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I've been trying for a full day to Ultrakey a simple snowfall animation over a still image background, but I'm having no luck. The animation layer is white flakes and wisps of gray mist over a solid black background. Should be a very simple process. As you can see by the attached image, I'm just getting digital garbage as soon as I select the black part of the image as the key color. I've read where this can be an issue unless everything is on the same monitor. I've moved everything to the same monitor and it doesn't help. It also doesn't matter if I select the key color using the eyedropper or just select black in the color select window. I've shut down and restarted numerous times. I either get no key at all or this digital mess. I tried the key using the Color Key effect and it works, but there are lots of flakes that won't clip properly and I cannot get the nice swirling grey mist to show at all with that effect. So I'd really like to use Ultrakey. Any suggestions?
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Hi,
For this case, you should consider using a blend mode since you have black, grey and white informations.
Select your snow footage, put it on top of your Background image. In the Effect Control panel , go to Opacity / Blend mode / Screen.
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Hi Richard. Thanks for the reply. Yes, I looked at doing that, but the snow has a transparent look with the opacity effect. It really needs to be keyed. Plus it doesn't address the overall issue of why the Ultrakey effect is simply not working. I just updated my PP app to latest Ver 15.2.0 hoping the bug would be fixed, but it is actually worse now. I cannot even get the digital garbage matte to show up now. When I select the black background absolutely nothing happens. I've tried numerous foreground elements (leaves falling, etc.) and absolutely nothing will key using Ultrakey.
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Consider updating your graphic card drivers. I can't figure out why it acts like this.
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Maybe you should also do a video capture of what'is going on during your process to show us.
Update drivers prior to consider this. Have you tried to use Mercury playback engine Software only to see ?
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You could try a luma key.