Any expert in Keying using After Effects out there?

[low-fat-al]

I have a major video project I am currently trying to finish. The keying part is where I stuck on. Once past this, we can move into the actual editing phase.

There is 31 subjects shot in front of a green screen. All static sitting in an interview type of situation. I am down to 4 main subjects that I had issue with in regards to getting a clean key.

Being on a small budget, we had to hire cameramen on the different locations. All had different cameras at the different locations.
Here are sample files of the original source shots. I removed the audio.

Video 001:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ueoli0ef1s9r28f/Video%20001.mp4?dl=0

Video 002:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oboi9f2b4x1fd74/Video%20002.mov?dl=0

Video 003:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6oljid4m7v3zktc/Video%20003.mov?dl=0

Video 004:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xgyjoypvqr02mk0/Video%20004.mp4?dl=0


Here is a sample clip of what I was able to accomplish from Video 002, the problem I have left with this one is a reflection on his head and a glow under his arms around his body.
The background is close to what will be used in the final video edit.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/aewuhv6zrz0phjd/Video%20002%20%5BKey%20Attempt1%5D.mp4?dl=0

If anyone can seriously provide very clean professional keys, I will pay for your work.

We are using After Effects. So any plugins outside of the installed default ones like Keylight that you use, I will purchase if necessary. I do have the RedGiant plugins as well.

If you do want to work on this, please provide a sample rendered clip for previewing. If your work is satisfactory, I will pay you for your After Effects project with the settings for the plugins you use.

Thank You!

AL

[racer-x]

I'm sure someone will come by with AE advice. I don't use AE (too expensive for my needs), but here's what you can get with free tools like Aviutl. Not perfect, but not too bad...

[smrpix]

Keylight alone will get you 90+% of the way there. The rest has to be done with gruntwork masking. Your camera operator was a disaster, leaving the camera on auto exposure and auto white balance allowing both to wander all over the place. Investing in a simple background would have cost far less than the time and effort it's going to take to fix this.

[low-fat-al]

Thank you for your replies. I can't use another application other than After Effects. This isn't about using free tools. The entire project is using the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite and it all works together with dynamic linking, etc.

The sample 1 minute footage with proper keyed settings would be applied to the entire project for that subject filmed, so masking and going frame by frame meticulous methods won't work. Too much footage and cuts already made that have been sorted. This was about settings that can be applied to that footage brought into After Effects through dynamic linking and not losing degradation from exporting, importing, and the exporting all over again.

[poisondeathray]

The sample 1 minute footage with proper keyed settings would be applied to the entire project for that subject filmed, so masking and going frame by frame meticulous methods won't work. Too much footage and cuts already made that have been sorted. This was about settings that can be applied to that footage brought into After Effects through dynamic linking and not losing degradation from exporting, importing, and the exporting all over again.

yeah.... that won't work . You can't copy and paste and hope it works on the other parts of the same footage

Let me explain - I know it's not your fault, but the lighting setup is what's making your life difficult - too bright and reflected green spill onto the talent. Some powder/makeup is typically used for face/forehead to reduce the shine. It will probably be less expensive for you to reshoot if you want a professional result. You might be able to find some VFX students to do it at cheaply or for free if you credit them.

It looks like you're attempting to try a 1 pass key - click and forget. That's not how it works in real life, even with ideal lighting conditions, let alone something like yours. You won't get that with 1 filter. You need to apply multiple keys on multiple layers with different adjustments and composite them. At minimum, you'll need separate ones for the core, to preserve the armpit "holes", for for the loop earrings, for the head edge key - because each has slightly different characteristics. The "professional" result is all about edge detail preservation. Because of the uneven lighting and green spill, your edges are going to be difficult - it looks like you've tried to compensate by shrinking the matte, losing your edge details. If you had fine details like hair, they would all be gone . For example, you can see the talents' ear rings are destroyed in most frame, and a lot of the other edges are missing pixels.

The forehead glow(s) are usually motion tracked with something like mocha and replaced with a patch. Usually you'll still need to do some roto work on top of all that of that to clean up a few stray frames. Those reasons are why you cannot copy & paste some settings (there are keyframe adjustments) . (But look on the bright side: At least your talent in video 002 doesn't have hair bouncing all around like some shampoo commercial).

Keying is only part of the job - compositing is the other (e.g. light wrap, changing the lighting appearance making it look like the talent was shot on the BG in the first place, seamlessly)

[budwzr]

Yeah, what you need to use is an inner and outer Edge Mask in addition to a soft ChromaKey.

Inner EdgeMask will be soft edge, Outer EdgeMask will be sharp. You have to create a convolution kernal. Look for that tool.

[racer-x]

I think the hardest part is getting rid of the green splash on the people. I can reduce it by lowering the green channel, but that messes up the white balance.....

Good luck.

[budwzr]

Oh, there's green spill across the edge? Hmmm, that's tough to fix.

[poisondeathray]

The spill is actually pretty easy to address in AE - it has several spill removal plugins and scripts.

One of the "best" 3rd party ones for general use scenario is "spill slayer". The reason why it's good is it preserves the hue range , especially important for things like skin tones (other spill approaches typically alter the hue, you end up having "magenta-ish" skin or changing fabric colors) . It also has a matte that you can use to composite over the "spilled" areas, almost like a light wrap effect
http://aescripts.com/spill-slayer/

You can basically recreate it for free, by understanding the channel operations being done behind the scenes. These tutorials go into that (it's actually by the same author as the script) - so it's not unique to AE or Nuke - it can be done in any program that give you enough control over channels
http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/advanced-spill-suppression-methods--ae-23722

But that's only part of his problem - you still need multiple edge mattes - especially for things like hair on the other clips. They all need specific settings and some changes over time with roto/masks if you want to preserve edge details

[budwzr]

No job is impossible for the man that doesn't have to do it himself - Budwzr

TeeHeeHee

[racer-x]

Reading PDR's post #9 got my thinking, so I revisited. This time I made a black and white mask and applied it to the video. I then duplicated it and lowered the Green Channel of the under-laying video. I then keyed out the green splash on her hair in the over-laying video track. It looks good enough to use I think. This method also retained her earrings because of the mask.

I think all will agree that this is a good key-job from a totally free program using Aviutl.....

[poisondeathray]

If the spill is bothering you , you can do the channel math in avisynth , same concept as the linked tutorial video . AFAIK, aviutl doesn't have a channelmixer, but I could be wrong (at least I couldn't find it)

This is "green limited by avg. of red and blue"

a=last

ChannelMixer(RR=100.0, RG=0.0, RB=0.0, GR=50, GG=0, GB=50, BR=0.0, BG=0.0, BB=100.0)
b=last

Overlay(a,b, mode="darken")

RE: good free software methods -

Cinegobs has a good free spill supressor. They have a "portable" version too

Avisynth as above is the same method of spill suppression, but it sucks for keying

Nuke has a free for non commercial use version now. Nuke is and has been the gold standard for VFX work in Hollywood, high end production for many years. It has IBK and Keylight (The award winning keyer that is also used as AE's primary keyer) . (Primate, Ulitmate are disabled in the free version). You can use the same channel operations in that video to control spill - that's actually where it originated from - Nuke.

But what I said about compositing with different edge mattes is no different. You need to use that approach in Nuke as well, or any software for that matter. There is no way around it. You can use rotobrush , refine edge and refine matte in AE to reduce the amount of work on some parts, but you still need to use the composite "jigsaw" puzzle approach if he wanted to preserve the edge details. Even on perfectly lit screens with 16 bit linear raw, no compression - you still need to. There is no such thing as a 1 click key.