Reflecmedia – Green and Blue screen Chromakey

Traditional chroma key involves a complex professional studio setup with a large blue or green screen background. Reflecmedia’s innovative range of flexible, portable, safe* and easy to use products mean that with minimal lighting and technical expertise almost any location can be used as a virtual studio at a fraction of the usual costs – providing endless creative possibilities for digital content creation.

Leading broadcasters, production companies and educators around the world use and trust Reflecmedia’s multi award-winning products. We here at DVeStore use Reflecmedia ourselves, and take great pride in being able to recommend this great product with full knowledge of it’s capabilities and practical uses, as well as it’s benefits to you.

Green Litering 8′x8′ Kit

$1500 Reflecmedia Chromatte 8′x8′ background

$0 Reflecmedia LED LiteRing (included in package)

$0 Reflecmedia Controller (included in package)

$0 Camera lens adapter ring (included in package)

Availability: Available Now. Usually ships same or next business day.
Price: $1500.00
Choose Adapter Size

Blue Litering 8′x8′ Kit

$1500 Reflecmedia Chromatte 8′x8′ background

$0 Reflecmedia LED LiteRing (included in package)

$0 Reflecmedia Controller (included in package)

$0 Camera lens adapter ring (included in package)

Availability: Available Now. Usually ships same or next business day.
Price: $1500.00
Choose Adapter Size

Just need an adapter?

Availability: Available Now. Usually ships same or next business day. Some units still backordered.
Price: $75.00

Choose the size:

Medium Adapters:

Do you have a small camcorder, such as a Canon HV20 or Sony Sr-12? Try the new Microlite!

Reflecmedia can pay for itself!!

You need to take into account the valuable time it can take to properly position the lights for a traditional set-up.

Next is the electricity to run the lights.

Now what about the Air Conditioning to cool the room from the hotlights?

Also, what about the spill from traditional set-up? If you can’t get the talent further away, you get “green hair!”

How about the time to “fix it in post?”

Why choose Reflecmedia?

Typical green screen set-ups can look like this:

You can light up the background with simple Tota lights with an Umbrella to produce soft and even light.

The trick with Reflecmedia is the LED LiteRing which mounts to the front of the camera.

When the light from the Reflectmedia LED LiteRing hits the Chromatte background, the light is reflected back and what the camera sees is a perfectly even blue or green sceen!

The background is a silvery gray color upon initial examination. A closer look reveals tiny glass beads that reflect incoming light like “cats eyes” do when car headlights approach. This is what makes the material reflect the color of the LED Litering, in a brilliant blue or green!

———–

Typical Litering Adapter Sizes

Sony PMW-EX1 = 77mm

Panasonic HVX200 = 82mm

Sony HVR-FX1 = 72mm

Canon XH-A1 = 72mm

Canon HV-20 = 43mm

“Come on now, this sounds too good to be true, we rely on you to give us the straight scoop – what’s the downside?”

- With Reflecmedia’s Litering, the camera needs to be 10′ away from the subject. So you’ll need about a 12′ room.
- Teleprompters do not work well with the Ringlite. Read more here.
- HD (Yes! HDV too!) keys better than DV
There you have it, if none of the above affects your style of production, you’re good to go!

Curtains are also available in 10′x12′, 16′x9′ and 16′x12 Please call or email for a quote.

The 6.6 x 4.6′ (2 x 1.4 m) Reflecmedia BaseMatte™ Tile has a Chromatte special “beaded” surface with a rubberized backing. It is ideal for floor application with your Reflecmedia system. The backing forms easily to most carpets and solid floors and provides a flat chromatte panel with no creases. When used with a ChromaFlex or Chromatte curtain it will enable the camera operator to frame full body shots.

Reflecmedia Basematte Tile

Availability: Available now. Usually ships same or next business day.
Price: $1200.00

Click on the picture above to watch the movie!
We want to give you the opportunity to explore the art of keying. Taking the background out and dropping in something different is a special effects technique that has been around for years. However it was not until recently that we have been able to get broadcast quality results in both a fast and inexpensive manner. Quality Chroma keying is now for everyone.

Possibilities

Think about being able to shoot a background plate in Hawaii to use in the middle of a New York winter (although you may want to make sure that you have plenty of heat in your studio for swimsuits and tropical Mai Tai’s on that one). Now how about being able to capture a restaurant atmosphere without having to rent out and hire everyone in the place? Really, the possibilities are endless. You can have a million dollar mansion, showy corporate office or a fancy broadcast studio with just a few clicks of the mouse. It’s up to your imagination to dream it up and you can pull it off.

Worried about the Quality?With the many HD recording formats available, we now have more pixels to work with than ever as well as a color space that can adequately capture enough information to make keying more believable than ever. The good news is that its even at a price that a budget filmmaker can afford. A Canon HV20 is a good example of a sub $1,000 camera that can capture great quality footage at a phenomenal price.

Worried about the Rendering?Right now even a base model laptop is capable of handling HD Chroma keying in a reasonable amount of time. This opens up a whole new dimension to video content creators looking to spice up their productions. We’ve gone from days of waiting to minutes, seconds and even real-time.

Light your subject for the background.You’ll notice that we have included a few files to let you see for yourself what it is like to composite a foreground and background together. Two of the example backgrounds work and look realistic. You’ll see that the foreground subject was intentionally dimly lit. If we place our subject into a bright, sunny Hawaii beach background it just doesn’t work.

Want to try keying HD?We’ve uploaded a few sample clips we shot for you to try your hand at compositing with Blue Screen. The clips were shot in our studio using the Reflecmedia Chroma key system. We found a few tips that may help you should you choose to try your hand at chroma keying:

1. Light your Foreground Subject appropriate to make your Composite believable. Dim background? Use low-level lighting on the set. Sunny background? Brighter lighting. Take color cues from the background and match those colors onto your talent using colored gels on your lights. Also, watch for lighting placement, window on the left – light from the left.

2. A slight Blurring of the Background can give more realistic results. You can intentionally shoot your background slightly out of focus to avoid Rendering a Blur in Post.

3. The optional $495 Mattenee software chromakey plug-in produces the best results for drag and drop keying, but at the sacrifice of speed. In test after test, the Rendering Time is 10 times longer that of other keying plugins.

4. In Production, watch for shiny surfaces and “Spill” – to avoid additional work in post. You’ll see both of these in our example.

5. Fine hair, small edges, hands and fast moving objects shot in a compressed format such as DV/HDV can be challenging to key. Try to minimize shooting these types of subjects if possible. Shoot two versions if necessary, one close up, one wide.

6. 3rd party plug-ins such as Chroma Smoother from the Nattress Big Box of Tricks can turn a bad key into a good key.

7. In camera, make sure Sharpening is set to Zero or Off. Artificially sharpened edges can actually introduce unwanted background artifacts on your foreground subject.

Download Sample HD clips and project files

Mac – Final Cut Pro

PC – Raw files

Click here to ask a question about chroma keying in Final Cut Pro.

Nattress Big Box of Tricks includes the existing filters from the discontinued Nattress Set 1 and Set 2, as well as several new filters.

The package consists of eight groups of filters, one group of generators and one group of transitions:

Blurs: These filters give you several different ways to blur your image, or parts of your image. Includes: G Cool Blur, G Directional Blur, G Horizontal and Vertical Blur, G H and V Blur Glow, and G Radial Blur.

Extra Touches: In this group you find filters that add a little something to your video. Includes: G Beauty, G Bug Eye, G Earthquaker, G FBM Noise, G Lens Flare, G Reverberator, G Split Screen, G Star, G Theartrical and G Tone Enhancer.

FixIT: Each of these filters addresses a specific problem, and fixes it. Includes G Alpha Expander, G Chroma Smoother, G Copy Channel, G Deflash, G Deflicker, G Field, and G Reinterlacer.

Image F/X: This group of filters modifies the look of your video and includes G Diffuse, G False Colour, G Monochrome, G Posterise, G Saturator, G Saturator Balanced, G Sharpen, G Surreal, G Threshold, and G Tint.

Levels And Curves: These filters are designed to give you precise control over the tones in your video, operating in either RGB or Y’CbCr space for creative control. Although Final Cut Pro has some in-built plugins for Levels and Contrast, they can be tricky to use and do not provide the creative control that these plugins offer. Includes G Contrast, G Detail Contrast, G Detail Levels, G Hyper Contrast, G Levels, G Simple Contrast, G Simple Curves, G Simple Levels, and G Super Levels.

Noise Reduction: Some useful filters to reduce/eliminate static and buzz. Includes: G Chroma Noise Reduction, G Spatial Noise Reduction, and G Temporal Noise Reduction.

Time Tools: These filters play with time and/or fields and frames. Includes G 50 Percent, and G Timelapse.

TV Effects: When you need to create the look of television, with all its quirks and faults, these filters give you the tools you need. Includes G Analogue, G Chroma Shift, G Digital, G Head Clog, G Resolution, G RGB TV, G Roll, G Scratch, G Shift, and G TV Lines.

Transitions: Here you will find several innovative ways to get from shot A to shot B! Includes G Burn, G Directional Blur Dissolve, G Dissolve, G Glow Dissolve, G Horizontal and Vertical Blur Dissolve, G Lens Flare Transition, G Long Dissolve, G Sharp Dissolve, and G Spring.

Generators: Look here for plug-ins to create animated lines for your next Indianna Jones style epic, animated video strips, countdowns, bar graphs or random symbols for alien manuscripts. Includes G Bars, G Countdown, G FBM Noise Generator, G Fields and Frames, G Laser, G Lines, G Long Lines, G Random, and G Video Strip.

Nattress Big Box of Tricks visit  http://nattress.com/

This System works great with a ReflecMedia Back Drop

The Photoflex ProDuty™ BackDrop Support Kit includes our new BackDrop Pole, two 2320Y LiteStands, and a rugged carry bag to hold the whole kit. Shoot with confidence with this strong, stable outfit.

The BackDrop Pole is a single-unit with telescoping sections that constructs easily with a twist and pull motion to extend each section and another twist to lock in place. The Pole stores collapsed at 4′-7 “. The Pole extends to 12′ 6″.

Each 2320Y LiteStand extends to 12′ high. The extra height afforded with these stands means you can shoot your model from a low angle without seeing the top of the backdrop in your shot. These are exceptionally sturdy stands with a maximum load rating of 40 pounds. The “flip-top” design of the brass post adds versatility for multiple uses in your studio.

This kit comes with its own durable carry bag.

SKU: LS-B2320Y

SKU: DP-BP412

PhotoFlex ProDuty Support System

Availability: Ships Same/ Next Day
Price: $249

The V-8 Eight Channel Video Mixer has all the features of the V-4 by Edirol,but with more channels, two selectable RGB inputs, monitor outputs and additional powerful special effects. It continues the legacy of the V-4′s other great features such as ease of use, high-quality digital processing of video, numerous video effects and BPM sync with music. This next generation video mixer expands your visual presentation and performance potential to new applications and dimensions.

Main Features

DV quality video outputs with full digital processing
The internal processing of the V-8 is 4:2:2 full-frame digital. More than 500 lines of video resolution ensure very high image quality after digital processing and mixing.

Direct input of computer signal
The V-8 has a built-in scan converter, providing direct input of RGB signals (VGA – UXGA) from two D-Sub terminals on the rear panel. With the selector switch located on the top panel, you can select between two computer sources. Using the luminance key or chroma key, enables logos or text from your computer to be keyed over background video enabling the display of lyrics, bottom thirds, and announcements. Integrating computer graphics and visual applications with video sources has never been easier.

New video filters and numerous transitions
All your favorite effects like colorize and negative are included, along with newly added effects like feedback, afterimage, emboss, find edge and more. Composite two images with Picture-in-Picture and Luminance or Chroma keying. Customize your transitions between the A and B bus with multiple flavors of simple mix, hard or soft wipes, and the all-new stretch and slide transitions.
Independent faders on each bus as well as master output
Faders are independently equipped for both A/B buses allowing you to create a video fade on just one bus or adjust the various video effects parameters. The master fader control is a slider bar enabling quick and intuitive operation while working on the fly.

Next generation V-LINK control enables audio-follow
The V-8 can be remote controlled from the Edirol PR series video presenters as well as the V-4. The V-8 can also send remote control signals to the new generation of Roland’s digital audio mixer, the RSS M-400 (V-Mixer). The motorized faders of the M-400 automatically follow the video switching of the V-8. Now you can have your audio sources follow your video sources without the need to manually control two mixers at once.

To separate a subject from a background, you can either:

1. shoot in front of a greenscreen/bluescreen, then key out the background in postproduction

You can also key out a background that is much darker or brighter than your subject, but it usually takes a little more work, because often your subject will have pixels that are darker and/or lighter than the background, so there there will be holes in your subject that must be “patched” with a garbage matte. If your subject is not moving much, this is much easier than if you have to do a lot of keyframing on the matte.

*NOTE: there an excellent section on lighting a greenscreen on this DVD:  

2. have a team of rotoscopers (or just you) manually “cut” the subject out of the background frame by frame

There are advanced tools that help rotoscopers, but consider how long it takes to do a decent job cutting a subject out of the background in Photoshop. Now multiply that by 30 and you have one second of footage.

So, if it takes you 5 minutes per frame, that’s 150 minutes per second of final footage. For a ten second sequence, that’s 1500 minutes, or about 25 hours of work. For a national spot, this is probably worth it!

For a minute of final footage, plan for 150 hours of work! A team of three people could get this done in a week.

If you’re using Final Cut Pro, you might need more than 8 points, sadly.

Here’s a 50 point matte plugin.

DV Gear Talk was one of the world’s first video podcasts, hosted by Guy Cochran and DVeStore, the coolest place on the web to check out videos of awesome video production and post-production gear.

This podcast has been ranked as high as #12 of all podcasts worldwide!

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View individual episodes below.

The Ultimatte DV is a huge timesaver! Forget having to Render – it’s done! Real-Time chroma key made simple! Feed your Camera into the Foreground input, an S-Video signal into the Background input – what you see out of the Output is your final composite!
We’ve beeen using an inexpensive DVD player as our Background source. Simply burn a DVD with your still images or animated backgrounds and you’re done.

The true beauty of the Ultimatte is being able to adjust your framing and lighting to make the scene appear real. Say for instance you have a window in your Background image. Simply place a light in about the same location to light your foreground subject and all of the sudden it looks like they are really there.

Yes the Ultimatte is DV, so you won’t be able to do HD output, but it is still great for “pre-viz.” Use the Ultimatte to see what your final composite will look like. So you’ll still have to record to tape and use a software keyer such as Serious Magic, After Effects, Shake or your editing app.

For schools, I can see the Ultimatte as a great tool for live broadcasts. Want to put students in front of any landmark – easy! Want to put the talent in a high-end newsroom? No problem! In a museum or mansion? Think of how much money you’ll save in set construction or rentals.

The Ultimatte lets you know immediately if your scene is going to work or not. If you want to save time in post, this is the best way – don’t get to post only to learn that your badly lit footage is unusable.

Download a Brochure to see an enlarged image

Ultimatte DV
Availability: Usually ships same/next day.
List Price:$3350.00 / Our Price: $2995.00