cut out background

[deebee]

I unfortunately filmed a video in front of a blue curtain.
is there any software that can cut out the background (the blue curtain)?
I've tried the chroma key feature in Adobe Premiere Elements but unfortunately the actor is wearing bluejeans and they start to disappear the more the curtain disappears.
Have I just wasted everyone's time or is there a solution?

I'm desperate!

Thanks
Deebee

[david walsh]

The chroma key in premiere isn't very good, if you have After effects you might get better results with keylight, but it depends on how close the blues are. There might be ways of taking out the curtain while replacing any blue in the jeans that gets removed if it's not too much.

If not a combination of keying techniques and rotoscoping techniques you'll definately be able to do it. But then you have to look at how much video you need to do, and consider if it would just be better to re-shoot. If you havn't done any roto work before if this is the case your probably best to re-shoot as it's not someting your likely to get right first time.

David.

[Mannering Media]

One method that may work is by the use of matte's, it all depends on how much movement there is in the front of the curtain and how long the clip is....

Basically you need to take a stills copy of the first frame, last frame and maybe a couple of in-between frames.
Then, in Photoshop (or similar) create a matte of each image (the curtains would be one colour and the foreground another).
Overlay the video with the matte and with the chroamkey effect, make the foreground part transparent..... use the position/animation effect in your editor to make the matte follow the action (a travelling Matte).
It would be possible to do similar with the background part of the matte....

This is a make do option, and the results are very dependent on your skills, patience and sauce material, but to get really good results, you would need to make a matte for every frame and/or use specialist software.

Just throwing ideas around...

[deebee]

Thanks! Guess I'm in big trouble! this is all new to me and there's a lot of movement in some of the frames
the subject is going to be really mad at me when I tell him we have to refilm.. he'll probably just dump the project.
Oh well, I'll give both your suggestions a try but don't want to waste much more time... already spent 4 days goofing around with color replacement and chroma key... don't know what rotoscoping is..