When color keying doesn't work in certain areas

[ChrisCrystalize]

When i use the eyedropper in keylight 1.2 to key out the black in the letterboxed area of the trailer the program won't key the color out. However it will key out color within the movie itself. i want to key out the black letterboxing so I can put a picture behind it, however the program won't allow me to do it. Any solutions? I could make a picture vignette, however I want to know why the color key fails inside the letterboxed area. What makes those pixels so different that they can't be colorkeyed?

Thank you,

Chris

[Dave_LaRonde]

You're trying to key BLACK?  With footage that's had the bejeezus compressed out of it?  You're lucky to have your current results.

You may want to blow off keying and try Rotobrush instead to isolate the subject.

[Andrew Yoole]

Why don't you just mask the letterbox out with a rectangular mask?

[Rick Gerard]

If you just want to add something to the letterboxed area just use a rectangular mask and put another layer below the original footage. This is day 1 AE basics. You are making things way way way too difficult.

By the way, monkeying with a trailer for a major motion picture is putting a lot of pressure on the fair use portion of copyright laws. You should really carefully consider what you are doing to make sure you won't get into trouble.

[ChrisCrystalize]

So far nobody's shut down my YouTube channel nor have I been contacted by an attorney via certified mail. I do my work strictly for my own enjoyment and not for any monetary profit.

[ChrisCrystalize]

[ChrisCrystalize]

My YouTube channel is not affected, ads may appear in my videos when viewed by users, which the royalties will go to the artists of the songs I use in my creations, and I can't earn money from them. I do this strictly for pleasure so I can get good with After Effects and other Adobe applications. The resolution of most videos I download from YouTube is poor at best, I speed up the trailers 4 or 5 times and mute them so nobody is going to get anything useful out of them anyway. Certainly wouldn't cause somebody not to pay and see the full movie for themselves. I get so few views anyway so who cares? At least the FBI isn't knocking down my door or some hotshot attorney trying to sue me.

[Roei Tzoref]

Chris, Keylight was designed to work on chroma key such as green, blue or red. If you want to key out black, try the unmult effect preset or the extract effect. There are also 3rd party unmult plugins and some of them are free (like VC Color Vibrance)

[ChrisCrystalize]

I'll give it a shot... thanks.

[ChrisCrystalize]

Will do.

[the_dudes]

1. It's cool to see Dave and Rick are still around after such a long time.
2. Yet all three anwers fail to solve OPs problem ("What makes those pixels so different that they can't be colorkeyed?")
3. Rick even warning about "monkeying" and copyrights stuff, when you know nothing about the project. Maybe it's a private project? Maybe it was the subject in an training course? Or maybe ChrisCrystalyze is legally working on this trailer?

Just imagine how that feels to a person asking a question here.

[ChrisCrystalize]

I post my creations on YouTube with no copyright infringement intended and will take down if requested. So far nobody's shut me down, worst case YouTube will block the content from being viewed. I'm surprised the trailer's even viewable on YouTube to begin with, let alone downloadable by using RealDownloader. Pretty crappy resolution though, 360p. I'm just learning the ropes with the Adobe CC Suite and would like to be able to create marketing infomercials for businesses one day.

[the_dudes]

Try 4KVideodownloader. It's awesome. Very little ad, almost no intrusion. There's also a portable version.

[ChrisCrystalize]

Thanks for having my back here in this post; Rick does have a point about copyright infringement. I hope my efforts to learn the Adobe CC Suite doesn't empty my pockets simply for creating my own video using pieces of other people's work and posting it on a public site like YouTube. Users of Napster found out the hard way when the RIAA sued many college students for using songs on a peer to peer network in the beginning of the Millennium. Those students are probably still paying off the lawsuit.

[the_dudes]

So here's the thing: The pixels in the letterbox are 100% black, or rather RGB000. But the pixels that you're keying out are somewhat in the grey. – More often than not, movies don't go to a 100% black because it feels like there's a hole, and no more visual information. The movie could also be exported in Video Legal Range, while the letterbox contained black from full RGB range.

[ChrisCrystalize]

I decided to put a picture over it and make a rectangular mask with feathering. I'm just using trailers off YouTube, no copyright infringement intended. If there's no text on screen I'll crop. I just wanted to know why the color keying doesn't work sometimes. Green and blue are the most popular colors to key out but I've keyed black before.