Remove a Green Screen in Premiere Pro

The short answer

In Adobe Premiere Pro, a green screen is normally removed with the Ultra Key effect. Apply it to the green-screen clip, sample the green with the Key Color eyedropper, then refine the matte and spill settings until the background is transparent and the subject's edges look clean. Put your replacement background on a video track below the keyed clip so it shows through. How good the result is depends heavily on the source footage. Evenly lit, well-separated, less compressed footage keys more cleanly than footage with shadows, wrinkles or heavy compression.

Keying is a video-only operation. It does not change the audio recorded with the clip, whether that audio came from a webcam's built-in microphone or a separate mic.

Before you start

• A clip recorded against a green (or blue) background, imported into your project.
• A replacement background: a still image, video clip or color matte.
• A sequence with at least two video tracks available.

Menu and panel names below describe Ultra Key as it has commonly appeared in Premiere Pro. Adobe changes the interface between versions, so check the labels in your installed version if something does not match.

Steps to key out the green screen

• 1. Place the replacement background on a lower video track, such as V1.
• 2. Place the green-screen clip on the track directly above it, such as V2, aligned in time with the background.
• 3. In the Effects panel, open Video Effects, then Keying, and drag Ultra Key onto the green-screen clip. You can also type "Ultra Key" in the Effects search field.
• 4. Select the clip and open the Effect Controls panel. Under Ultra Key, click the Key Color eyedropper and click a representative area of the green background in the Program Monitor. Choose an area close to the subject rather than the brightest or darkest patch.
• 5. Try the Setting presets (Default, Relaxed, Aggressive) to see which gets closest before adjusting values by hand.
• 6. Open Matte Generation and adjust Transparency, Highlight, Shadow, Tolerance and Pedestal to remove leftover green while keeping detail such as hair.
• 7. Open Matte Cleanup and use Choke to pull the matte edge inward and Soften to blur hard edges. Use small adjustments, because too much choke can eat into the subject.
• 8. Open Spill Suppression to reduce green tint reflected onto the subject, especially around hair, shoulders and skin.
• 9. If needed, use Color Correction within Ultra Key, or a separate color effect, to match the subject to the new background.

Check the matte, not just the composite

The composite view can hide problems. In Ultra Key, change Output from Composite to Alpha Channel. The subject should appear solid white and the removed background solid black. Gray speckles in the background mean green is still partly visible. Gray patches inside the subject mean parts of the person are becoming semi-transparent. Adjust Matte Generation and Matte Cleanup until the alpha view is clean, then switch Output back to Composite.

Removing areas the key can't handle

Light stands, the edge of the backdrop, or poorly lit corners often won't key out cleanly. Instead of pushing the key harder, which also degrades the subject, cut those regions away. Use the Crop effect for straight edges, or draw a mask under the clip's Opacity or under the Ultra Key effect to keep only the area around the subject. This is often called a garbage matte.

Why some footage keys poorly

The following are general compositing principles, not measurements of any particular camera:

• Uneven lighting on the backdrop creates several shades of green, so one sampled color won't cover them all.
• A subject standing close to the backdrop picks up more green spill and casts shadows onto it.
• Green clothing, props or reflective surfaces will be keyed out along with the background.
• Heavy video compression, common in webcam and streaming recordings, can blur color detail at edges and make fine detail such as hair harder to separate. This is an inference from how compression works, and the effect varies by camera and settings.
• Motion blur turns edges semi-transparent, which a keyer can only partly resolve.

What this means for your audio

Applying Ultra Key, cropping or masking changes only the image. The clip's linked audio is untouched and stays in sync as long as you move the video and audio together. If the speech in your green-screen recording sounds thin, echoey or noisy, keying will not fix or worsen it. That has to be handled at recording time, through microphone choice, placement and input selection, or afterward with audio effects. This guide does not cover webcam microphone setup because the question here is about video. No evidence was supplied on how particular webcam microphones perform in green-screen setups.

Gaps in this guide

No version-specific documentation, test footage or measurements were available for this article. Exact panel locations, preset names and default values may differ in your release of Premiere Pro. If they don't match, check Adobe's documentation for your installed version.