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Christopher Duncan
Christopher Duncan
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Your thoughts on Keylight vs Primatte Keyer / Key Correct Pro?

May 14, 2012 7:18 AM

Hey, guys.

 

As I was gathering tips & tricks to clean up my green screen work, I ran across a few different offerings. Red Giant has a suite that includes their Primatte Keyer and Key Correct Pro (also Warp, which isn't as closely tied to keying as the first two). And of course, there are other keying products.

 

Don't mind spending money on plugins if they offer a significant bang for the buck, but of course I have no desire to throw money at plugins just to be doing so, (i.e. for marginal improvements in my environment). If Keylight and good skill gets the job done, I'm fine with that. However, if other products take the quality to a significantly higher level than what Keylight can provide, it might be worth the bucks. I simply lack the experience to know.

 

Is Primatte (or similar products) enough better than Keylight to justify the purchase? Key Correct appears to be largely about artifcat removal which seems quite useful, but again wondering about bang for the buck here.

 

Your thoughts / rants / experiences / opinions / passionate beliefs (stone tablets optional) would be most appreciated.

 

Thanks!

2076 Views   4 Replies   Latest reply: Christopher Duncan, May 14, 2012 8:23 AM
 
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  • Mylenium
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    1. Mylenium,
    May 14, 2012 7:45 AM   in reply to Christopher Duncan
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    Primatte is much more reliable when it comes to rendering. It doesn't suffer Keylight's excessive memory consumption. Other than that it isn't a one-click affair, either. Just as Keylight it takes some time to learn and understand its keying algorithm and method. Depending on what you need to do, one keyer may do the job better than the other. If you can afford both, then all the better, but it really depends. I wouldn't prematurely spend a lot of money on yet another plug-in before exploring all options that come with AE. You can do a lot already with Keylight and if you spend a bit of time on learning the Channel and Matte effects, that also expands your arsenal already. I'd only consider alternatives, if you really get stuck with fringes or have no control over the shooting environment so the green/ blue screen is never the right color...

     

    Mylenium

     
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  • bogiesan
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    2. bogiesan,
    May 14, 2012 7:51 AM   in reply to Christopher Duncan
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    Some quick research led me to conclude there is no clear leader. One makes this purchase decision based on obscure factors like your primary acquisition format, your tolerance for speed versus accuracy, the needs and expectations of your clients and your ability to figure out and then use the many subtle controls for each of the products.

     

    At my shop, our Panasonic P2  at full 1080, using either of our two radically different green screens, produces superb keys with the bundled Keylight filter. I'm getting better at the subtle controls and using precomps to tweak the color before applying the filter and pulling the mattes form other layers.

     

    I don't need a new keyer and this one does everything my clients require. I only must ensure the shooting and lighting is good enough.

     

    Hope you get some useful advice. But all I found were equally glowing reviews for all of the major keyers with similar lists of quibbles.

     

    stupid typos

     
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  • Christopher Duncan
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    3. Christopher Duncan,
    May 14, 2012 8:20 AM   in reply to Mylenium
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    Mylenium,

     

    Thanks, man. My perception has been that Keylight offers plenty of power and as such, problems are more likely to be cockpit error than limitations with the plugin. However, being on the front end of the learning curve in general I didn't know if there were vastly superior tools or not. Sounds like the vastly superior tools are, for the most part, between the ears.

     

    As I was looking into Todd's references on light wrapping yesterday, I started to get a sense of how much more I need to learn on Channel & Matte effects and plan on digging in and improving in that area. The manual and Google are my friends, but any educational links on them that you think particularly useful would be most appreciated.

     
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  • Christopher Duncan
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    4. Christopher Duncan,
    May 14, 2012 8:23 AM   in reply to bogiesan
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    Bogie san -

     

    Glowing reviews and common quibbles sound about right. Regarding precomps & tweaking colors prior to keying, any particular techniques you can share? No teacher like the experienced.

     
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