Hawaiki Keyer 4 - Manual
Overview
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Hawaiki Keyer 4 is a complete keying system for green screens and blue screens, designed for Apple's Final Cut Pro and Motion, and Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, featuring two keyers in one, an automatic keying algorithm, a unique diagnostic toolset and unrivalled compositing options, all designed to help you get the perfect key with the minimum of guesswork.
- New in Hawaiki Keyer 4.6 - new plug-ins, functionally identical to Hawaiki Keyer 4.5, built using a new Metal based processing engine that is optimised for Apple silicon (M1). - support for M1 (Apple silicon) Macs.
- NEW in Hawaiki Keyer 4.5 is a sophisticated Screen Clean function that intelligently analyses the green or blue screen backing to remove defects and create an even screen, making most keys a lot easier to pull.
- 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.
- And now with HK4 you can finesse your mattes even further with the unique new Secondary option, which gives you two keyers in one. Mask between the Primary and Secondary mattes and automatically track the position of the mask using the powerful realtime tracking option.
- Hawaiki Keyer offers an outstanding feature set for spill suppression, a powerful and unique edge control system, and a great-looking Light Wrap option, as well as several new VFX-level edge control features (Background Match, Edge Replace and Fine Edge) that are unique to HK4 and which you won't find in an other keyer.
- 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, including a precise Analysis mode, that make it easy to extract the perfect matte, while the Spill Map view makes for really precise and detailed spill suppression. Additional views allow you to monitor HK4's sophisticated edge control operations.
- 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 the finishing touch to a really great composite with Hawaiki AutoMatch, the best colour matching plug-in you can buy.
Upgrading to Hawaiki Keyer 4.6
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Hawaiki Keyer 4.6 is a free upgrade for Hawaiki Keyer 4.5 users.
It doesn't overwrite the existing Hawaiki Keyer 4.5 plug-ins but provides new green screen and blue screen plug-ins labelled Hawaiki Keyer 4.6.
We recommend you use the Hawaiki Keyer 4.6 plug-ins in all new projects but the version 4.5 plug-ins are still available to use and for updating existing keys.
If you are running an an older version of macOS or apps purchase Hawaiki Keyer 4.6 then download an older version of Hawaiki Keyer from the FxFactory product page.
System Requirements
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macOS: macOS Big Sur 11.5.1 +
FxFactory: 7.2.8 +
Apps: Final Cut Pro 10.6 +, Motion 5.6 +, Premiere Pro 14 +, After Effects 17 +
New Features in Hawaiki Keyer HK4
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For Hawaiki Keyer 4 (HK4), we've created a new automatic matte extraction algorithm to give you even better quality keys with even less effort.
- Screen Clean - NEW in Hawaiki Keyer 4.5
- Two Keyers in One
- Mask Tracking
- New advanced matte extraction algorithm:
- BG Match
- Edge Replace
- Hawaiki Edge Tools
- Fine Edge
- Hawaiki Slice
And we've added a whole range of exciting new features to help you key even more accurately and with even greater finesse.
A sophisticated screen correction function that intelligently analyses the green or blue screen backing to remove defects and create an even screen, making most keys a lot easier to pull.
Unique new feature that gives you a Primary and a Secondary keyer within the one plug-in. Tackle tricky problem areas much more easily while avoiding any compromise on the fine edge detail. The Secondary keyer section gives you all the same controls as the Primary with full control of the mask between the two.
A new tracking system gives you precise and powerful automated realtime tracking of the Secondary mask with the minimum of additional set-up and no need to pre-compute tracking data.
Does more of the heavy lifting for you - clearing the backing and preserving edges while also giving those who need it more fine-grained control. In short, faster results and better edges, more easily.
Background Match automatically adjusts the edges of the foreground to match the luminance of the background. So if a foreground pixel is darker than the background it will be brightened and if lighter than the background, darkened. BG Match can be used as an alternative or complement to Light Wrap.
Allows you to replace the edge of the foreground with pixels further from the edge, synthesising new pixels to replace unwanted edge artefacts. Useful for dealing with a noticeable dark or light edge caused by excessive in-camera sharpening and chroma subsampling as well as the real world light wrap that is present in some shots.
Edge Tools is a new plug-in which can be added on top of the main keyer module. Provides standalone Light Wrap and Edge adjustments - including the new Fine Edge, Edge Replace and BG Match operations - that can be used with any image with an alpha channel. For example you can use it with an HSV Keyer or use it on titles to create interesting edge effects.
A new feature in the Edge Tools Plug-in, Fine Edge allows you to darken the outer edge and brighten the inner edge of the foreground’s semi-transparent (grey matte values) pixels. Quite sophisticated results can be achieve with a look that differs from the main Edge brightness. It is also more efficient.
A powerful new image analysis plug-in.
Operation
- The plug-in comes complete with two separate Keying modules, Hawaiki Keyer 4.6 (Green) and Hawaiki Keyer 4.6 (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.
NB. Hawaiki Keyer 4.5 plug-ins are still available to use and for updating existing keys.
- Hawaiki Edge Tools and Hawaiki Slice can be used with either green or blue screens.
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 Final Cut Pro 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.
INVERT: The Invert button allows you to invert many of the views, including: On Black, Final Key, Analysis, Main Matte, and Combined Matte.
Matte Check: provides a gamma correction to the matte view so you can easily spot pixels in the background that are not clear. Turn off to have the Matte view match the alpha channel view of the host.
ADVANCED: Checking this box displays advanced controls in the Primary and Secondary groups. NB. Any changes made to the advanced controls persist when this is unchecked - i.e it doesn’t disable them.
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 Screen Clean mode shows the result of the Screen Clean process.
- The On Color mode shows you the final key composited over a black background or any other color of your choice with correct premultiplication. 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 (90 to 99% opacity) 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.
- 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 Despill view shows you the unmatted source image after the spill suppression has been applied.
- The Use Background view shows you the result of the Despill - Use Background process where spill on the edge of the foreground is colorized by the background image. It shows the output of the whole Despill process multiplied by the main matte and the custom edge matte employed by Use Background (composited over black).
- The Edge Matte view shows you the fine edge matte that is used by BG Match and Edge Replace within the Edge Tools group 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 Pre-Qualify views [REMOVED from the Hawaiki Keyer 4.5 plug-ins] show you the map of the background and foreground which Hawaiki Keyer precalculates for use with the pre-qualify RGB controls. In the PQ Foreground view the more yellow the image is the more it is being calculated as part of the foreground and the more magenta it is in PQ Background, the more it's being treated as part of the background.
Screen Clean
- NEW in Hawaiki Keyer 4.5 - Screen Clean
is a sophisticated screen correction function that intelligently analyses the green or blue screen backing to remove defects and create an even screen, making most keys a lot easier to pull.
- Hawaiki Keyer 4.5 Tutorial - Introducing Screen Clean
- Auto - Screen Clean's intelligent analysis is optimised to give the best possible result but you can manually override some of this. Disabling Auto brings up the option to make a pick of the screen. This colour is then used to smooth out defects in the screen.
- Pick Screen - Visible when Auto is disabled. Clicking on the color swatch brings up the Mac OS color picker allowing you make a pick of the screen - switch the view mode to Source.
- Include - The Include slider defines the areas of the screen that are to be replaced - increase the value to grab more of the screen but be careful to maintain edge detail.
- Density - The Density slider has a very similar effect to the Density sliders in Primary and Secondary and can be used either on its own or in conjunction with these controls - increase it to clear more of the screen.
- Edge Protect - Excludes the edges of the foreground from the process. Default works for most shots but you may need to increase on shots with a lot of spill.
- Clamp - By default Screen Clean won't adjust brighter parts of the screen, as they will normally clear. However if they're less saturated than the rest of the screen you may need to level off these bright spots by increasing the Clamp slider.
- Amount - Mix the cleaned screen with the source.
It's not very often that one manages to shoot a perfectly even green or blue screen backing and sometimes the results can be very uneven indeed, which means that the keyer is having to work overtime to compensate and that inevitably compromises the overall result.
So while you can use the Density and Level controls to clear the darker parts of an uneven screen, often these patches are insufficiently distinct from the edge of the foreground, especially hair, and you lose edge detail in the process.
Screen Clean solves this problem - clearing the backing whilst preserving edges. It also frees up the Secondary keyer for further refinements rather than having to use it to clean up an uneven screen. Screen Clean can also benefit well lit screens - enhancing edge detail by smoothing out out the unevenness that is very close to the key subject.
NB. The best view to evaluate Screen Clean is the Analysis view and we've also provided a dedicated Screen Clean view so you can see the results of the process.
Primary
- Hawaiki Keyer 4 Tutorial: Primary and Secondary - Basics
- 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. 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, some of your background may 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.
- Auto - Produces a key by extracting the screen color automatically for every frame and comparing that with every pixel in the image. The intelligent analysis in Hawaiki Keyer 4 is optimised to give the best possible result but you can manually override this. Disabling Auto brings up the option to make a pick of the screen.
- Pick Screen - Visible when Auto is disabled. Clicking on the color swatch brings up the Mac OS color picker allowing you make a pick of the screen - switch the view mode to Source.
- DENSITY — Use the density control to clear the backing. Switching on invert in Analysis mode can help show those stray pixels that have yet to be zeroed.
- 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. If you are having major problems with solidiying your foreground, then you will need to have a look at using Matte Cleaner (see below).
- LEVEL - Adjusts the level of the screen. In general increasing level (from the default) can help clear the backing, decreasing reclaim edge detail, but it will depend on the shot and what you are seeing in the Analysis view. We’ve noticed most of the clips users sent us had backings that were underexposed. Level is our answer to that.
It uses a novel algorithm that helps clear the backing whilst maximising edge detail.
NB. Some very bright screens may require you bypass the level control altogether and there is a checkbox for this when Advanced is enabled. - Bias - HK4 is a sophisticated color difference keyer - in essence it works by comparing the dominant channel of the screen (green or blue) with the other two channels (red and blue for a green screen, red and green for a blue screen)
Bias allows you to use one or the other of those other channels or a mix of the two. The setting that works best is very much dependent on not only the colour balance of the screen but also of the foreground. We’re working on automating this but in the meantime it is largely a process of trial and error.
A setting of 0 uses the maximum of the two channels - this will give you a solid FG but sometimes makes the edges too solid. A setting of 1 compares the dominant channel with the minimum of the other two and will often clear the backing but at the expense of eroding the foreground. A Bias value of 0.5 is a 50/50 mix of the two channels. We’ve found a default of 0.25 - a mix that favours the max channel - a good starting point.
NB. In HK3 this control was called Screen Calibration. - Bias Gain - Adjust the gain of the channel or channels set with the Bias control - it can be useful for solidifying the foreground in away that produces a smoother gradient at the edges than FG Fill.
- Primary Advanced Controls: Displayed when the Advanced checkbox is enabled.
- FG Fill Knee - Sets the point at which the FG Fill kicks in. Reduce it to add more transparency to the edges, increase it to solidify the edges.
- FG Threshold - Works like a white clip control but earlier in the matte extraction process so the effect is more subtle. Reduce it to solidify the foreground, increase it to give the edges of the foreground greater transparency.
- Black Limit - Limits the Level process to prevent dark parts of the FG from eroding. If you have a screen with dark patches that won’t clear then reduce the amount.
- Bypass Level - Bypasses the level control - may be required on some screens (especially very bright stock shots)
- Linear - Changes the basic curve used when comparing the screen to the foreground. For green screens we’ve come up with a custom curve - enabling Linear turns this off. Linear is on by default with blue screens.
If when keying a green screen you find your edges are too soft you may wish to enable this. Note it will make it harder to clear dark parts of the backing but the level control can help here.
NB. Enabling Linear also changes the way the Matte group gain and gamma controls work - Limit Bias Gain - Limits the Bias gain to the foreground. Allows you to push Bias Gain so as to keep the foreground solid whilst adjusting the Bias and Switch Bias controls in a way that clears the backing e.g you can switch Bias to use the min channel whilst maintaining a solid foreground.
- Switch Bias - Lets you specify the channels used rather than using the maximum and minimum. When enabled in HK4 Green 0 becomes the red channel and 1 blue and in HK4 Blue 0 is the green channel and 1 red. Like the main Bias slider this is a control best experimented with.
- Gamma (RGB) - Adjusts the gamma and color balance of the shot being sent into the keyer. Really useful for dealing with problematic shots. When used in tandem with the bias controls quite sophisticated results can be achieved. HK3 users you can think of this as a Pre-Qualify control that works on the whole image.
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.
Secondary
- Replicates the Primary key controls (including Advanced controls) and provides matte controls to define the area of the image effected by the Secondary key.
- Secondary Matte Controls:
- Guide - When enabled (and Secondary is enabled) a white outline showing the edge of the secondary matte is displayed. When softness is greater than zero a grey outline is also shown. NB. This is disabled automatically whenever the Final Key view is selected.
- Invert - Inverts the secondary matte.
- Pos X - Sets the position of centre of the matte in the X axis as fraction of the wdith offset from the tracking point when Track X is enabled otherwise it is an offset from the centre of the frame.
- Track X - Enables Tracking in the X axis i.e the secondary matte will follow the horizontal movement of foreground elements within the Track Area.
- Pos Y - Sets the position of centre of the matte in the Y axis as fraction of the height offset from the tracking point when Track X is enabled otherwise it is an offset from the centre of the frame.
- Track Y - - Enables Tracking in the Y axis i.e the secondary matte will follow the vertical movement of foreground elements within the Track Area.
- Scale - Increases or decreases the size of the matte
- Height - Sets the height of the matte as a fraction of the height
- Width - Sets the width of the matte as a fraction of the height
NB. A value of 0.5 for both height and width will give you a perfect square or circle (when roundness is one). - Angle - Rotate the matte
- Roundness - Adjust in tandem with the width and height controls to create a range of squares, circles, rectangles and ovals.
- Softness - Adjust the softness or feathering of the matte - a second grey outline is present when softness is greater than zero.
- Scale Softness - When enabled softness is scaled relative to the size of the matte. Uncheck to maintain a fixed amount of feathering when resizing the secondary matte.
- Track Area - Defines the area of the frame to be tracked - defaults to the whole frame. Adjust the Left, Right, Bottom, Top sliders to reduce this. Red lines will appear on screen to show the area being tracked.
NB. You will generally want to exclude from the Track Area: anything in the frame that is not going to be in the final composite e.g lights,mics, areas of the frame not covered by the green screen; static objects; moving objects you don't want masked by the Secondary matte.
NB. Set Matte overrides the key controls and allows you to manually set a matte value for the secondary area - useful when using Secondary to create a garbage or holdout matte.
Denoise
- The Denoise group 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. You have 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 are replaced by RGB sliders.
Pre-Qualify
- REMOVED from the Hawaiki Keyer 4.5 plug-ins - features that we added to Hawaiki Keyer 4 such as RGB Gamma and Bias Gain for Primary and Secondary largely obsoleted Pre-Qualify but we kept it around for existing users. With the addition of Screen Clean in Hawaiki Keyer 4.5 we doubt you'll ever need to use it and if you do the Hawaiki Keyer 4 plug-ins can be used.
- Pre-Qualify is a versatile set of controls, 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.
- New in HK4 are separate views for the background and foreground mattes and matte black and white controls (replacing FG and BG separation) that work independently on each matte. Makes it much easier to isolate a correction to the foreground or background or correct both differently e.g use a hard foreground matte and a soft background matte.
NB. Separation control at the top of the group increases the density of both mattes. - 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 dealing to specific areas that pose a problem.
You may have a section of the foreground that is being eroded and showing as blue in Analysis view. 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. - HK4 automatically detects the Background and Foreground areas and these are shown in the PQ Background and PQ Foreground views. 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 Black and White sliders. Generally FG White and BG Black won't need adjusting. While it might be tempting to increase BG White and FG Black 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.
Matte
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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 Blur and Matte Cleaner (with Fill Holes option), and Outer Matte.
- Gain - Scales the matte. Works in a similar way to the Density control in Primary and Secondary - increasing it will help clean up the background - but across both mattes and in a way that is less prone to eroding the foreground when pushed. That said it is best to exhaust the possibilites of the Level,Density and Bias controls before turning to Matte Gain.
- 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.
- 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. 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 level,density and bias 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. - 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).
- Matte Blur - blurs the matte using a gaussian blur. The slider sets the blur radius.
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. - 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.
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 HK4 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, HK4 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. For an explanation of what the Spill Map is and does, see below.
- Brightness - The Brightness control lets you make manual adjustments to the brightness of the despill.
- 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.
- Restore 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.
- NEW in Hawaiki Keyer 4.5 The default Despill for green (blue is unchanged) produces more pleasing results with a variety of backgrounds. We tweaked the Restore Luminance process for green screens to better account for darker foregrounds.
NB. You may need to increase Brightness or increase Restore Luminance (you can enter values above the max slider value of 1) to match very bright backgrounds. - 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.
Spill Map
- When setting up the spill suppression operation it's a good idea to use the Spill Map view 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 view - 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.
- 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.
Use Background
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Use Background uses the color of the Background image to colorize the areas of spill on the edge of the foreground. The area of the foreground replaced can be seen in the Use Background view, which will update when you adjust the controls below.
- The Amount slider controls the mix of the original despilled image with the background image - a setting of 0 will turn it off.
- The Depth slider sets the distance into the foreground that the spill is replaced with the background i.e the width of the custom edge matte employed by Use Background.
- The Density slider modifies the intensity of the Use Background process by changing the density of the custom edge matte.
- Areas of the foreground are only replaced where there is spill, shown as pink in the Spill Map view (more precisely, the Use Background matte is the intersection of a custom edge matte with the Spill Map). This means that areas of the Spill Map that are cyan will not be colorized. It also means that changes to the Spill Map controls will change the intensity of the Use Background process.
- Selecting the Background: You will need to add the background image (or footage) to the Background image well. In Final Cut Pro 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 Use Background 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 (Final Cut Pro), 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.
NB. The Use Background view will also update when the main Despill parameters are changed.
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 the color correction suite.
- Adjust the Global Saturation, the saturation for shadows, midtones and highlights (Low, Mid, and Hi), the global Lift, Gamma and Gain , or if need be, you can even fine tune the RGB balance of the Lift, Gamma and Gain.
White Balance
- The White Balance section within the Color 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.
Edge Tools
The Edge Tools group provides a range of custom tools for refining your edges - Edge Replace, BG Match and Light Wrap.
NB. Even more tools are available in the standalone Edge Tools Plug-in.
Edge Matte
- 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 Light Wrap.
- Qualify - If you enable Qualify, you will see the Center, Angle and Spread controls appear and the Edge Matte view change with purple on the left hand side and yellow on the right, representing the two halves of a gradient matte. This is used in Edge Replace where additional controls will become visible.
Edge Replace
- Edge Replace allows you to replace the edge of the foreground with pixels further from the edge. Useful for dealing with a noticeable dark or light edge caused by excessive in-camera sharpening and chroma subsampling as well as the real world light wrap that is present in some shots.
- It does this by eroding - Sample In - then blurring - Fill - the foreground and replacing the original foreground with these synthesized pixels in the area defined by the main Edge Matte.
Amount controls the blend of the replacement with the original - a value of 1 replaces the original foreground entirely (providing the Edge Matte value is also 1).
NB. You can refine the area affected by Edge Replace with the Edge Matte controls. - You need to increase Sample In enough to avoid sampling the edge artefacts (by default Sample In is set to zero because the Fill process suffices for a lot of shots) and then push Fill just enough to ensure the edge pixels are replaced.
The ideal setting for these controls is very much dependent on the color of the surrounding foreground pixels as well as the color of the background in the area you are replacing. - When The Edge Matte is qualified you have the option to qualify Edge Replace with a gradient matte and the — B — controls appear. The main sliders will now control the areas that are purple and the B sliders the edges that are yellow. This allows you to target specific problem areas.
BG Match
- Background Match automatically adjusts the edges of the foreground to match the luminance of the background. So if a foreground pixel is darker than the background it will be brightened and if lighter than the background, darkened but only in the area defined by the Edge Matte. BG Match can be used as an alternative or complement to Light Wrap.
- Selecting the Background: You will need to add the background image (or footage) to the Background image well. In Final Cut Pro 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 BG Match 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 (Final Cut Pro), 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.
Light Wrap
- 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.
The 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. - Selecting the Background: You will need to add the background image (or footage) to the Background image well. In Final Cut Pro 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.
External Matte
- HK4 gives you the ablity to bring in an external matte for use by the keyer.
- In Final Cut Pro 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 (Final Cut Pro), 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.
External Sources, On Color, & Presets
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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 Use Color option for LightWrap, Use Background and BG Match; and the presets system.
- 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.
HAWAIKI EDGE TOOLS
- Edge Tools is a new plug-in which can be added on top of the main keyer module.
It provides standalone Light Wrap and Edge adjustments - including the new Fine Edge, Edge Replace and BG Match operations - that can be used with any image with an alpha channel. For example you can use it with an HSV Keyer or use it on titles to create interesting edge effects.
Hawaiki Edge Tools gives you superb control over the edges of the final key, with a range of advanced ways to fine-tune the edges of your composite for a truly professional finish.
- Edge Matte - Adjust the Width and Density slider (found in the Edge Matte section at the bottom of the Edge Group) 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.
Edge
- You can adjust the color (RGB Balance, Brightness and Saturation), transparency and blur of the edge. Note that unless Qualify is enabled, the A sliders are the master controls for the various edge corrections and the B sliders are not shown.
- 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 - Set the blur radius with the Blur sliders. Edge Blur has a more subtle effect than the main Matte Blur available in the Keyer modules.
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. - Qualify - If you enable 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.
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 Edge Tools is that you can divide the edge in two and affect either side independently, using the Qualify option.
NB. Changes to Edge transparency and blur change the matte and as such will be reflected in the Matte views.
Edge Replace
- Edge Replace allows you to replace the edge of the foreground with pixels further from the edge. Useful for dealing with a noticeable dark or light edge caused by excessive in-camera sharpening and chroma subsampling as well as the real world light wrap that is present in some shots.
- It does this by eroding - Sample In - then blurring - Fill - the foreground and replacing the original foreground with these synthesized pixels in the area defined by the main Edge Matte.
Amount controls the blend of the replacement with the original - a value of 1 replaces the original foreground entirely (providing the Edge Matte value is also 1).
NB. You can refine the area affected by Edge Replace with the Edge Matte controls. - You need to increase Sample In enough to avoid sampling the edge artefacts (by default Sample In is set to zero because the Fill process suffices for a lot of shots) and then push Fill just enough to ensure the edge pixels are replaced.
The ideal setting for these controls is very much dependent on the color of the surrounding foreground pixels as well as the color of the background in the area you are replacing. - When The Edge Matte is qualified you have the option to qualify Edge Replace with a gradient matte and the — B — controls appear. The main sliders will now control the areas that are purple and the B sliders the edges that are yellow. This allows you to target specific problem areas.
Fine Edge
- Fine Edge allows you to darken the outer edge and brighten the inner edge of the foreground’s semi-transparent (grey matte values) pixels.
Quite sophisticated results can be achieve with a look that differs from the main Edge brightness.
NB.Use BG requires the Background dropzone to be populated as it uses the luminance of the background image to adjust the process.
BG Match
- Background Match automatically adjusts the edges of the foreground to match the luminance of the background. So if a foreground pixel is darker than the background it will be brightened and if lighter than the background, darkened but only in the area defined by the Edge Matte. BG Match can be used as an alternative or complement to Light Wrap.
NB. The Background drop zone needs to be populated for BG Match to work
Light Wrap
- 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.
The 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. - Selecting the Background: You will need to add the background image (or footage) to the Background image well. In Final Cut Pro 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 (Final Cut Pro), 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. 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. - 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 group, BG Match and Edge Replace.
External Sources, On Color, & Presets
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In the final section, you can find the image source wells for the Background Image; the On Color selector swatch; the Use Color option for LightWrap, Fine Edge, BG Match and Edge Blend; the Blend Mode menu and Opacity slider used in Composite view; and the presets system.
- COMPOSITE View - When the Background dropzone is populated you can bypass the host compositing by switching the View menu to COMPOSITE and using one of 30 blend modes to composite the foreground with the background. This can be handy in complex timelines where you are using a lot of layers. The Opacity slider controls the opacity of the foreground.
NB. Blend modes also work with the On Color view. Enable Use Color when using this view mode for Light Wrap, Edge Blend and BG Match to use the color selected with the On Color picker. - The built-in presets allow you to save any of your edge adjustments for future use, or you can customise a default layout of the plug-in.
HAWAIKI SLICE
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When you first add Hawaiki Slice to a clip the slice graph showing the red, green, blue and alpha values as lines will appear along with yellow dotted line that indicates the slice of the frame that you are sampling. Moving the onscreen point control up and down changes the row that is sampled. Moving it left and right controls the centre of the zoomed area when the zoom level is greater than 100%.
- VIEW- Switch the channel(s) displayed: options RGBA - normal Color image, Red, Green, Blue, Alpha and the Max view - a three-colour view that shows which of the three channels is the dominant one in each area of the image - useful for identifying issues with green and blue screens.
NB. This menu is also available onscreen in Final Cut Pro X and Motion. - SLICE - Turn the onscreen slice display on and off.
NB. This checkbox is also available as an onscreen control in Final Cut Pro and Motion. - Sampling - Switch between a horizontal and vertical slice of the image.
- Zoom Level - Allows you to zoom in on a portion of the image and see a more detailed slice - the slice graph updates and the area excluded is darkened. NB. the slice is zoomed around the centre of the onscreen control.
- Zoom - When enabled the background image is zoomed as well so the slice graph aligns with the image pixels (except when Mini Slice is enabled, see below).
- Min - Sets the bottom of the slice graph range - defaults to 0, reduce to show out of range values.
NB. If you take the Min value below 0 a dotted white line appears to indicate zero. - Max - Sets the top of the slice graph range, defaults to 1, increase to show out of range values.
- NB. Values beyond the slider range can be entered if you need to see very high or very low values in your image.
- Slice Length - Switch between setting the slice length either using the Zoom level or the Pixels slider that replaces Zoom Level when Pixels is selected. The Pixels option is handy if you're only wanting to sample a small area.
- Highlight - Turns off the highlighting of the zoomed section of the image.
- Gamma encoding - Switch between Linear (the linear color space used by Hawaiki Plug-ins), Rec. 709 (generally matches the built-in scopes of the hosts) and sRGB (useful for getting color values for the web or graphics).
- MINI SLICE - shrinks the slice graph to a portion of the screen. The size and position of the Mini Slice graph can be set with the Display controls below.
- Square - Shown when Mini-Slice is enabled - Overrides the frame aspect ratio so that the Mini Slice graph is displayed as a square similar to the waveform displays available in most host applications.
- Display Horizontal - Visible when Sampling is set to Vertical - displays the vertical slice graph horizontally (bottom -> top gets mapped to left -> right). May be more intuitive for some users, especially when used in tandem with Square in Mini-Slice mode.
- VALUE checkbox - turns on the RGBA display that shows the numerical value of the slice.
- Value Sample - Switches the value displayed between an Average of all the pixels in the slice or when switched to “Pixel” the option to step through each of the pixels. The Slice Pixel slider appears allowing you to step through the slice (0 samples the left most pixel, 1 the right) and the pixel sampled is shown on the slice guide.
- Value Fullscreen - Displays the value as a fullscreen colour - useful if you need a swatch value that is an average of a group of pixels and to provide a larger target if you want a swatch value for a single pixel.
NB. Updating the View menu cycles through the channels of this sample. - DISPLAY - Size, Left-Right, Bottom-Top - Sets the size and position of the Value readout as well as the Mini Slice graph.
- Background - Sets the opacity of the Mini Slice and Value background.
- Line Width - Sets the width of the slice graph lines.
- Smooth Zoom - Smooths the zoomed image so individual pixels aren’t visible.
- Alpha Check - Works like Matte Check in the Keyer modules, applies a slight gamma correction to the alpha channel view so you can see stray pixels that are not cleared.
- Dim Background - Darkens the image - useful if you can't see the slice graph because the image colours are close to the slice graph colours.
- Pos - Reflects the position of the onscreen point control.
- Presets - Allows you to save a custom layout for Hawaiki Slice.
NB. When sampling is set to Vertical moving the OSC left and right sets the column that is sampled and up and down controls the centre of the zoom.
By default Hawaiki Slice uses the full width and height of the frame to display the slice graph, so in horizontal mode the top of the frame is set to the Max value (defaults to 1) and the bottom is set to the Min (defaults to 0) and when a vertical slice is sampled the left of the frame is the Min value and the right the Max.
Frequently Asked Questions
- ”I am having issues when using 4K footage in a 1080 timeline in Final Cut Pro.” - 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.
- "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 HK4 button at the top of the Inspector is a shortcut to take you to the manual at any time.
Sliders - A General Note
Some parameters can have values entered that are greater than the slider maximum or lower than the slider minimum. If you find you need to go beyond the slider maximum or minimum, try entering a higher or lower value.
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.
- Even the best keyers in the world sometimes can't give you the perfect key for all areas of your shot in one go and often you might find that you are compromising one area in order to get the required result in another area and it can get very frustrating very quickly. The huge and unique advantage of Hawaiki Keyer 4 is that when you engage Secondary you have easy access to two keyers in one and it's a very easy job to break up your shot into two distinct areas so as to get the best result for each one. 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. Breaking up the key like this (especially for hair and any other subtle edge detail) is a trick used by all professional visual effects artists, so take a tip from them! Hawaiki Keyer 4 takes away all the hard work of doing this so you can get outstanding results with the minimum of fuss.
Also don't forget that Hawaiki Keyer's Outer Matte option is a very handy way of garbage matting unevenly-lit screens and other issues. Remember though that it's always a good idea to use a rough mask, crop or manual garbage matte to remove areas of the background that are hard to key out. Anything you can easily do to make the keyer work less hard is going to make for a better looking key in the end. - 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.