Keying in Practice

In day to day usage, most of the dvMatte controls work best at or near their default settings. A good working methodology for setting matte controls is as follows:

• Select High Color and pick a high green spot
• Select Low Color and pick a low green value
• Switch to Matte View to see the matte.
• Base Matte: Try the 3 options. Usually ‘Average of 2nd and 3rd channels’ works best
• Switch back to Composite view.
• If the composite has a ‘milky’ appearance, it is usually due to the Blend operation picking up on brighter spots in the background. Lower the Background Highlights slider until the highlights disappear.
• If there are obvious holes in the composite, lower the Base White Point until they fill. Because of the ‘matteless’ background blending operation, you do not need to achieve a super-solid matte to avoid holes, which is why this is best done while looking at the actual composite.
• Raise the Base Black Point very slightly to remove spurious areas of background. Pushing the black point and the white point of the matte too close together is to be avoided, as this leads to ugly, blocky edges.
• If there is a visible edge, select the Pick Edge Color and adjust the edge coloration up or down slightly to blend it in.
• If there are some edges that are too light, and others that are too dark, increase the Dynamic Spill Suppression slider slightly to help bring them in. Excessive use of Dynamic Spill Suppression will lead to ‘printing through’ from the background.