Loving Green Screen Again

I use to hate green screen work. Exporting clips to Adobe After Effects or Apple Motion and spending hours just keying out the talent only to bring the clips back in to Final Cut Pro. Compositing always ate up time for more creative pursuits such as animating graphic organizers and moving around topography. I was unhappy with green screen projects and the end result suffered with boring animations and static typography.

This unfortunate cycle came to a end this year when I was approved to buy a license of dvGARAGE dvMatte Pro. I've used many other keying tools including, Keylight, Primatte Keyer Pro and all the standard built in keying tools included with Final Cut Pro and others. The results were often mixed as green screen footage is never shot perfectly. Primatte Keyer Pro was the best quality keying tool of the lot, but playback was never in real time a the license costs $500.00. In order to really "see" the result you had to render everything out and then make changes and render again. The final render cost (not mention the license) was simply too much to use in the type of multi-module distance learning projects I've come to specialize in.

dvMatte Pro is by far the best keying tool I've worked with in the industry. The results are quick with a simple to use interface that makes keying tasks become effortless. I can play back keyed clips (automatically down sampled) in real time with many other composited layers, including imported Motion projects. I've keyed both EX1 and JVC HDV footage with the same simple and high quality results. The plugin even works well with my Matrox MXO2 box playing out to a Sony 24" CRT broadcast monitor. Final output render/compressions see no noticeable difference in time compared to exporting the same timeline without keying plugins.

If you cut with Final Cut Pro and you key a lot of footage, you should have a license of dvMatte Pro. You don't have to waist time or money on anything else. The cost of the tool is about half of the most expensive Primatte Keyer Pro. The real value of a quality keying plugin is the time you'll get back from rendering and round tripping with other applications. Workflow adds up and compositing costs can get out of control very quickly. dvMatte Pro controls compositing costs and the improved interactivity of each video benefits from a quick keying tool.

Now that quality keying is simple and fast, I've started to love compositing again. I have more time for more important creative animation and typography work. The result has been satisfied customers and entertained viewers with higher content retention.