers that I have ever seen inside an NLE. Of course it lacks advanced features like cam tracking and fast rotoscoping for complex masks, which BTW you won't find in Keylight for classic FCP either. But from what I have seen at NAB the new Smoke might deliver the perfect all-in-one solution for us.

Ronny,

Thanks for the update. I'm trying to shoot single person interviews against green screen and then put realistic environments/settings in afterwards. The keyer in FCPX seems to be having trouble dealing with hair, as it leaves a white glow around the hair. My research led me to Keylight (hence my original question) but there may be a better solution, possibly even one within FCPX. Can you, or any other posters, kindly direct me to any useful resources, tutorials, plugins, etc on the topic?

Much appreciation for the help!

For straightforward keys such as the one you describe you can get a long way with the standard keyer in FCP10. If you have any problems with the hair the Edge, Color selection and Lightwrap features can help you out.

This little tutorial explains the basic functions of the new keyer in FCP10:

www.macprovideo.com/hub/final-cut/fcp-x-...an-even-better-keyer

Of course all this requires some tweaking and trial and error because no two keys are the same and as the op said: there is no perfect one-step solution for keying.

I have attached a picture of two problematic greenscreens I have here. The upper one was unevely lit and I keyed it out with just two strokes using the internal keyer. The lower one was overexposed and the key really showed many problems with the hair as you can see. The final result you see has only taken 5 minutes tweaking the standard settings. Of course I would need to further color correct the foreground to match the BG, but this is just meant as a quick example of what the standard keyer can do.



If you still have problems with your key after trying out the tweaks in the keyer post a screenshot of your key and I will happily assist you with the settings.

Best wishes

Ronny

Ronny,

Thanks for taking the time to post this information - I really appreciate it! I plan on working through everything again on Monday and will keep you posted on the results.

Mike

I'd say if you need a more powerful keyer than the standad FCPX keyer, you need to light your shots better.

That said, it's not a perfect world, and I've not found in all my years a better keyer than Phyx Keyer. CHV's keyer in his Quartz Composer collection is a close second. Nothing does better than Phyx. It was originally a Shake keyer plugin.

BenB,

With regards to better lighting...

I am currently using a Lite Panels system. Everything seems to light just fine except for the hair light. Without it the subject keys without a problem, but there is no depth and it looks strange. With the hair light the subject looks correct, but there is a problem keying the hair and edge of the face and neck.

The green screen is evenly lit with a Lite Panels 1x1 flood, so I am pretty confident that is not my problem.

Any suggestions on non-obvious tweaks to the lighting that may help?

I'll post some screen shots tomorrow.

Thanks!

Mike

How from from the green screen is your talent?
Are any lights used with soft boxes / diffusers?
Be aware most of the professional green screens I work on have more than one "hair light", they use upwards of a dozen lights. That hair light needs to be one of your brightest, and your talents needs to be 20 feet from the green screen. Don't light the green screen brightly, either. Light it only enough to capture it, be sure the talent is a bit brighter. Also take your camera back a ways and get some DOF between the talent and the screen, also.

This will take you through getting the most of the FCP X built in keyer.

www.peachpit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0133015548

Post an image of your raw green screen shot. I've found very, very few keying shots that FCP X's built in keyer can't handle. It's very powerful when you open the advanced settings. The problem ones are easily taken care of with Phyx Keyer. No better keyers around between FCP X and Phyx. Personally I don't see the need for Keylight when we already have those two. Ronny's example shows how really powerful the built in keyer really is.

phyxware.com/Keyer.html

Can I just add a tip that compositing experts will always recommend.

It is almost always a good idea to key the hair separately from the rest of the subject. With hair you are looking at levels of transparency that you're not trying to achieve elsewhere. If you try to use one key to do the whole thing you will very often run into problems.

Make two layers of your greenscreen. Apply a mask to the hair area and copy the same mask inverted to the layer with the rest of the subject. Now you can use the keyer differently for those two areas.

I've never had to do that, but could be useful in a jam. Just be careful about getting different looks. If you can pull the key for the hair, all the hard edges should fall right into place.

Yes I forgot to mention the PHYX plugin, which indeed has some very powerful matte cleaning options that you can use to further clean up problematic areas in your key.

I agree with Ben that for straightforward key shots you really won't need more than the custom keyer in FCP10 and/or PHYX. Of course the better your key scene is lit, the easier it gets. The second example I have shown is about the worst lit green screen I have ever had to work on. Overexposed, no depth, no hair lights, lots of spill... I remember that at the time I have pulled this key using Keylight in AE and got decent results after lots of tweaks. But not really better than what I can see now right inside FCPX after just a few minutes of working on it.

Having multiples keyers stacked, together with masks and mattes is indeed a very common procedure in compositing. Not really for simple talking head keys like these but much more for complex keying where the foreground objects need to follow background camera tracks, where wires need to be removed and where different layered objects have to interact with your keys.I have done scenes in Flame where we had over 20 layers of composed keys and track mattes to create an action shot. For this kind of work nothing beats the dedicated keyer and tracking system inside Flame or Smoke.If Smoke 2013 delivers what it promises this will be our next finishing workflow combined with FCP10.

Thanks to all for the continued input. For what its worth, I did receive an email from The Foundry re Keylight for FCPX. It reads as follows:


Thanks for contacting us with your interesting in Keylight.

I'm afraid that Keylight isn't presently available for FCP X but we do have an
open feature request for this so this may change in the future. I'd added
your email to the feature request to record your interest, for reference this
is tracked as request #19830.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Kind Regards,
Foundry Support

Ronny, what I meant was I've never had to layer keys to separate out hair from the rest of the body. But yes, I've done many layers of keyed elements in composites. Just not in something as simple as this for the hair.

Hi Ben,

Absolutely. This is a fairly straightforward process and you can easily do it without any secondary keys or masks. To be honest I am quite amazed how far you can go with this new keyer in FCP10.

Best wishes,

Ronny

I am, too, very much. It's amazing. I love the Phyx keyer because it gives me a bit more advanced light wrap and really great Clean Plate functions. Between the two, I've never needed anything else. But when a green screen is shot horribly, it's shot horribly, and there's not much you can do with it. If I had a nickle for every clip I've had handed to me that I simply said, "Reshoot it!" But yes, between FCP X and Phyx, no need for any other keyer.

If I had a nickle for every clip I've had handed to me that I simply said, "Reshoot it!"

LOL. If I had had a nickle for every crappy shot we have received in the past 30 years I would be scandalously rich. Can you imagine the overexposed key I have posted as an example was shot in a professional green key studio using a 30K camera!!! Is this just me or is the "we will fix this in post" attitude becoming worse with every year?