When I started watching the tutorial, I intended to go only through the “Getting Started” section in my first sitting. I actually ended up having to pull myself away after the fifth section, because I didn’t want to be late to an appointment. A few times I had to hit pause and think through what had just been presented, because I heard it and I was following it, but I needed a little extra time to absorb what I had learned before moving on to the next topic.
To help catch everything, I really appreciated the Full Screen mode. By expanding the tutorial to fill my screen it was like someone was showing me how to do the composite in my own application. It’s a different experience when the tutorial uses the whole screen than when it appears in a small window.
This training has three uses. The first time through, I was entertained and I was learning to think differently about keying and to view the shot differently. The second time through, I used it as a tutorial and I would watch a section, pause it, and try the technique on my own footage. The third time it is a valuable reference. There are so many techniques covered it is hard to remember them all. And being able to go back to the chapters and then move the cursor on the timeline to the section of interest makes it a valuable job aid.
In my opinion, this training is absolutely worth the cost. I would (and have) paid this much for reference books. But having the host show me and tell me, rather than reading, allows me to learn much faster. And the way this training is organized and presented it is a useful resource later as well.
With that said, to recap my comments earlier, there are four weak elements of the training:
- Acquiring green screen footage, or at least being able to explain to someone what constitutes good green screen footage.
- Compositing in a low-color space such as SD or HDV.
- Advice relevant to specific common uses. (Explosion, Falling, and so forth).
- Method to streamline work flow for production efficiency; tradeoffs of quality for speed.
If the above elements are important to you, then you may still find this training to be valuable and informative. You will just have to find other resources to fill in the gaps.
Professional Keying with Keylight is a full training resource for keying. It not only teaches the interface and techniques, but presents these in a practical context of problems solving. And knowing when to apply a technique with Keylight is at least as important as knowing how to do it. It is a solid general resource for keying with Keylight in AE.
