My mask outlines are visible on different monitors - help please!

[Sharleen5EDF]

Hello all! 

i have been having some trouble regarding masking. I do a lot of in studio work where backgrounds are like a solid black and a subject is lit. Sometimes due to spacing issues, you can see some equipment on the edge of the frames so as a solution, since it's just a black surrounding the product, we just mask it out in post as it's not that difficult to do. 

I have a MacBook Air but mainly edit on my PC. In the exported file, on the MacBook everything will look fine like a perfect even black, no masking noticeable but once I play it on my desktop the mask is visible and looks like a different "tone" of black if that makes sense. 

I understand that Mac monitors aren't the greatest to work off of for colour grading, and my PC monitor isn't a high quality calibrated monitor either. The main thing is, I understand my videos aren't going to look amazing on every monitor as we don't have control over that but at the very least I do not want there to be any noticeable masks...... I played an exported file on a friends monitor - one where it looked perfectly fine on my PC and Mac monitor so I thought it was ok but on her monitor they were noticeable!!! This stresses me out a little bit because as I said I can accept colours and all to not look great on every monitor but I cannot have masks be visible! 

yesterday I edited something on the PC, using masking and all, and it looked fine but when I exported it and played the export the masks were suddenly visible so now I am unsure if it's more of an export setting issue or not. It's very frustrating and I feel like I am just missing something stupidly obvious here. 

anyway, any help and advice would be greatly appreciated. Let me know if any further information is needed! Thank you! 

[Ishan Y]

Hey Sharleen,

Welcome to the community. Could you post screenshots or share sample footage for us to see? That could help us better understand the issue. Are you masking the edges of the frame and adding a black solid in the background? We're here to help. Just need some more info. 

Thanks,

Ishan

[Sharleen5EDF]

Hello, 

thank you so much for responding! 

I have attached two screenshots here - I had to photograph off my PC monitor and my Macbook because if I post the official screenshot here it may not be noticable on your monitor. 

On the PC version you will see the lines, and on the Mac version (apologize if its not as clear since its quite reflective), its not noticable and all looks like a true black essentially. 

This shot in particular is in motion, so the shots "scrolling" in, sideways which is why I have to mask them. 

I basically just have the clip on the V1 layer, mask around it, since by default it will be black I don't add a colour matte the bottom layer (maybe this is where the issue lies?). 

I hope this is making sense - please let me know if something is unclear. Thank you for looking into this! 

[MyerPj]

It's not the most attractive background I've seen. It's not really black, or solid black, so as to mix a graphic solid with it. You may be able to cut out a bit of the black background on the video and use that as a filler. Also, any preroll with just the background, shoot the background blank before putting the models in front of it, so you have it.

Have you seen these - less then $20.00:

https://www.amazon.com/Photography-Backdrop-Background-Chromakey-Muslin/dp/B07G7NSSZ9/ref=sr_1_5?cri...

There's hundreds of them on Amazon, etc... I think a green screen would be better as you can easily remove it and put whatever you want on the background.

[Sharleen5EDF]

When I put the dropper in both areas, it tells me they are both pure black (#00000) so I don't think that it's officially that it's two different colours. In premiere while I am editing on the PC it shows just fine and even but its when I export that it shows then the mask outline. I have played with black levels and applied the QT Gamma Compensation LUT when exporting as I know sometimes there are gamma shifts and that made a little bit of a difference but it's still there in the export, so I am still unsure what the problem is. But I will try to cut a bit of the background and see if that makes a difference even though with the dropper tool it says it's black in all areas. 

[Sharleen5EDF]

Update: I tried matching background image but that didn't work either. I think I figured the issue out - played around with legal range & scopes settings and I think it's okay right now. Weird thing was that when taking an official screengrab via Premiere (Frame Export - the small camera icon) it would always appear normal but only when exporting video it would show. Right now it appears to be okay. Will test it out with other shots and see if its consistent!

[MyerPj]

Let us know... 😉