Hi Jose,

Chroma keying a subject onto a different background picture is straight forward. As Terry said you can use a green background behind your subject, typically a fairly bright mid green. It can be paper or material or even a painted wall or board. Many companies online offer green screen backdrop material. It is important to have a smooth background with no creases or folds and to have it evenly lit with no shadows from the subject. Once you have captured your footage, load into MEP with the images you want in the background on the track above. then go into chroma key, having selected your green screen background track, then click on the colour you want to remove i.e. green. You can adjust the amount that you want to remove, to give a clean outline to your subject.

You don't have to use green for chroma keying backgrounds and blue is frequently used as an alternative. However as chroma keying is usually used for human subjects, green is the colour less likely to be present in skin tones etc. If for instance you use pink or light brown as a background, when you key out the background, you will probably key out the subjects skin as well. Its also important that subjects do not include the background colour in clothing etc for the same reason.

Finally, your background image can be either a still picture or a moving image, but if using a moving image such as a street scene, the camera doing the filming needs to be totally still to give a realistic affect when chroma keyed.

Roger

Hi José,

As you have seen, it is not easy if you want to key out the background of people who are moving if you don't have them against a green or blue screen, or some other colour. I did one with my wife where we stood in front of a wall that had a uniform colour, I cropped the video and chromakeyed out the colour of the wall. As the others have pointed out, this works if the colour is not in the part that you want to keep. If there is a problem, then you can add a moving mask using Xara to protect the area that you want to keep. I will show this in a second example.

First example, is a simple case for you to follow of cropping a someone against a green screen, size/position, chromakey green.

I'll try to get the second case done for tomorrow.

In BluffTitler, open the sample show called _PictureLesson6.bt to see an example of how to use chromakey green in BluffTitler. The Show is under folder "Picture."

Were you able to view the link that Terry gave you?

I was in Mozambique.

John CB

Terry, I think I have caused some confusion by not being sufficiently clear in what I said. This is caused by, first English is not my native language and trust me I have to make quite an effort to state as clear as I can what is my problem ; and secondly, the terminology used here is technical and as a consequence I might unwillingly use the wrong or inappropriate term. I might even have problems with my own language if I were to ask for help in the Spanish forum which is by no means even close to the superior level this English forum has.

Yes, I have used the examples you kindly sent me and applied Chroma Key to both , the first and last, and they worked fine. Part of the misunderstanding caused by my previous post is due to the fact that I , erronously, thought that BT had a built in mechanism to change the background of a pic or video. That there was no need to do anything else; the software took care of everything ( please don´t laugh ). My reasoning was that normal pics and videos were composed of layers, objects (subjects) and background. And these two could be separated.

I have also tried to apply Chroma Key the way Roger and you have explained. I even bought sheets of lustrous green paper and pasted them on a wall and took shots of my Schnauser pet, Camila. It was then that I realized that creases, reflections, slight differences in color, affected the result. I do not have a screen either. But again I want to point out that when I downloaded BT I thought there was an alternative as I mentioned above and if this was the solution. there had to be instructions or tutorials and when I opened this new post I also thought that MEP should have same as BT. And in fact as John CB and yourself have shown, there is a way and that is by the magnetic lasso and layer and transparencies by an image editor. I do have Photo and Graphic Designer 11 and have spent all day long reading sections of transparencies and layers in the Manual but to tell the truth, I find this program difficult to master and also it is so big. PDF manual has 645 pages. !!! Each page is a set of intructions. There is no magnetic lasso to my knowledge.

To sum it up, Green Screen is the way to go with videos and either magnetic lasso or transparencies and layers with pics. Problem is my version of Photo & Graphic Designer does not have lasso and need help with transparencies and layers.

ATB,

José Robles

Hi José,

I've made comments below on specific points.

Terry, I think I have caused some confusion by not being sufficiently clear in what I said. This is caused by, first English is not my native language and trust me I have to make quite an effort to state as clear as I can what is my problem ; and secondly, the terminology used here is technical and as a consequence I might unwillingly use the wrong or inappropriate term. I might even have problems with my own language if I were to ask for help in the Spanish forum which is by no means even close to the superior level this English forum has.

Understood. I hope my attempt to use illustrations and solid examples helps a bit with this understandable obstacle.

Yes, I have used the examples you kindly sent me and applied Chroma Key to both , the first and last, and they worked fine.

Good, big step! Then I think you already know the answer to the question you have raised, namely how chroma key works in MEP.

Part of the misunderstanding caused by my previous post is due to the fact that I , erronously, thought that BT had a built in mechanism to change the background of a pic or video.

No, you were not mistaken, it does! I told you how to do it in my post of 10/03/2018, 10:48 with an illustration.

As another learning exercise, make any simple BT clip and change its default black background to green. Import that into MEP on track 2 with various videos or images of your choice in track 1. Apply chroma key green. Try some adjustments of the two sliders. Repeat the exercise by changing the BT background to white, and blue. In each case MEP is just making that colour transparent, with some minor tolerance adjustment possible.

That there was no need to do anything else; the software took care of everything ( please don´t laugh ). My reasoning was that normal pics and videos were composed of layers, objects (subjects) and background. And these two could be separated.

OK, it is indeed a tricky subject, so your confusion is perfectly understandable. I was too when I first attempted this sort of stuff. A key topic to focus on is selection of your target. Consider a grandson as a target. That target will be in a source of some kind. That could be a glossy photo. Or a JPG/BMP/PNG image on your PC. Or a video. Forget about video for now and learn how to select still images like my first two examples.

But they will hardly ever be isolated on a plain background. So an essential step will always be to extract or select the target from its background. In the case of an old photo, the tool could be a pair of scissors. The cut out target could then be placed on a background of coloured paper. Green is usually good as our skin is rarely that colour. A digital photo or scan would then give you the target on a solid background ready for MEP chroma key green (or white/black/blue) and transporting your target to a new destination.

With the source as an existing image on your PC, instead of scissors you use a selection tool. They will vary between image editing programs. I'm comfortable with those in PaintShop Pro. But I'm impressed with Xara's magnetic lassoo that John has highlighted and intend to try it when I get more time.

I have also tried to apply Chroma Key the way Roger and you have explained. I even bought sheets of lustrous green paper and pasted them on a wall and took shots of my Schnauser pet, Camila. It was then that I realized that creases, reflections, slight differences in color, affected the result. I do not have a screen either. But again I want to point out that when I downloaded BT I thought there was an alternative as I mentioned above and if this was the solution. there had to be instructions or tutorials and when I opened this new post I also thought that MEP should have same as BT. And in fact as John CB and yourself have shown, there is a way and that is by the magnetic lasso and layer and transparencies by an image editor. I do have Photo and Graphic Designer 11 and have spent all day long reading sections of transparencies and layers in the Manual but to tell the truth, I find this program difficult to master and also it is so big. PDF manual has 645 pages. !!! Each page is a set of intructions. There is no magnetic lasso to my knowledge.

To sum it up, Green Screen is the way to go with videos and either magnetic lasso or transparencies and layers with pics. Problem is my version of Photo & Graphic Designer does not have lasso and need help with transparencies and layers.

And do keep in mind the distinction between new and existing sources. A green screen is for making new video. Targets on your existing videos? Forget those for a while!

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi,

Just to clarify a couple of points in Xara, the Magnetic lasso only works on an image, not a video. So when making a mask for a video with the video in the Animation screen, the magnetic lasso does not work. This is what I think that I showed in the video. You actually have to trace around the part for which you want to make the mask.

I recently did a video in which I went outside and filmed myself talking about my new X-country skis. The camera was on a tripod. I wanted hide some of the fence and a shed, so I exported an image from the video showing the background without me in it. Then using Xara, I cut out some trees with snow (made a copy of them) and pasted and pasted them at a couple of location. I then save this new background image and imported it into MEP. I placed it as the background on track 1. Then I opened the video which was now on track 3 and using the animation, I traced around myself and the skis, but not too tightly, hoping that I didn't move too much in front of my new trees. This created a mask video with the mask resizing/reshaping. However, I moved around too much and for a good part of it, I had to tighten up my mask and instead of making adjustments every half second, I had to make more and I had to move the points in to really outline myself and my skis or it was obvious what was happening. I gave up as I decided that it was too much work for not much gain. I went back to the background image and moved my new trees more out of the way.

I will try to illustrate a bit of this with a video.

There is a good video tutorial in French on the forum showing the problem of cutting out things from the video using the animation in Xara.

Bottom line, this is a time-consuming process. All video editors that can do this type of thing, have the same problem, nothing is automatic.

John CB

HI,

Sorry for not answering sooner but yesterday I called tech to inspect pc to rule out any problem that might be causing effect failures described in previous post. He found nothing.

Thank you very much Terry for the detailed post which I am still reviewing. I definitely will try to follow your suggestions and carry them out with my own material in order to practice and see the results. After I have conducted several tests ( I sincerely hope not to bother you any longer ), I will post again .

Thanks also John CB. Unfortunately my version of Photo & Graphic Designer 11 does not have the magnetic lasso. I even consulted this with Magix Support and they confirmed it. I wonder if I can upgrade it to Xara Designer Pro X. I also searched the Frech Forum the tutorial you mention but my French is very basic and could not post the right question but it gave me the opportunity to watch some amazing stuff by Sergio.

Best regards,

José Robles

Hi,

for English tutorial on green screen check on Youtube, also the tutorial on Magix forum. When you have the right equipment like a backdrop or green mate paint from any hardware or paint store. The most important is lighting use fluorescent swirl bulb around 5000K to obtain a blue cool light dont mix lights.

Regards,

YR

Hi ivon-robert,

Thank you very much for the advise. I was planning to acquire a green piece of cloth and use it as a backdrop. As to the lighting I did not know what you suggest, so thank you. Forgive my ignorance but is the bulb of blue color?

Regards,

José Robles

Hi,

check fluorescent swirl bulb rated 100Watts or 200 Watts 5000K or Kelvin color spectrum this is daylight lamp you can build your own reflector or buy cgheap China made kit. You need 3 black box for subjet and at least 2 or 4 black box to light the green backdrop. You can make all lighting box and use a green muslin tissu. Some use a paint protection canvas and dye green.

Regards,

YR

Hi,

I've published on YT a revised version of the Green Screen tutorial that I embedded in a previous message. I've uploaded this to the Tutorials tab, but it hasn't shown up yet.

John CB