Experience using primatte or another chroma keyer?

[Clayton Harper]

I am hating the chroma keyer that is included in FCP and I am thinking about buying a plug-in. I don't want to send clips out to shake or AE because every shot is a key.

Has anybody had success with Primatte or another plug-in?

[createra]

You can try dvMatte Blast or dvMatte Pro for free. They also include some sample material to play with.

[Clayton Harper]

Thanks for the rec. Dvmatte Blast looks to be pretty nice.

[Cail Young]

Conduit allows you to do nodal-based keying inside of FCP, and it's an FxPlug, so it's FAST.

http://www.dvgarage.com/prod/prod.php?prod=conduit15

It's what they use to key Macbreak, which is 100% green screen at 1080P.

[Peter McCully]

I have had success keying some of the Red test frames on the cinematographer site using Primatte in Eyeon Fusion (my main compositor). The green screen is very evenly lit, which helps but the tif files were very easy to get a good key from. Bodes well for future effects work.

[Joel Kaye]

I am hating the chroma keyer that is included in FCP and I am thinking about buying a plug-in. I don't want to send clips out to shake or AE because every shot is a key.

Has anybody had success with Primatte or another plug-in?

If you're really trying to do movie quality keys you're going to end up in a compositer like Shake. They exist for a reason. :-)

For quick keys DVMatte Blast Pro followed by Primatte are probably the easiest choices. Conduit should be good but might have more of a learning curve because it's a nodal based compositor.

[Bruce Allen]

Primatte gets my thumbs up. Keylight is good but less tweakable. Primatte takes slightly longer to perfect but with patience, Primatte can key even HDV. The main problem with trying to key in FCP is that you can't easily draw mattes. Keyers work so much better if you can roto two basic mattes - an "always opaque" matte and an "always transparent" matte, then you just tweak the keyer's settings to work on the areas in between.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Clayton Harper]

After messing with a bunch of demos, I declare Conduit to be just what the doctor ordered.

Very, very flexible, nodal interface but works/preview in FCP with a fast render. A couple of demo videos and I have made some great mattes.

[Sean Michael Johnston]

Ultimatte is the best. I've tried Primatte and I like the edge cleanup it does for compressed video, but Ultimatte is so much more sophisticated. I had bought it about 8 years ago and not kept up with the upgrades. I'd been using the built-in keyers for a few years for rough keying and bought Primatte last year for some DV jobs. I tried the new version of Ultimatte for an HD project we just did that required a much cleaner key. When you shoot on Ultimatte green, it is incredible. When you shoot on generic chroma green or blue it still blows Primatte out of the water. Ultimatte is the grandaddy of keyers. It costs more, but is well worth it.

[Cail Young]

After messing with a bunch of demos, I declare Conduit to be just what the doctor ordered.

Very, very flexible, nodal interface but works/preview in FCP with a fast render. A couple of demo videos and I have made some great mattes.

Good to hear. I've been meaning to purchase for a while but haven't had a project which would really demand a turnaround requiring in-FCP keying.

[Bruce Allen]

Ultimatte is the grandaddy of keyers. It costs more, but is well worth it.

Hmm, good to know. looks like I need to try Ultimatte again! I remember using it and liking it.

Cheers

Bruce

[Stephen Gentle]

I personally use Keylight, and it's great. I don't know about Primatte or Ultimatte.. Do they have demo versions for After Effects?

-Stephen