chroma key in motion

jaymay22

Member Location: Sydney, NSW, Australia. Joined: Aug 27, 2009 07:18 Messages: 143 Offline

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May 27, 2014 04:53

I want to know if you can make a motion pip from a piece of footage that is NOT on a green (or other single colour) screen.
For example I wondered if I could use a video of a baby, and make it walk along a title page. The original clip is NOT shot against a green screen, but in the garden.
I only have a rudimentary idea of how chroma key works, but tried a test where I used ck, produced, used ck again, produced again, about 6 times, to come up with a baby with very little background. Unfortunately the mask I used seems to be masking out my background too.
hmmm....any other ideas, or am I a bit ahead of chroma key's abilities?
Jenny Jenny

Carl312

Senior Contributor Location: Texas, USA Joined: Mar 16, 2010 20:11 Messages: 9090 Offline

May 27, 2014 09:44

Chroma Key only works on single colors. That color does not have to be Green or Blue.

Anywhere that one color appears it will be removed.

I have not had any success isolating a single object in a video. I can do that in a Still image.

One thing you might try is take a snapshot of the baby, then in a photo editor (Paint.net) remove all of the image except the baby.

Transparent PNG and motion track, you may have something usable for a Title.

EDIT:
If you take multiple snapshots of the baby walking. (At least three) remove the background in a Photo Editor.

PNG or GIF image sequence produce a video. You may have what you want. Technique used to be Motion GIF.

You can put PNG images on the timeline, produce a video. With the right timing,(duration of image) you can make a pretty good movie from PNG images.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at May 27. 2014 10:01

Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

jaymay22

Member Location: Sydney, NSW, Australia. Joined: Aug 27, 2009 07:18 Messages: 143 Offline

May 29, 2014 02:19

Great Ideas Carl, thankyou.
Next time I'll have to shoot the chroma key subject on purpose. This was just a random idea....the film is from the 1960s, so no chance now of changing the background. Oh well.
I will try the photos idea though, which is a good one, and should be fun.

Thanks Carl,
Jenny Jenny

Carl312

Senior Contributor Location: Texas, USA Joined: Mar 16, 2010 20:11 Messages: 9090 Offline

May 29, 2014 08:11

Quote: Great Ideas Carl, thankyou.
Next time I'll have to shoot the chroma key subject on purpose. This was just a random idea....the film is from the 1960s, so no chance now of changing the background. Oh well.
I will try the photos idea though, which is a good one, and should be fun.

Thanks Carl,
Jenny

Lets us know how it turns out.

I assume you know to take snapshots that show different positions of the legs if that is the motion you want to generate.

Take a tip from the Disney people, the way their artists drew the cartoon characters.
The more images you have the smoother the motion is.

You can do motion with three images. More make the transitions smoother.

Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Carl312

Senior Contributor Location: Texas, USA Joined: Mar 16, 2010 20:11 Messages: 9090 Offline

May 29, 2014 10:59

Jenny,
Just to show you and the forum members, an example to isolating a baby from the background.

This is not as clean as it can be done, I want to show that I could do what I recommended you do.

I found to isolate the baby was very easy in Paint.net. Magic Lasso, invert selection. Delete selection (Not the baby).

The demo video is not a long as the original, I shortened the original.
I made 6 screen shots from the video, then made the background transparent in each one.

Filename	Transparent_Baby.wmv	Download
Description	What I did to it. Not pretty.
Filesize	849 Kbytes
Downloaded:	340 time(s)

Filename	Infant_babbling_in_crib.ogv	Download
Description	The Original source video (Creative commons)
Filesize	4661 Kbytes
Downloaded:	345 time(s)

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at May 29. 2014 11:05

Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.