motion tracking and chroma key

I shot a webmercial and during the product demonstration (on an iphone) the screen of the application is very close to the color of the green screen. I am having a hard time keying due to the similarity in colors. I duplicated the clip and created a bezier mask around the LCD screen of the iPhone, and tried to apply the motion tracking behavior in Motion, but it's not working well. Any ideas anyone, or a better way to do this?


Thanks!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Jul 7, 2011 8:32 AM

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6 replies

Jul 7, 2011 9:27 AM in response to johnlll81

I know you think you've explained this well but I don't really understand the issue. The iPhone is moving around and you want to NOT key out the phone's screen? Motion tracking will only get you so far because the phone is moving around and changing shape relative to the angle of the camera position. How tight is the shot? How may trackers are you using? Do you have After Effects at your disposal?


bogiesan

Jul 7, 2011 1:30 PM in response to David Bogie Chq-1

Hey David... You're always very helpful, thank you for helping!


Okay, yes, it is a ** shot of a finger sliding a bar on an iphone (hand holding phone, other hand's finger, and iPhone against greenscreen). It is a 5 second shot and the the finger sliding the phone makes it jerk a little. Correct, I do not not want to key out the phone's screen.


I do have after effects, but my knowledge is poor. I just ordered some training on AE. If you have any way to help or point me to a tutorial that you know of I would appreciate it immensely. I understand how to track in Motion, but, as I said, it's not cutting it, and keyframing it is rather obvious, as it isn't a lateral move without shake.

Jul 7, 2011 2:20 PM in response to johnlll81

Umm, okay, it's a closeup of the iPhone, Apple will like that.

You may be approaching this all wrong or I'm still not understanding but try to think of the hand and the phone as a single object. All you need to do is not apply the greenscreen keyer to the hand-arm-phone object. You can protect that object by using a hand-drawn matte (also known as a garbage matte) but you can create a protection matte many different ways including pulling a hard luma key.


Here is one approach (if Patrick was tuned in, he'd have another, much more elegant, suggestion for you):

You have a your video as a layer, yes, you apply the green keyer to it and part of the phone screen drops out, too. That's okay, you're going to fill the phone back in with itself.

You place another copy of your video on top (or even underneath) and you draw a mask around the screen of the phone. Doesn't need to be precise. Maybe you need to keyframe the mask position a few time, maybe you can attach the mask to a tracker. But all you're doing with the mask is allowing the keyed video to show everywhere exept in the mask or, if you apply your mask to the keyed video below, you're just allowing the clseup shot to be seen through the hoel from below.


Umm, clear as mud, I know. The point I'm trying to make is the task is probably not as complex as you're thinking it is.


If you were using AE, you'd use a four corner motion tracking setup with trackers in each corner of the screen.


PS: Thank you for the kind words, mostly I ust pi$$ folks off around here.


bogiesan

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motion tracking and chroma key

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