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Premiere Q + the Penguin Joke

Dreadylocks

Dreadylocks

I've recently installed a green screen in my 'studio' and I've been testing it out. I shot this test, doing the chroma keying in after effects. The output was pretty high quality, there was a bit of the grainyness you see below, but it was sharp and the colors were clear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxE8GXR_woA (watch in HD, please)

My problem came in two parts, fixing the first will hopefully fix the second. The first part is when I tried to open my rendered after effects mpg (which looked good, to me) in the timeline of premiere (it's pro), the preview of the clip in the timeline is really tiny with all this black around it. I didn't want to go to the trouble of editing it and then having it render that way, so I edited in vegas, which I'm comfortable with. Wow what a quality degradation! The moment I imported the file, it lost quality. Even rendering with all HD/HQ settings yielded no help as the original footage was already made bad. Why did that happen?

More importantly, if anyone knows a fix for the premiere problem I'm having, could you help me out? I can find my way around the basic controls, but I'm a total noob with the program.

If I can figure out how to just put a small clip of the 'good' footage up for comparison I will. I just can't even shave it down without quality loss (or can I?) so I'm stuck....

Thanks!
 
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Dreadylocks said:
open my rendered after effects mpg (which looked good, to me) in the timeline of premiere (it's pro), the preview of the clip in the timeline is really tiny with all this black around it.
Click to expand...

What are you doing in After Effects, and how?

It sounds like you are rendering an output from AEFX that is smaller in dimension than Premiere's project size ("really tiny with all this black around it"), and that when you've taken it to Vegas the settings there have automatically scaled the footage up to fit (thus the grainy look)

That's my guess, at any rate.

You can chroma just fine in Premiere... maybe skip the AEFX step?
 
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Y'know I think you're probably right. That makes sense. I'm really into skipping the middle man if premiere can do it. Effects wise I used keylight and a rendered spotlight, does premiere support those?
 
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Dreadylocks said:
keylight and a rendered spotlight, does premiere support those?
Click to expand...

Dunno, off the top of my head.

You have a CS version of Premiere, right? If so, you can send footage directly from Premiere into AEFX (or whatever other CS software) and back again, without having to deal with exports at all.

Select clip(s) on timeline >> File >> Dynamic Link >> AEFX (well, something like that)

Used it a lot in CS3; not yet with CS4, though. When done monkeying around in AEFX (which inherited all the correct properties from Premiere), the footage gets sent back to Premiere - seamlessly. Very useful.



Btw... Penguin jokes are always funny, regardless of the punchline. On the other hand, Yakov Schmirnoff never was, and never will be. :no:
 
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So it turns out Zen was right :) I feel dumb but yeah I must have changed the size when I changed the output format.
I got it all working and figured out how to get Vegas to render real HD (I thought I was before but apparently not :P).

Anyway here's the updated clip, do you think the keying was alright? I think it's still a bit grainy, maybe I needed more light? I also took the opportunity to edit it again and made it tighter. Let me know what you think :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcdgvoKtpsg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcdgvoKtpsg

EDIT: Anyone know why the HD options don't show up in the embedded vid? I've seen those options on other embedded videos, but I can't seem to find an option to enable...
 
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I will be watching with interest, as I am pondering the idea of trying green screening in the future, and want to learn as much as possible.


On a performance note, you've got deadpan down perfectly!:D

The "spotlight" looks yellowish(don't know how these things work with greenscreen, maybe it's supposed to :)), but otherwise it looks good.

It almost looks like you've cut yourself off too much with the spotlight-but maybe that's the effect you're going for-othewise, looks pretty good (to my newbie eye anyway):D
 
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Yup the yellow and the cutoff were completely intensional. If I could figure out how to adjust the light element after I created it, I think I might have added a little more white. But I really like the warm look of yellow lighting, call me crazy.

I can tell you if you want to chroma key, and your green screen and lighting isn't perfect, then you are gonna need a powerful program like after effects to get it to look okay. When I tried chroma keying in Vegas, it was complete and utter crap, it didn't work at all.

Thanks for the compliment on the performance, but that was just me :)
 
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Anything I find out playing with it, I'll let you know-though I use Premiere, and don't have AfterFX, so milage may vary :)

I want to put a character in a city location/alley as a trial.

Ultimately (if I ever have the budget), I'd love to try one of those "jumping off building and flipping through the air" in hero movies-course I'd need access to one of those bungee rigs and convince/pay enough for a day rental to cover the room in green sheets/carpet whathave you.....

Remind me to tell you about "Doll" someday :D
 
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