Creating black silhouette from green screen video in MEPP 2020

barndoorproductionstheatre wrote on 8/14/2022, 11:01 AM

I have an actor in the foreground with a green-screened waterfall in the background. I want to turn the actor's image into a black silhouette, leaving the green screened bg video, but can't find a way to do this. I've searched the forum but haven't found a way that works for me. Any suggestions, please?

Comments

emmrecs wrote on 8/14/2022, 11:15 AM

@barndoorproductionstheatre

Before attempting to answer your question can we establish exactly which version of Movie Studio you have?
This is the forum for users of Movie Edit Pro and versions of MS from 18 onwards. If you have an earlier version then any advice we may offer here is likely to be rather less than useful!

Jeff
Forum Moderator

Former user wrote on 8/14/2022, 11:19 AM

Hi, use your green screen (Chroma Key) as you would normally to isolate the person,

then add Brightness & contrast to make it black or white,

There's a couple of ways of doing that, you could export as a B/W image then use Mask Generator to adjust the opacity of the silhouette,

A full screen capture of what you're trying to do would help.

barndoorproductionstheatre wrote on 8/14/2022, 12:16 PM

Thank you both for you answers.

I've worked out my problem: Brightness/Contrast and a bunch of other video effects aren't working for me in Movie Edit Pro Premium 2020. I know they did last year when I last worked on video in the program, so lord knows what's happened.

So, I went back to ME Pro Plus 2016 and found I can't import MP4s. So I went back to MEPP 2020, imported the MP4s, exported them as MPGs, imported them into ME Pro Plus 2016 and used the video effects there.

Just with use of Chroma-Key and Brightness/Contrast, I've now got the silhouette effect I want and it works very nicely.

Thanks again for your help.

David

Former user wrote on 8/14/2022, 12:38 PM

@barndoorproductionstheatre Have a play with Mask Generator, it doesn't have to be applied to a B/W clip & it can create some interesting effects, esp when coupled with Croma Key, Brightness & Contrast etc..

johnebaker wrote on 8/14/2022, 2:01 PM

@barndoorproductionstheatre

. . . . Brightness/Contrast and a bunch of other video effects aren't working for me. . . .

This is most likely cause is the Program setting, Display options, Video mode is incorrectly set.

As a starting point set the Video mode to Compatibility mode (Video for Windows)

Your computer specification may help - see this topic for what is required and please quote processor and graphics card make/model in full, and also what monitor/screen resolution(s) your are working with if this is a laptop.

I would suggest you put this information in your profile signature so we do not have to keep asking for it.

Are the graphics card drivers up to date?

Also see this tutorial on creating masks using the mask generator, @Former user mentioned, without the use of green screen.

John EB
Forum Moderator