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• Requirements
• Usage

Chroma Key (HSV)

Chroma Key (HSV)⁹ (figure 10.30) replaces a color with another color or transparency using HSV variables; it is frequently used to remove a color from a video to composite with another image. This process is generally referred to as green screen or blue screen process (because of the color that is keyed out). More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromakey

Figure 10.30: Keying a green screen with Chroma Key (HSV)

Requirements

The subject in the movie should have a good background. The lighting is crucial and good lighting during production will save you time with much less effort than in post-production. Another tip is to use a low-compressed, intraframe codec with as high a color depth as possible. In case of YUV-type source signal, it is better to have subsampling 4 : 4.4 or 4 : 2 : 2. Here we assume that we have a good video, filmed on green (or blue) screen that we want to use. Important: Make sure you are using a color model that has an alpha channel, such as RGBA8, RGBAFloat, YUVA8. To change color model, go to Settings → Format → Color Model.

Usage

As in any other effect, add it to the timeline in the main window. You can tweak each parameter in order to improve the keying.

Start with Hue Tolerance at 10%, Min Brightness at 0, Max brightness at 100%, Saturation offset at 0, Min Saturation at 0, In Slope at 0, Out Slope at 0, Alpha Offset at 0 (that’s mid-way through), Spill Threshold at 0, Spill Compensation at 100%. At any time, you can check what the Mask looks like by clicking on Show Mask. This will output a black and white image of the mask (matte).

Key color:

Select the key color (green, blue, etc) using the color wheel or the color picker. Remember, only the Hue matters, not Saturation or Value. To use the color picker, click on the color picker icon in the Compositor window, then click on the color you want in the Compositor window. Finally in the Chromakey (HSV) parameters window, click on Use Color Picker.

Hue Tolerance:

Because there are slight variations in lighting, the background will not be in a uniform key color hue. Increase or decrease the Hue tolerance to mask out the background. If there are dark spots that are keyed out that shouldn’t be, it can be corrected later.

Brightness:

ncrease Min Brightness so that only the background is masked out, and not parts of the foreground. You can also reduce Max Brightness if some clear areas are keyed out (useful for very dark backgrounds).

Saturation:

Increase Min Saturation so that only the background is masked out, and not parts of the foreground. Saturation Offset can be used to change this, but for now leave it set to 0.

Check what it looks like at this stage, your mask should be pretty clean. Toggle Show Mask to check what it looks like, it should be OK. If not, repeat steps 1to4 to get a better key. The rest of the controls are useful to smear the mask to help compositing later on. They will help you to make your key look much cleaner.

Slope:

For now, the mask is a full on/ full off mask that can be really harsh and not necessarily what you are looking for. In Slope and Out Slope will help you to smooth that key. In Slope leaves more colors in the mask, Out Slope takes more colors out of the mask. The colors that are borderline in the mask will see their alpha channel reduced by half instead of being completely on or off.

Alpha Offset

This control offsets the whole alpha channel by some amount. Be sure to know what you are doing if you change it from the default value of 0.

spill light control:

This step helps you remove the green or blue halo around the edges of the mask. It does so by removing the saturation of pixels that have a similar hue to the key color (turning them into grey instead of green or blue). Spill Compensation controls the amount of de-saturation. If you start with Spill Compensation at 100%, slowly increase the Spill Threshold until the remaining green or blue areas turn grey. Then reduce Spill Compensation until the image looks good.

Now the mask is probably still very harsh, so just below the Chromakey (HSV) plugin, add a Blur effect, and select only the Alpha channel, with a radius of 2 or 3 (more if you really want to soften the edges). This will significantly help the keying.

Footnotes

... (HSV)⁹

Credit for Plugin by Jerome Cornet http://jcornet.free.fr/linux/chromakey.html

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Next: Color 3 Way Up: Video Effects Previous: Chroma Key   Contents   Index

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