Hawaiki Keyer - Manual

Index

Overview System Requirements New in HK3 HK3 Features in Depth F.A.Q. Keying Technique View Menu Sliders - A General Note Density Pre-Qualify Matte

Edge Denoise White Balance Despill Spill Map Light Wrap & Edge Blend External Matte Color Color Space Presets

Overview

Hawaiki Keyer 3.0 is a complete keying system for green screens and blue screens, designed for Apple's Final Cut Pro X and Motion 5, and Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, featuring an innovative keying algorithm, a unique diagnostic toolset and unrivalled compositing options, all designed to help you get the perfect key with the minimum of guesswork.


• Hawaiki Keyer features advanced GPU acceleration for blazingly-fast performance both for real-time playback and rendering speed.


• Hawaiki Keyer's powerful and versatile matte extraction tools include a unique set of easily understood operations to tackle even the trickiest keying problems with perfect finesse and resolve exceptional edge detail.


• Hawaiki Keyer offers an outstanding feature set for spill suppression, a powerful and unique edge control system, and a great-looking Light Wrap option.


• An optional hard Outer Matte and a versatile Matte Cleaner option facilitate pulling a great solid matte without sacrificing the edges of your key.


• An extensive set of view modes includes a precise Analysis mode, as well as unique Luma Map, Pre-Qualify and RGB Max modes, make it easy to extract the perfect matte, while the Spill Map and Spill Map Overlay views make for really precise and detailed spill suppression.


• Finally, Hawaiki Keyer offers a full color correction section to provide high quality, accurate grading of the final key, as well as a new White Balance option for correcting either foreground or matte or both.


• And add to the finishing touch to a really great composite with Hawaiki AutoMatch, the best colour matching plug-in you can buy.

System Requirements

OS X El Capitan 10.11.1 + , macOS Sierra 10.12 +
FxFactory 5.1 +
Final Cut Pro X 10.2.3 + , Motion 5.2.3 + , After Effects and Premiere Pro CC (2014) +

New Features in Hawaiki Keyer HK3

• For Hawaiki Keyer 3.0 (HK3), we went back and had a close look at our previous versions and realised that even though the core tech worked really well and produced great results, there was still more guesswork involved than we'd have liked - a problem common to many keyers and which can often be frustrating for users.
  
  So while we've refined the core algorithms and added some exciting new features, the focus of this release has been about giving you the tools to reduce the guesswork so you can not only pull a better key but finish the job much faster.
  
  We've aimed to achieve this in a few different ways - by removing, reordering and renaming existing parameters, by providing more refined control of existing processes and by adding new and unique views that show both what you need to do and what you've done.



• View Modes:

New Swap option (with additional dropdown menu) for quick comparison of any two views;
New views include RGB Max, Pre-Qualify, Luma Map, Edge Blend and Spill Map Overlay, as well as improved versions of Analysis and Spill Map.

• Auto Target & Auto Edge:

New Auto Target control to adjust the target density of the Auto process; new Auto Edge option helps maintain lighter foreground detail.

• Refined Screen Density Controls:

Knee controls for High & Low Density for greater accuracy and enhanced edge quality.

• Pre-Qualify:

New Pre-Qualify section intelligently targets foreground and background RGB balance for very high levels of matte refinement.

• Black and White Clip Knees:

New Black and White Clip knee controls allow for much more precise targeting of clip operations.

• White Balance:

New White Balance section uses Hawaiki's state-of-the-art white balance technology (from AutoGrade) to allow you to white balance either the foreground image or the matte process or both, with the choice of balancing from a white (grey value) pick or a skin tone pick.

• Edge:

Edge - revamped Edge processing: Edge Transparency now uses the main edge matte, as does the new Edge Blur, so both can be qualified with a gradient. Edge Blend algorithm has been updated to produce a smoother blend.

• Denoise:

Improved Denoise options with Low, Medium and High settings.

• Despill:

New Auto Luminance and Auto Saturation options.


• Light Wrap:

Enhanced Light Wrap module with a choice of blend modes.

HK3 Features in Depth

• Luma Map - Luma Map is the default for View 2 (the secondary dropdown menu). Hit the swap button to bring it up quickly. This view tells you exactly which density control to use to clear the background. High where the backing shows red, Low where it shows blue. The new High and Low density Knee sliders allow you to set the range of luma values covered by each and the Luma Map will update accordingly. The Pre-Qualify Gain controls are also a good way to isolate the Background and Foreground to a specific luma range. The brighter the red or blue the greater the impact of the sliders.


• Pre-Qualify - The Pre-Qualify controls allow you to adjust the balance of the red, green and blue channels independently in both the background and the foreground (prior to the matte extraction process). Very useful when dealing with problematic shots. You also have some control over what is defined as Background and Foreground and this is shown in the new Pre-Qualify view where the Background shows as magenta and Foreground as yellow.


• RGB Max view - This view shows the maximum of the red, green and blue channels. Used in conjunction with Pre-Qualify and the Analysis view this is a useful view for highlighting and dealing to problem areas in your foreground.


• Analysis View Enhancement - we’ve added an intermediate color - yellow areas indicate where your foreground is still solid but verging on being semitransparent. (You’ll recall areas that are blue are areas that are semitransparent and the areas that are orange are solid foreground.) This can prevent you from crunching the edges to get a solid foreground as yellow areas may be solid enough. You can adjust the alpha threshold value (where yellow replaces blue) using the Analysis Threshold slider that is below the View controls in the inspector.


• Spill Map Overlay View - This new view shows areas that are being despilled as a grid over the final key. Allows you to adjust the Despill and Spill Map controls and see the impact on both the spill map and the final image at the same time.


• Edge Blend view - Shows the blend of the background and foreground used for Edge Blend. NB. the matte used differs from the matte for the main Edge group. Edge Blend also uses a new compositing process that produces a smoother blend.


• On Color view - This replaces the On Black view. Defaults to black but you have the option of picking the background color. Use the "On Color" swatch near bottom of inspector to choose which color you want to composite against. This feature is handy for checking your key: select a color that contrasts with your foreground to show up any problem areas.
  
  NB. this can also be used for a final render and saves having to add a separate solid color background outside the plug-in. When using it in this way, you will want to enable the "Use Color" checkbox in the Light Wrap / Edge Blend group in order for these processes to use the selected color for compositing purposes.


• <—> Swap button This new button switches the view displayed between the View (left) and View 2 (right) dropdown menus. NB it will switch between the Quick View and View 2 when the Quick View buttons are in use and swaps the views when Dual View is enabled.


• Auto - Along with Auto Balance comes two new controls - Auto Target and Auto Edge, found at the bottom of the Pre-Qualify group. The Auto function works by boosting the green or blue channel and by boosting dark areas more than light. This helps to deal with dim, unsaturated and uneven blue and green screens whilst gently improving well shot screens.
  
  Auto Target controls the strength of the auto process (taking it to zero will turn Auto off).
  
  Auto Balance intelligently sets a ceiling on the amount of auto correction.
  
  Normally you can leave these alone but if you have a very dark screen it can be useful to increase Auto Balance and if you have a dark foreground with a saturated backing it may be necessary to reduce Auto Balance to reclaim edge detail.
  
  Auto Edge can be useful when you have a lighter foreground and are losing edge detail - increasing the slider value will reduce the auto process on mid range values and protect the edges.


• White Balance - New group that allows you to white balance by picking either an area of white/grey or skin. You can choose to balance the Matte input (which can assist with pulling the key if the White Balance is badly off), or the Image (as a starting to point for Color correction and/or to assist the despill process) or both.


• Light Wrap - The new Blend Mode menu lets you select from five different blend modes for light wrap: Screen (used in previous versions), Add, Overlay, Soft Light, and Multiply.
  
  A new BG Blur slider lets you control the amount of background blur. The Luma Match slider allows you to match the original luma of the foreground but mix in the color from the background. This control can also be used to subtly reduce Light Wrap brightness.


• Matte - Clip White and Clip Black Knee controls have been added to allow for more refined adjustments.


• Denoise Strength Menu - select from Low, Medium or High.


• Despill - Two new controls have been added to give more control over the Auto Process and provide different defaults for blue and green screens. Because despill by definition is removing green (or blue), the process inevitably results in a darkening of the despilled areas - the auto process is designed to compensate for the darkening (and also the desaturation).
  
  Auto Luminance - a value of 1 matches the luminance of the despilled image to the luminance of the source. A value of 0 turns off the Auto process (including Auto Saturation).
  
  Auto Saturation - a value of 1 attempts to maintain the source saturation. 1 is the default for green screens, 0 for blue screens.


• Edge - Two new features have been added to the Edge function (formerly Edge Color), namely Edge Transparency and Edge Blur.
  
  Edge Transparency - now in the Edge group and uses the Edge Matte - more refined and can be qualified with a gradient.
  
  Edge Blur - replaces Matte Blur, found in the Edge group and can be qualified with a gradient.



• CHANGED:
  *Matte Density renamed FG Fill (Foreground Fill).
  *Screen Density renamed Quick Density.
  *Auto Balance - control now in the Pre-Qualify group.
  *Combined Matte view renamed Matte.
  *Denoise - now has its own group where all controls are grouped together - they were previously split between Screen and Advanced groups.
  *Outer Matte added to Matte group.
  *Color Correction group renamed Color, moved below Despill.
  *Edge Color Matte renamed Edge Matte.
  *Combined Matte view renamed Matte.
  *Light Wrap group renamed Light Wrap / Edge Blend - now incorporates Edge Blend.
  *Light Wrap Depth range changed to 1 - 10 (was previously 0.1 to 1, same effect just different scale).
  *Edge Blend moved from Edge group to new Light Wrap/ Edge Blend group.
  *View menus reordered.
  
  
• REMOVED:
  *Advanced group.
  *Clamp RGB, Screen Density RGB and Screen Contrast RGB removed - use the Pre-Qualify controls in their place.
  *Denoise Type and UV and RGB sliders added to new Denoise group.
  *Matte RGB - use Pre-Qualify.
  *Matte Contrast - use new Matte Clip controls.
  *Matte Blur - replaced with Edge Blur in Edge section.
  *Secondary Mattes group.
  *Core Matte - use Matte Cleaner.
  *Auto dropdown - reduce Auto Target value to zero to turn Auto off.
  *Auto Pick Color - Auto Balance changes made this redundant.
  *Mid Density - use the Knee controls of High and Low density to target areas previously covered by Mid Density.
  *External Matte and Background views removed - you can see these within the host.
  *Option to show Background in Final Key when in dual view.
  *Main Matte view - turn off Outer Matte, if enabled, to see the old Main Matte view.
  *Despill checkbox - reduce Amount slider to zero to turn Despill off.
  *Despill - Auto checkbox - take Auto Luminance slider to to zero to turn Auto off.
  
  

• The plug-in comes complete with two separate modules, Hawaiki Keyer 3 (Green) and Hawaiki Keyer 3 (Blue). Select whichever is appropriate for your background color: so for green screens select Hawaiki Keyer Green and for blue screens choose Hawaiki Keyer Blue.
  
  
  The operation of both versions is identical but each has been optimised for its respective screen color. For this reason not all the controls work precisely the same between the two modules.

Frequently Asked Questions

• ”I am having issues when using 4K footage in a 1080 timeline in FCP X.” - We strongly recommend that if you are using this workflow, you create a compound clip of your 4K shot (on the timeline), before you add Hawaiki Keyer.


• "I'm having a hard time getting the background to go fully transparent, what can I do?" - All you should need to do is increase the Auto Balance value as necessary - this creates an automatic compensation for desaturated or dark screens.


• "My Light Wrap background (or my edge blend, or my external matte) doesn't seem to fit the foreground, what can I do?" - Unless your chosen background or external matte is the same size and aspect ratio as your timeline, you will need to pre-format it so that the plug-in sees the correct dimensions. You can do this easily from within your host application - see below. It's also important to make sure that you preformat your foreground in the same way if you are applying any spatial transforms to it (i.e. cropping, scaling, positioning, rotation). For example, if you are working with a 4K source in a 1080 timeline, you will have scaled the source by 50% to make it fit, and will need to preformat in order to make everything work correctly within the keyer.


• HELP - Note that clicking on the HK3 button at the top of the Inspector is a shortcut to take you to the manual at any time.

Keying Technique

• Keying is not a process that lends itself to total automation, which is why the keyers that try to sell you this will never get you a really great-looking key. Hawaiki Keyer uses a robust and innovative matte extraction algorithm and we've done everything we can to make the process really easy and adjustable, and more importantly offer you a wide range of different but complementary strategies that you can use depending on the source material, but you may well find cases where you can't work out the best approach. If you need help, we are always happy to look at a test frame and consult on the best way of getting a good result - and of course we are always looking to refine the algorithm further.


• SHOOTING TIP: We've seen a lot of examples of users who have shot using extremely faded, desaturated backing materials, paints, cloths or drapes, and we'd offer a word of caution about this. Obviously a desaturated backing is less likely to create nasty spill problems, especially if your talent is very close to it, but you do need to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of this approach. And remember that Hawaiki Keyer's despill tools are incredibly powerful and should be able to get you out of almost any problem.
  
  The greater the difference between your foreground colors and the colors of your backing, the more easily you will be able to pull the key and hence the better your all-important edges will be. A saturated backing helps to maximise that difference. A desaturated backing means the keyer has to work harder and process the initial result more aggressively, and it's heavy processing that is going to kill your edges. So throw out that faded green screen and buy or hire yourself a new one - you won't regret it!


• For the same reason, make sure you apply the appropriate LUT to your footage before trying to key it.


• One other extremely important shooting tip is to make sure that you turn off any in-camera sharpening. Regardless of how good your camera is, sharpening will always make a mess of your edges from a keying point of view, for the simple reason that all sharpening works by edge processing, in other words taking your precious edge pixels and making a nasty mess of them. It may look fine when you view the RGB image, but if you examine the individual channels, you will see the damage it is causing. Each channel needs to be free of edge artifacting for any keying operation to work properly.


• The same thing also applies when considering your camera's compression system. Most budget cameras are using very aggressive compression which can really cause big problems with you try to key the footage you shoot with them. Do everything you can to minimise compression in your footage acquisition. In particular, consider shooting 1080 rather than 4K - the chances are your camera will give you much less compressed images that way, and any trade-off in terms of the number of pixels you are acquiring will be more than compensated in terms of the quality of the key.


• As with any keying software, remember to proceed carefully when adjusting the manual controls. Use the relevant view mode as you work, making only gradual, fine adjustments until you've only just got the result you need. The key thing to bear in mind is that more is not better - just enough and no more is what you should always be aiming for.


• Another general point to be aware of is that even the best keyers in the world sometimes can't give you the perfect key for all areas of your shot in one go, although Hawaiki Keyer comes a lot closer to that ideal than most. Sometimes you might find that you are compromising one area (especially, for example your hair detail) in order to get the required result in another area and it can get very frustrating very quickly.
  
  This is why it's always a good idea to try and make the process as easy as possible. Use a rough mask, crop or garbage matte to remove areas of the background that are hard to key out. Hawaiki Keyer can help a lot by offering you the option of the Outer Matte which can take care of things like unevenly-lit screens, and the new Pre-Qualify feature is going to solve a lot of tricky problems, but it's not going to be the solution in all cases.


• The other trick to bear in mind is that you don't have to do everything with just one keyer - you can always use a second instance and mask between the two. This is especially advisable for preserving hair detail which is usually the first thing to suffer when you try to make one key do all the work in tricky situations. In this instance, use a separate, softer key for the hair to keep as much detail as possible and use your solid, punchy key for the other areas, and simply mask between the two versions.
  
  You will save a lot more time breaking up the key like this than you would waste trying and failing to get a decent compromise with a single instance of the keyer. And remember, professional visual effects artists are always using this strategy, so take a tip from them!

View Menu

• Hawaiki Keyer provides a comprehensive set of view modes to make it easy to set up your key and refine the spill suppression.
  
  
  In FCP X and Motion (but not the Adobe hosts) there are onscreen buttons and menus for selecting the views which are duplicates of the Inspector controls.
  
  
  QUICK VIEW: The three quick view buttons allow you to access the most common views (Matte, Analysis and Source) at the flick of a switch. Note that the Source button over-rides Analysis which in turn over-rides Matte. All three can be enabled at once.
  
  DUAL VIEW: The Dual View mode allows you to compare any two views side-by-side. Enabling the Dual View switch brings up the dual view in the Canvas. The left hand view is selected from the main view menu, or if any of the quick view buttons are activated, these will take precedence. The right hand view is selected from the secondary dropdown menu.
  
  SWAP: New in HK3 is a Swap button that lets you quickly swap between the views selected in the main and secondary dropdowns. This is available onscreen in FCP X and Motion (between the main and secondary dropdown menus) but is only available in the Effect Controls in Premiere and After Effects. Note that when Dual View is enabled, the Swap button can be used to swap the two views.
  
  
  Note that in the case of Dual View and Swap modes, the quick view buttons over-ride the main dropdown menu (View), not the secondary menu (View 2).
  
  INVERT: The Invert button allows you to invert many of the views, including: On Black, Final Key, Analysis, Main Matte, and Combined Matte.


• So let's look at the View menus in more detail:


• The Source view mode, as the name implies, lets you view your untreated original source image.


• The Luma Map mode is new to HK3 and lets you analyse the image in terms of its luminance: the red areas are higher/brighter than the low/blue areas. With this information, it's much easier to use the High and Low Density controls accurately to get pinpoint results without guessing. If the backing areas is predominantly red, for example, you know that you will get the best result from using the High Density control. If it is predominantly blue, then you will want to go for the Low Density slider. If it is both red and blue and/or magenta (a combination of the two) then you will want to use both sliders.
  


• The Pre-Qualify mode, also new to HK3, shows you the map of the background and foreground which Hawaiki Keyer precalculates for use with the pre-qualify RGB controls. The more yellow the image is the more it is being calculated as part of the foreground and the more magenta it is, the more it's being treated as part of the background. Adjusting the Background and Foreground Separation controls and their respective Knees will change the balance of background and foreground and you will see this updating in the Pre-Qualify view.
  


• The RGB Max mode, again new in HK3, is another useful tool for working with the Pre-Qualify routine. It is a three-colour view that shows which of the three channels is the dominant one in each area of the image. This makes it much easier to make an informed decision about which channel to boost and which to reduce using the Pre-Qualify controls.
  


• The On Color mode (new in HK3) shows you the final key composited over a black background or any other color of your choice with correct premultiplication. (This replaces the On Black view in 2.0.) This can be very useful for checking your key or even for your final composited output, which means you don't need to add a background layer if you simply intend to composite over a solid color. On Color lets you choose a custom color to composite against and you can select your own using the swatch situated at the bottom of the Inspector. The Invert button inverts this view.


• The default mode is Final Key which shows you the keyed image with spill suppression. Make sure to select this view when you have finished work on your key because this is the view that will get rendered. The Invert button inverts this view.


• The powerful Analysis view shows you the current state of the matte, with orange representing the solid foreground pixels, blue representing the semi-transparent pixels (typically your edges), and black representing the fully transparent background. Pixels that show up yellow are on the verge of becoming transparent but will show up fully opaque in your final matte. Note that using the Invert switch with the Analysis view is a great way of making sure you have eliminated all stray pixels from the backing, which are otherwise less easy to spot.


• The Matte view shows you the familiar black and white matte. Note that you will get much better results if you use Hawaiki's Analysis view to set up your matte as a simple black and white view makes it much harder to judge the matte density correctly. Use this view if you need to send the black and white matte out to another compositing operation. The Invert button inverts this view. (You can see the HK2 Main Matte view by disabling Outer Matte if it is enabled)


• The Outer Matte view shows you the hard matte for the outer regions of the background, with red for the full transparent background pixels, overlaid over the full colour original source image.


• The Spill Map view shows you a representation of the pixels that will be affected by the spill suppression with pink for the areas that are fully despilled and cyan for those that are not affected by the despill process. Note that adjusting the Spill Map Depth, Amount, Balance, etc. will all update this view.


• The Spill Map Overlay view, new in HK3, lets you see the Spill Map superimposed as a grid over the full color RGB image (keyed over black), which can make it easier to adjust.


• The Despill view shows you the unmatted source image after the spill suppression has been applied.


• The Edge Matte view shows you the fine edge matte that is used by the Edge feature for adjusting the brightness, saturation, RGB balance, blur and/or transparency of your edges. What this view shows you is the matte itself and not the result. In the default Edge mode, the matte is grayscale, but if you turn on Gradient Qualify, the colors will change to purple for the Value A side, and yellow for the Value B side (see below for more details).


• The Light Wrap view allows you to monitor the Light Wrap component on its own - in this case what you are seeing is the full color Light Wrap and not just its matte, which makes it easy to assess the depth, brightness and saturation of the Light Wrap before applying it to the final key.

• The Edge Blend view shows you the result of the edge blend operation prior to compositing with the final image. Note this uses a different edge matte from the main Edge operation (see above).

Sliders - A General Note

Some parameters, especially those that use blurs, can have values entered that are greater than the slider maximum.  If you find you need to go beyond the slider maximum, try entering a higher value.

Density

• When you first apply the keyer to your clip, you will notice that the background is not fully transparent. The reason for this is to allow you to adjust the matte only as much as is necessary to achieve a solid foreground and a fully transparent background. Some automatic keyers, such as Apple's Keyer (available in FCP X and Motion 5), give you a solid matte straight out of the gate, but make it that much harder to restore missing detail. Hawaiki Keyer has made this a semi-manual process for a very good reason - and that's because your eyes will be a much better judge of this than any automatic process can be.



• The best way of working on creating a great-looking matte is to use the View menu and select the Analysis view mode which gives a color representation of the state of the matte. Solid foreground pixels will be orange and the transparent edge pixels will be blue (unless you change the Analysis Threshold value). Pixels that show up yellow are on the verge of becoming transparent but will show up fully opaque in your final matte. To begin with, most if not all of your background will be washed blue because it is not yet fully transparent. Note that using the Invert button with the Analysis view is a great way of picking up stray background pixels that are otherwise tricky to spot, so you may want to try that at the final clean-up stage of your matte.


• Note that Auto Balance is the only mode available in HK3 and we have removed Pick Color and Off.
  
  
• HIGH & LOW DENSITY - In HK3 we have devised a whole new method for clearing the background that we think is going to make your life much easier and take out most if not all of the guesswork. The main two controls you will be using are the High and Low density sliders, and in a lot of cases you will only need to use one of these, depending on your source material. To decide what to use, all you have to do is take a look at the Luma Map view.
  
  Luma Map is the default for View 2 (the secondary dropdown menu) - hit the swap button to bring it up quickly. This view tells you exactly which density control to use to clear the background. The Luma Map views shows you the relative luminance of different areas of your image, so the red areas are High (in other words, brighter) and the blue areas are Low (in other words, darker).
  
  Having determined whether your backing is predominantly blue, or predominantly red, you can then use the corresponding slider to gently clear the backing. Red means you want the High slider, and blue means you want the Low slider. If your screen is well lit, you will most probably only be using the High control and conversely if it is darkly lit you will need to grab the Low slider. If your backing has both areas of blue and red and/or magenta (a combination of both) then you will need to use both the High and Low Density sliders.The Luma Map will make it easy to see what to use without having to work this out for yourself.
  
  However, with the new tools in HK3, we can be even more precise. Both High and Low controls come with an additional Knee slider, and these allow you to really fine tune the extent of the adjustments very precisely. Reducing the High Knee value picks up more of the high mid range values, while increasing the Low Knee picks up more of the low mids. Taking care over setting these values will really pay dividends in terms of getting a really good looking edge to your key. NB. If the backing is showing as black in the Luma Map then you will need to use the knee sliders to bring it into range.
  
  Be sure to adjust all of these controls only as much as is necessary. If you go too far you will lose precious edge detail and that's something you really want to avoid.


• Quick Density - If you are used to working with 2.0, you may wonder what has happened to the Screen Density slider, and we have simply renamed this Quick Density. But we strongly recommend that you don't use this and work with either the High or Low Density controls instead which will guarantee a superior result.


• If you are having problems clearing your backing, or if you think that you are missing edge detail, which can occasionally happen, then you will want to have a look at adjusting the Auto Balance, which you can find in the Pre-Qualify group along with the new Auto Target and Auto Edge controls.


• FG Fill - Once you have cleared your backing, you may need to firm up your foreground and remove transparent areas where there shouldn't be any. To do this all you have to do is use the FG Fill (foreground fill) slider and the easiest way of making sure you are doing the right thing is to use the Analysis view. Again, do this only just enough to solidify your foreground and make sure not to go too far. Wherever a pixel has turned orange (or yellow), you know that it is fully opaque - any that are still blue will be semi-transparent. Note that you want to make sure that your edges stay blue - the one thing you don't want is a hard edge to your matte as this will look very ugly and unrealistic. (In 2.0 this was called Matte Density.) If you are having major problems with solidiying your foreground, then you will need to have a look at using Matte Cleaner (see below).


• Screen Calibration - The effect of this control is to recalibrate the relationship between the red, green and blue channels as they are being fed into the keyer algorithm. Depending on the color composition of your background and your foreground, you can often achieve great results from using this control. The best thing to do is experiment and see if it helps the matte or if it doesn't. Because every shot is different, it's not possible to make recommendations about the specific use of this feature - sometimes it will perform brilliantly as a major problem-solver, sometimes it will work very well as just a finishing clean-up tool, and sometimes it won't make a useful improvement in which case it's best left at the default setting.

Pre-Qualify

New in HK3, the Pre-Qualify controls allows you to adjust the balance of the red, green and blue channels independently in both the background and the foreground (prior to the matte extraction process). Also included in this group are the Auto controls: Auto Balance, Auto Target and Auto Edge.



• Pre-Qualify - Pre-Qualify is a versatile set of controls, new in HK3, that allow you to optimise your blue screens and green screens prior to the matte extraction. This is achieved by adjusting the level of red, green and blue and overall gain independently for both the background and foreground. Pre-Qualify gives you the fine-grained control required to pull a better matte, even with the trickiest of shots.
  
  Pre-Qualify can be used simply to help clear a desaturated backing (by boosting the Background Green or Blue) or fill in holes in your matte (by decreasing the Foreground Green or Blue) but where Pre-Qualify really shines is when used in conjunction with the RGB Max view to deal to specific areas that pose a problem.
  
  You may have a section of the foreground that is being eroded. If you switch to the RGB Max view, you see the max channel in this area is green. By increasing the FG Red or Blue and decreasing FG Green, the max channel changes to red or blue and the matte becomes solid. Perhaps there is a dark area of the backing that is not clearing, you can increase Background Green and Gain to deal to it. Another possible use case is to adjust the Luma Map by increasing or decreasing Background Gain so that the Low or High density controls clear all of the backing.
  
  HK3 automatically detects the Background and Foreground areas and these are shown in the Pre-Qualify view as magenta and yellow respectively. You can also control how rigidly these are defined and the relative strength of the background and foreground controls by adjusting the BG and FG separation and Knee sliders. While it might be tempting to increase the separation of each to their maximum, subtler results are possible by leaving each less dense and compensating with the RGB controls. So if you increase Background green you may find you need to decrease Foreground green to compensate. It is a good overall tactic to think in terms of reducing a foreground color while boosting the corresponding background color, or vice versa. BG and FG Compensation are best used in moderation for fine-tuning the effect.



• Auto Balance - The default Auto Balance setting should work well for most cases, but if your screen is of poor quality (dark and/or desaturated) then you will want to experiment with higher settings, whereas for very good screens you can reduce the setting all the way down to 1.0. Generally, you want to aim for as low a setting as you can get away with as this will usually give you the best edges and the most detail. An unnecessarily high setting with throw away detail that you could be capturing. Howver too low a setting will make it more difficult to use the Density controls satisfactorily so it's important to strike a sensible balance.


• Along with Auto Balance comes two new controls - Auto Target and Auto Edge, found at the bottom of the Pre-Qualify group.
  
  The Auto function works by boosting the green or blue channel and by boosting dark areas more than light. This helps to deal with dim, unsaturated and uneven blue and green screens whilst gently improving well shot screens.
  
  
• Auto Target - Auto Target controls the strength of the auto process (taking it to zero will turn Auto off) Auto Balance intelligently sets a ceiling on the amount of auto correction. The way that Auto Target and Auto Balance interact is a little hard to grasp, but to use a plumbing metaphor you can think of Auto Balance as the pipe size and Auto Target as the rate of flow.
  
  Normally you can leave these alone but if you have a very dark screen it can be useful to increase Auto Balance and if you have a dark foreground with a saturated backing it may be necessary to reduce Auto Balance to reclaim edge detail.
  
  
• Auto Edge - Auto Edge can be useful when you have a lighter foreground and are losing edge detail - increasing the slider value will reduce the auto process on mid range values and protect the edges.
  
  
• The best practice is to use the Auto Target and Auto Balance controls to get you in the ballpark without necessarily clearing the backing - the main thing you want to achieve is not losing any detail in the edges or applying so much Auto processing that the edges start to look ragged.

Matte

The Matte group comprises a variety of tools for cleaning up, refining the matte and dealing with specific problems - these are all best used once you have done everything you can with Density and Pre-Qualify. The tools include Black and White Clip, Gamma, Matte Shrink, Matte Cleaner (with Fill Holes option), and Outer Matte. (If you are looking for a matte blur option, you can find it in the Edge section.)



• Clip White & Clip Black - The black and white Clips allow you to adjust the matte in the conventional way, in other words by clipping either the black or white values or both - clipping the black cleans up the background, and clipping the white solidifies the foreground. However, Hawaiki Keyer as usual goes a step or two further and offers the ability to refine these operations with Knee controls. Note that while this common process can be useful for fine-tuning an almost perfect matte, it's not recommended to use them to do the heavy lifting of extracting the matte in the first place. Hawaiki's unique and much more refined and targeted density controls will give you a superior result every time.
  
  
• Matte Cleaner - The Matte Cleaner option is designed to help you deal with problem areas in your foreground that refuse to go solid. At extreme settings you can use Matte Cleaner to force fill "holes" in your foreground caused by reflections or foreground colors that too closely match the background screen color. Check the Matte Cleaner switch to enable this option, and adjust the Amount slider as necessary. For advanced hole filling operations you will probably also want to use the Fill Holes slider which helps to force the filler into more of the holes.
  
  Note that while Matte Cleaner is a really powerful tool, like any keying control you want to make sure that you only use as much as you actually need and no more - at extreme settings you can risk compromising your edges, so keep an eye on them to make sure you're doing enough but no more.
  
  COMPOSITING TIP: If your foreground holes are caused by reflections, it's worth knowing that filling them in is not always the best-looking option. Being reflections they should ideally be reflecting your environment, and in your final composite that environment isn't the flat color of your despilled green/blue screen (which is what it will be if you fill them in), but rather it ought to be the color of the new background and any detail it may contain. Hence leaving your holes see-through will often have the effect of making them look more like real reflections and your composite will look better as a result.


• Gamma - The Gamma slider performs the magic trick of making your transparent edges either more opaque or more transparent - increase the value for greater transparency and reduce it for increased opacity. This is a great control for making your edges look more realistic, but, as always, be sure to use it gently and don't overcook the results.


• Matte Shrink - You shouldn't ever really need to shrink your matte, as Hawaiki Keyer gives you so many great tools for creating a great-looking edge, but if you do need to shrink it for any reason, then use the Matte Shrink slider. Again, try to ration yourself as much as possible - a matte that has been visibly shrunk is not a professional-looking matte! If you facing the kind of desperate situation where Matte Shrink is needed, you may need to use it in conjunction with a small amount of Edge Blur (see below).
  
  
• Outer Matte - The Outer Matte helps take care of the outer regions of the background and makes them fully transparent. The Outer Matte is disabled by default - use the checkbox to turn it on.
  
  The Outer Matte keeps clear of the edges of the main matte so as not to lose any detail, but you can increase the clearance if necessary using the OuterExpand slider.
  
  Note that the Outer Matte is usually large enough (or can be expanded enough) to keep well out of the way of the Main Matte in most cases. However, if you have lots of large areas of transparency that you need to keep, it's best to leave the Outer Matte turned off to avoid fighting with those areas.

Edge

• The Edge options give you superb control over the edges of the final key, and in HK3 there are even more advanced ways of fine-tuning the edges of your composite for a truly professional finish. You can adjust the color (RGB Balance, Brightness and Saturation), transparency and blur of the edge. (NB. for Hawaiki Keyer 2 users: Edge Blend is now found in the Light Wrap/Edge Blend group - see below.)
  
  Each of these methods uses the same very thin matte which only encompasses the very edges of your foreground. Using this matte you can make detailed adjustments to the edge as required to help the foreground sit better into the background, compensate for edges that have been over-lit, or create special effects. The really powerful and unique feature of Edge in Hawaiki Keyer is that you can divide the edge in two and affect either side independently, using the Gradient Qualify option.



• Enable the checkbox and adjust the Width and Density sliders to taste - it's a very good idea to do this while looking at the Edge Matte view so you know exactly what you are doing. Normally the default edge width and density should be enough, but you may need to increase the values for problematic foregrounds or high resolution footage. Note that the Edge Matte view is not the matte used in Edge Blend.


• Note that unless Gradient Qualify is enabled, the A sliders are the master controls for the various the edge corrections and the B sliders have no effect.


• Brightness - Use the Brightness slider to adjust the brightness up or down as required.


• Saturation - Use the Saturation slider to adjust the saturation of the edge as required.


• RGB Control - Use the RGB sliders to make precise color adjustments to the edge as required.


• Transparency - Edge Transparency is a great way to soften any hard edges in your matte and give you a smoother-looking composite. It uses the same thin edge matte as the rest of the edge features and allows you to reduce the opacity of the foreground in that small area.


• Blur - Use the Blur checkbox to enable blur. Set the blur radius in pixels with the Radius slider. A Blur slider is available for the A and B sides and only needs to be used when Gradient Qualify is enabled. They set the amount of blur applied to each side. A value of 1 applies the full blur radius, a value of 0 turns it off.
  
  In general, you want to avoid blurring your matte wherever you can to preserve as much fine detail as possible, but sometimes if your green/blue screen is not as good as it should be, you'll have unwanted "stepping" or aliasing of your edges, or some of the processing you have applied may have made them look a bit too sharp. If this is the case, your first step should be to make sure you have enabled Denoise (see above) which is specifically designed to deal with this type of issue and will handle it really beautifully and smoothly without compromising your matte. If your footage is really poor and Denoise doesn't get you far enough only then should you consider using Blur - after having first fired your cameraman and/or thrown away your camera!
  
  If you are encountering serious aliasing problems, it usually means that you've over-processed the matte somewhere or other. Make sure you go back and review your previous decisions to see if you can improve on them before trying Blur. Hawaiki Keyer gives you more options for refining your matte than any other keyer so you should usually be able to find a good way of treating the problem without having to resort to blur.

NB. Changes to Edge transparency and blur change the matte and as such will be reflected in the Matte and Analysis views.


• Gradient Qualify - If you enable Gradient Qualify, you will see the Edge Matte view change with purple on the left hand side and yellow on the right, representing the two halves of the gradient. The Value A slider will now control the areas that are purple and the Value B slider the edges that are yellow.
  
  You can adjust the Angle of the gradient any way you like - so for example you could have Value A at the top and Value B at the bottom by entering an Angle of -90 degrees. You can adjust the center of the gradient with the Center slider - negative values move the center closer to Value A and vice versa. Finally, the Spread slider allows you to adjust the spread of values across the gradient and hence the softness of the mix between the A and B values - a lower Spread value will make for a more abrupt transition between the two sides and a larger value will spread it out further.

Denoise

• Denoise - The denoise control gives the user a sophisticated method for reducing edge noise in the matte. It can also help to clear up stray backing pixels caused by noisy source footage. This option is always the preferred method for dealing with "jaggies" or steppiness on the edges of the matte. Unlike a conventional matte blur, Hawaiki Keyer's denoise does a much smoother job of cleaning the edges, while retaining as much of the detail as possible.
  
  Enable the Denoise checkbox and adjust the Amount as required - try to use only as much as is needed to resolve your edge problem. New in HK3 is the option to choose either Low, Medium or High denoise.
  
  By default, the denoise process works on the UV channels in YUV colorspace and you have the option to adjust the relative noise reduction in each of these two channels. Or you can choose to denoise in RGB colorspace, by selecting this option from the dropdown menu. When RGB is enabled, the UV sliders deactivated and vice versa.

White Balance

• The new White Balance group allows you to white balance by picking either an area of white/grey or skin. You can choose to balance the Matte input (which can assist with pulling the key if the White Balance is badly off), or the Image (as a starting point for color correction and/or to assist the despill process) or both.

Despill

• The spill suppression provided in Hawaiki Keyer is very powerful with a lot of fine control of the results - more than you'll find in most keyers at any level. Spill suppresssion works by isolating the areas of your foreground that are contaminated with excess amounts of the background screen color and replacing it with something less offensive.



• Overview - Unlike some well-known keyers, the despill operation in HK3 is entirely separate from the matte extraction operation and will not be affected by the matte that you pull. Obviously a softer matte will show more of the despilled background than a very hard matte that crunches away too much of the edge detail but other than that there is no interaction between the two operations, and it is our view that this is a much better way of working. Too often with other systems, you end up chasing your tail between getting the matte right and getting the despill right and Hawaiki Keyer takes away that frustration. 
  
  Because despill by definition is removing green (or blue), an unmodified despill process inevitably results in a darkening of the despilled areas (less green/blue means less overall luminance). For this reason, HK3 uses an automatic process to adjust for this, which is designed to compensate for the darkening (and also the desaturation). However the automated process is simply designed to get you close enough to a sensible starting point with the option to over-ride the result manually as required.
  
  This is because there is obviously no "ideal" setting that will make a perfect composite for every shot - if you have a dark background, you want the despilled edge to be dark and if you have a bright background you want it to be bright. This is where the deep layer of control within the despill section really comes into play - you can manually over-ride the brightness, as well as the saturation and even play with the color balance.


• Despill views - To see the despilled image prior to the Final Key, we can select the Despill view. To see the Spill Map on its own, select the Spill Map view. To see the Spill Map overlaid (as a grid) over the Final Key (On Black), select the Spill Map Overlay view. For an explanation of what the Spill Map is and does, see below.
  


• Brightness - The Brightness control lets you make manual adjustments to the Auto result if you need to fine tune it.


• Saturation - The Saturation control lets you fine tune the saturation of the despilled areas, either to reduce it or increase it as required.


• RGB Control - The three RGB sliders let you adjust the color of the despilled areas directly and intuitively for really fine-grained control of the result.


• Auto Luminance - This controls the amount of the automated luminance correction. A value of 1.0 matches the luminance of the despilled image to the luminance of the source. A value of zero turns off the Auto process (including Auto Saturation). The default value for green screens is .75 which should give a satisfactory average match for most shots. The default for blue is 1.0.


• Auto Saturation - This controls the amount of the automated saturation correction. A value of 1.0 attempts to maintain the source saturation. 1.0 is the default for green screens, zero is the default for blue screens.


• Amount - use the Amount slider to increase or decrease the degree of spill suppression being applied - a value of zero will give you the original image with no despill applied.


• We will discuss the four remaining controls in the next section.

Spill Map

• When setting up the spill suppression operation it's a good idea to use the Spill Map and/or Spill Map Overlay views to see exactly what's going on and fine tune the despill process to the demands of your particular shot. The Spill Map defines the specific areas that will be de-contaminated and with Hawaiki Keyer, unlike most keyers on the market, you have total control over how this works.


• Reading the Spill Map views - Looking at the straight Spill Map view first, where the foreground is cyan, there's no spill being removed but the more pink there is, the more intense the despill process. And the spill map view will update as you make changes to the Amount, the Spill Map Depth, or the Balance. The Spill Map Overlay view works in the same way, but shows you the spill map overlaid as a grid over your Final Key (composited over black), and this allows you to see exactly which areas are being despilled in the context of the final key.


• Despill works by referencing the red, green and blue channels and removing any green (or blue, as the case may be) that exceeds the value of either (or both) of the other two. In this way you can control not only which areas are being despilled but also have some control over the resulting colors.


• Use the Spill Map Depth control to increase the intensity of the Spill Map as necessary. This will enable you to target areas with only slight contamination but which you still want to despill.


• The Spill Map Balance adjusts the degree to which the Red or Blue are referenced (in the case of green screen, or Red and Green in the case of blue screen).


• Use the Spill Map Red and Blue sliders to make precise adjustments to the areas that will be despilled (or the Red and Green in the case of a blue screen).
  
  In the case of a green screen, the Spill Map Green slider is not available as it is a constant, and the same applies to the Blue slider in the case of the blue screen.


• With the Spill Map view enabled, increase or decrease the values to include more or less of the spill contaminated image. For example if you want to include more of the skin tones in the image, increase the red value, or if you want to protect more of the blues from the despill, decrease the blue value.

Light Wrap & Edge Blend

• Light Wrap simulates the indirect illumination of the scene, which is where the background colors wrap themselves around the edges of the foreground. This can be very useful in helping the match between the keyed foreground and the new background.
  
  
  
  Toggle the Light Wrap switch to enable this feature, and adjust the amount, depth (the distance that the Light Wrap overlaps the foreground), the brightness and the saturation.
  
  The new Blend Mode menu lets you select from five different blend modes for light wrap: Screen (used in previous versions), Add, Overlay, Soft Light, and Multiply.
  
  A new BG Blur slider lets you control the amount of background blur. The Luma Match slider allows you to match the original luma of the foreground but mix in the color from the background. This control can also be used to subtly reduce Light Wrap brightness.


• You will need to add the background image (or footage) to the Background image well. In FCP X you need to click on the source well to bring up the image selection dialogue, then pick your background image and hit "Apply". In the case of Motion 5, all you need to do is drag the background image into the source well. In Premiere Pro and After Effects, all you have to do is select the layer you want from the dropdown menu.



• IMPORTANT NOTE: For Light Wrap to function correctly, it's really important that your background image is formatted correctly - if for any reason it's not the exact same size and aspect ratio as your timeline, please make sure to create a compound clip of it (FCP X), put it in a flattened group (Motion), nest it (Premiere), or precompose it (After Effects). The plug-in is expecting to see an image that is the same aspect ratio as your timeline - the host application has no way of telling the plug-in that you have used something different. If you have applied any kind of spatial transform (position, crop, scale or rotate) to your background image the same thing applies and you will need to preformat it in the same way. And the same thing applies if you have applied a spatial transform to the shot that you are trying to key. In each case, preformatting will give you the correct result, while failure to do this will mean that the images are out of register with each other.


• Just remember that a little of this effect goes a long way, so it's best not to overdo it - gauge the amount you need depending on the illumination level of the new background.
  
  
• EDGE BLEND - Edge Blend is a really sophisticated compositing technique used by visual effects artists to put the finishing touches to a great composite. It works by taking another very thin matte that encompasses the composited foreground and background, and then creates a subtle blend of foreground and background just in that small area. It's a great way of making your keys look more photorealistic and less artificial.
  
  IMPORTANT NOTE: - It's important to note that in order to use this feature, you need to add your background image to the Background source well (see below under Light Wrap for instructions on how to do this). Without a background image being fed to the plug-in, you won't get the desired result.
  
  In general, the only control you will need to adjust for Edge Blend is the Amount slider, which determines the intensity of the effect. The Blend slider adjusts the blend of foreground and background, but in almost all cases you will find that the default value of 3.0 is the right blend amount for your needs. However, you might need to increase this value when using source footage that is 4K and upwards.

External Matte

• HK3 gives you the ablity to bring in an external matte for use by the keyer.



• In FCP X you need to click on the source well to bring up the image selection dialogue, then pick your background image and hit "Apply". In the case of Motion 5, all you need to do is drag the background image into the source well. In Premiere Pro and After Effects, all you have to do is select the layer you want from the dropdown menu.


• Note that Hawaiki Keyer will expect to see a black & white image as the source for the external matte. Transparent alpha will be treated as black.



• Use the dropdown menu to select how the External Matte is combined with the matte generated by the keyer. The default is Off which means the external matte has no effect. The Add option will add the white values of the external matte to the keyer's own matte. The Subtract option will subtract the black values of the external matte from the keyer's own matte. And the Replace option will entirely replace the keyer's own matte with the external matte.


• There are many uses for this option, but an obvious use for Add is to create a hold-out matte, and for Subtract to create a garbage matte. Replace is useful if you simply want to use the spill suppression and other finishing options of Hawaiki Keyer but the matte from another instance of Hawaiki Keyer or another keyer.


• IMPORTANT NOTE: For External Matte to function correctly, it's really important that your external image is formatted correctly - if for any reason it's not the exact same size and aspect ratio as your timeline, please make sure to create a compound clip of it (FCP X), put it in a flattened group (Motion), nest it (Premiere), or precompose it (After Effects). The plug-in is expecting to see an image that is the same aspect ratio as your timeline - the host application has no way of telling the plug-in that you have used something different. If you have applied any kind of spatial transform (position, crop, scale or rotate) to your external matte, the same thing applies and you will need to preformat it in the same way. And the same thing applies if you have applied a spatial transform to the shot that you are trying to key. In each case, preformatting will give you the correct result, while failure to do this will mean that the images are out of register with each other.

Color

• Hawaiki Keyer gives you an entire color correction suite so you can polish your composite all from within the one plug-in.



• Click the Enable checkbox to enable to the color correction suite.


• Adjust the Global Saturation, the saturation for shadows, midtones and highlights (Low, Mid, and Hi), the global shadows, midtones and highlights (Low, Mid, and Hi), or if need be, you can even fine tune the RGB balance of the shadows, midtones and highlights.

External Sources, On Color, Color Space & Presets

In the final section, you can find the image source wells for the Background Image and the External Matte, as well as the External Matte menu options; the On Color selector swatch; the presets system; and the Color Space options.



• The built-in presets allow you to save any of your keys for future use, or you can customise a default layout of the plug-in.


• The Color Space option tells Hawaiki Keyer which type of conversion it should perform by default. When “Linear” is selected, Hawaiki Keyer will do its best to convert any color values coming from the host to an RGB Linear color space. When the “Uncorrected” option is selected, Hawaiki Keyer will feed the values coming from the host to the composition “as they are”. Depending on the host and current project settings, the uncorrected color values may be linear or gamma-encoded.