Hi guys. I need to tap into your respective genius.

I'm looking at adding live actors to sets, newsroom style kinda, but not using the Pop Vidoe add-on. I own Sony Vegas and do my final editing there and I wonder is there any other approach anyone knows of aside from using the Pop Video thing, to key out a background.

I haven't tried it yet, but Vegas will export a video of the Alpha channel only, so I wonder if I export two videos, one with the green screen and another with only the alpha channel, would putting the second video in the other box (transparency or whatever, the terminology escapes me at the moment) key out the background?

Thanks for listening. I wanted to ask before trying it.

Just as an FYI, it works.  Let me explain how I did it.

1.  Render a chroma keyed video in Vegas.



2.  Turn on "Show Mask Only" for the chroma plugin and render another video for the transparency.



3.  Using a billboard, put the first video on Diffuse and the second video on Opacity.



The caveats are...

1.   iClone only accepts WMV and AVI from Vegas.  For other formats it says "Your system cannot find a codec." (?)
2.  My tests used full frame videos (1280x720), a reallybad idea because the real time playback between the two videos is really jerky.   I'll try it again with smaller videos.
3.  The opacity video leaves a small black border outline around the video image as you can see in the last still image above.  I'll try to reduce that with blur in Vegas.

I think this will work though.

Not sure but this might help. I use Vegas as well...




In this video I brought the backgrounds from iClone into Vegas and composited there...








Click here to go to my YouTube Channel filled with iClone Tutes and Silly Stuff

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Oh for sure. Thanks Mark.

I wanted to ultimately have objects in the 3d space both behind and in front of live actors so in that regard it might be more difficult to do in Vegas. I find iClone nothing short of great for 3d. My only issue is being creative enough to make something interesting with it.

I'm an audio engineer and amature software developer and when I use media apps I always see some things that I think could have maybe been done differently. That's far from second guessing or backseat driving the iClone developers though, on the contrary, they are obviously quite talented and there's no scenario where I'd ever be able to code something like iClone except in my dreams. Great app.

But when I look at chroma and pop video and all that I wonder if it would have been possible to just key a background color on a video or image directly. To import a video to a billboard or similar, select an eyedropper tool and just select and key out a selected color. Given the very highly complex and great graphic things hapening otherwise in the app it seems like it might not be (comparitively speaking) a monumental task. But of course, some things always look easier from the outside looking in.

Thanks Mark.

Hope the tutes helped. Yes you can key an individual color no sweat. You have a lot of tools in Vegas to do that with not just the chroma-keyer.



Click here to go to my YouTube Channel filled with iClone Tutes and Silly Stuff

Visit ANIMATED PROJECTIONS Powered by iCLONE

Intel Core i7 3960X @ 3300MHz Overclocked to 4999.7 MHz Sandy Bridge 24.0GB DDR3 @ 833MHz Graphic Display HP ZR30w 
GeForce GTX 980Ti 6GB  Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1 ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. P9X79 WS (LGA2011)

They did help, thanks.

And being an audio guy I took notice of how good the audio sounds on your videos.  Good work.