Digital Commons at Penn State

Always Setup your project in Final Cut Pro by using this Tutorial.

First import your footage and background (image or video to be the background) into Final Cut Pro.

Now lets bring our background down into the time line by dragging it in.

Now we want to create another video track for our other file, to do this click Sequence > Insert Tracks a dialogue box should pop up asking how many tracks and of what type. Type in the number 1 in the Video Tracks and click OK

This bottom track will be the background of your video, you can use still images or movies as a background. You should now have two video Tracks that look like this.

Now we want to add our green screen clip to the top Video track, the reason we want it on top of the other clip is because Final Cut Pro works in layers, the top most track is always the displayed or top layer.

Now that we are ready to green screen we want to double click the Green Screen footage that is in the timeline (note this clip in the timeline now can have different settings than the one in your bins) Now The clip that we double clicked should show up in the Viewer window like this.

Let's click on the “Filters” tab across the top of the Viewer window, this will show us that we currently have no filters on that clip.

Now we can add our keying effect by clicking Effects > Video Filters > Key > Color Key

Now you should see the “Color Key” filter show up in the viewer window, we want to click on the eye dropper tool so we can choose which color to key.

Now move over to the canvas window and with the eye dropper tool select an area of the green screen near the face of our subject. This should change the color of our key to green.

Now we can start moving the levers to get a proper key, Start by setting all of the values to zero and adjusting tolerance until most of the green is gone, then you can adjust edge feather to soften the edges and finally adjust edge thin to make the green glow go away.