I recently did a REview of M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap – it’s not a great movie – but the making of that video was the first time I worked with a virtual green screen on a longer-length video (I use it regularly on shorter ones).

The experience was informative and something I intend to use again, so I wanted to write briefly about what I learned.

Positives

• Image resolution

I noticed that when shooting 1080p video and importing it into Final Cut Pro X image quality wasn’t quite as sharp as I would have liked. There was a flatness to the image that, while acceptable, didn’t quite pop as much as I would have liked. When importing the footage into Zoom and exporting it with a green screen the image ‘jumps’ forward, making it look sharper (so much so that I didn’t feel the need, beyond color correction, to treat it any further).

• Smaller Amount of Files and Sizes

Since I was exporting Quicktime files into Zoom, I felt that the process would work better if I were dealing with less actual files (a typical video 10-15 minute video would consist of 2 to four files) so before I imported the footage into Zoom I combined the videos, which means that instead of having 2 or 3 files over a gigabyte or two each, I’m left with a single file about a gigabyte or so (it’s worth mentioning that Zoom has restrictions of the length of the videos that it’s able to process from a free account. I don’t recall that number off the top of my head – I want to say that it’s something like 17 minutes – but I have not reached that point nor am likely to anytime soon).

And besides, whether it’s 15 or 30 minutes long I could just as easily break it into pieces (like it was originally, despite my preference not to).

Negatives

• Image resolution

I noted earlier that there was a sharpness of image that I wasn’t getting prior, which I appreciated though what I also noticed was that the engine in Zoom that tracks movement doesn’t do it all that well.

I’m not Italian but I tend to talk with my hands, therefore the virtual green screen is often working overtime to track my movements, not always successfully (by which I mean you get moments of the real environment peeking through on occasion. It’s not the worst thing though I would really like to ‘fix’ the issue.

Another problem, related to movement, results in another artifact that I didn’t anticipate.

The first I already mentioned – when the actual background peeks through – I can counter with an actual green screen, which I suspect will fill in the gaps.

The second issue also revolves around the virtual green screen’s attempts to track movement.

• Image tracking

What I noticed was that a ‘blob’ would occasionally pop up around the area of my chest. I think that it’s caused by the virtual green screen attempting to track the movements of my hands when they cross the area of my chest.

Seeing that not talking with my hands isn’t going to happen, I need to figure out a way around it (though the combination of actual green screen with virtual might minimize the issue).

Conclusion

My first experience with larger-form videos with a virtual green screen worked pretty well though while the image is sharper there are issues with the process I need to compensate for.

It’s worth mentioning that I could use an app like Capcut to process the video, which as far as I could tell has a better virtual green screen, BUT that isn’t an option (the last time I checked the app wasn’t available in the United States due to attempts by the Biden and Trump administrations to seemingly regulate it so it complies with propaganda needs).

Then there’s the problem of Capcut REALLY wanting users to get a Pro account, so much so that they took away the ability to add virtual green screens to the standard account.

That really bugs me (never mind all the talk about the app being a front for China – as far as I can see that’s not at all the case, though knowing how insidious American companies like Facebook and X (or the app formerly known as Twitter) are, it’s something I can’t rule out.

And since I won’t touch either Facebook or X with a 10-foot pole, I can’t justify using Capcut.