CorridorKey 2.0

Posted by ravenical 2 days ago

Counter206Comment78OpenOriginal

Comments

Comment by lambfoo 2 days ago

It is actually free for people other than organizations with more than US $20 million in annual revenue.

Source: https://github.com/nikopueringer/CorridorKey2.0

Comment by elijahciali 2 days ago

The weights and CLI tool have always been free. They're just charging individuals for their official plugin implementation so they can handle proper support and the like.

Comment by DetroitThrow 2 days ago

Wow, that's amazing to try in casual visual editing workflows. Very great results as well for something free.

Comment by teach 2 days ago

I also really enjoyed the "making of" video: https://youtu.be/svrdRAoIlxM?si=cG1gSRyWdGg8RnEM

Niko goes into some more detail about the licensing choices they've made and why towards the end of the video as well.

[Edit: note that the above video is "content" so if you're not used to the style it might be offputting but I'm into it]

It's been so cool to watch this develop

Comment by CitrusFruits 2 days ago

Huge fan of Corridor. For those that don't have twenty minutes, one of the big takeaways is that a pretty high level VFX Supervisor critiques the keys at the end and basically has only nits that you need to zoom in on or have a trained eye to catch. Very legitimate feedback for a top tier professional context, but this can get you really far otherwise.

Comment by ipsum2 2 days ago

The issues aren't nits, they're really obvious, even after YouTube compression.

Comment by rcxdude 2 days ago

They're also on some pretty damn hard to key shots, tbf.

Comment by normalaccess 2 days ago

Depends on the shot. Worlds better than version one of CorridorKey and they are using it internally on their own shows/content.

These tools can only get better and better as time goes on.

Comment by emkoemko 2 days ago

did i watch the same video? it was no where near professional level, he even said, as a first pass pre vis for test shots it would be great

Comment by Dylan16807 2 days ago

It doesn't output the final result that you'd expect from a human professional, but it does seem to be well into the professional level of tools. And for cheaper productions you could use it directly.

Comment by ZiiS 2 days ago

Not ready for strait output on a special effects driven big budget show who are more then happy to pay someone to sit there for days rotoscoping. These are not the only professionals wanting to use special effects. Would anyone complain if MrBeast's video got the blend of the texture of his cloaths a bit rough?

Comment by folkrav 2 days ago

I mean, having done quite a bit of rotoscoping work in high school, if you can start from the output of this plugin and refine a little, you’re absolutely still saving hours. It was still most of the way there.

Comment by normalaccess 2 days ago

I think that's a big chunk that people are missing. This tool ac get you from zero to 80%-90% for most shots in a handful of seconds.

Comment by Eji1700 2 days ago

> [Edit: note that the above video is "content" so if you're not used to the style it might be offputting but I'm into it]

I hate that it is because it makes me suspicious of every reaction. I happened to see the CD video on the clown wedding on the moon(sodium vapor maybe?) and so I at least have some grounding from this, but if I didn't I'd probably ignore most of this (as i ignored the thumbnail) because "literal industry defining tech" and "random temu mall ninja crap" has basically the same production pattern these days so why trust it?

I realize this is "old man yells at cloud" territory but it sucks that prostrating to the algorithm means all sincerity is lost because you have to ape Mr. Beast or whoever to get "engagement"

Edit-

And with that said, I'd say just jump to 23:40ish when the professional is talking if you're grumpy like me.

Comment by gewetensleegte 1 day ago

fortunately, if you're feeling grumpy, you can use one of their biggest sponsors to talk to a highly professional personal therapist with the ease of installing an app which is definitely not preying on people with mental health issues /s

Comment by ShakataGaNai 2 days ago

A beta price of $50 or full price of $100 is really a steal. If you do ANY sort of video production work, this is an amazing tool. The more casual of a green screen person you are, the more impressive this is.

This is like Magnet Mask for Final Cut, but probably better. I haven't compared/contrasted the two yet, but I have faith that Corridor has knocked this one out of the park from the demos I have seen.

(Yes, you can download it for free. You're paying for the pre-packaged convenience. I 100% paid them to support the work they are doing).

Comment by paaloeye 2 days ago

I always thought CorridorKey was free and open-source

Comment by bramhaag 2 days ago

You would think so considering the creator constantly calls it that, but it is merely source-available. This has been repeatedly brought up along with other very questionable license decisions [0]. The charitable interpretation is that the creator is very confused about what open source is and isn't.

Here's a summary:

- The project is licensed under the "Corridor Key License" [1], which is CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 with extra clauses that permit commercial use of you have their blessing (That's right, CC BY-NC with commercial use allowed).

- CC licenses should not be used for software, and the non-commercial restrictions make this project not open source.

- This project is based on Hiera, which licenses its weights under CC BY-NC 4.0 [2]. Again, non-commercial. He is selling this.

- The license was changed a few times after the community rewrote large parts of this project. The contributors should've retained their copyright to their contributed code as there was no CLA or similar, but to my knowledge their code was relicensed without their consent.

[0] https://github.com/nikopueringer/CorridorKey/issues?q=licens...

[1] https://github.com/nikopueringer/CorridorKey/blob/main/LICEN...

[2] https://github.com/nikopueringer/CorridorKey/issues/152

Comment by sorenjan 2 days ago

Interesting that the only issue on CorridorKey2.0 repo is about the licensing issue, then they turned off issues.

https://github.com/nikopueringer/CorridorKey2.0/issues/2

Comment by gewetensleegte 1 day ago

yeah I mean I watch them for the VFX commentary that I think is interesting not for their ethics, it's quite easy to cross that line as a big youtuber, you need to make a bit of an effort, instead they just make some questionable choices

Comment by david_van_loon 2 days ago

The underlying software is free and open-source: https://github.com/nikopueringer/CorridorKey2.0

The commercial package primarily consists of commercially supported plugins.

Comment by Yukonv 2 days ago

Clarification required as the project is NOT open source following OSI definition[1]. It should be advertised as source available as the license is restrictive in how you may use the software.

[1] https://opensource.org/education/what-is-open-source

Comment by dozerly 2 days ago

They explicitly call that out and mention if folks want to use it for paid projects, to just reach out. Thats a caveat obviously, but the intentions seem noble

Comment by jarjoura 2 days ago

Just to be clear, this isn't generative AI in the same way something like Nano Banana or Seedance is. You don't prompt anything into existence. However, this is using all of the latest SOTA techniques that the slop generative models also depend on.

I think it is an amazing example of how labs should take all of their fundamental research and turn into products entirely designed, limited and scoped only to empower artists instead of obsessed with trying to bypass them.

Comment by DrewADesign 2 days ago

> labs should take all of their fundamental research and turn into products entirely designed, limited and scoped only to empower artists instead of obsessed with trying to bypass them.

The software companies aren’t going to start doing this because the media companies aren’t interested in doing that. Tools like Nuke that already do this are expensive tools for people that the tech industry is trying to make obsolete. The media companies want to sell anything that will sell, and spend as little as possible in the process.

I’m pretty sure this will have to come from skilled and experienced artists doing amazing things with technology despite the tech industry sabotaging their careers, which in turn develops demand for actual art rather than bulk-created ‘content’. Sadly, I think we’re years away from that. I graduated in this field in 2024 and my career was dead before it started. Most people in this business with the hard-won skills to do this work that spent years developing their taste, storytelling sophistication, and craft are in the process of being systematically fucked over by the tech industry. Sad.

Comment by jarjoura 2 days ago

> The software companies aren’t going to start doing this because the media companies aren’t interested in doing that.

I'm not super familiar with Nuke, but isn't ComfyUI the open-source version of that? If true, that's like saying Blender is making Maya obsolete, and maybe true, but Blender has its own community and so does Maya.

Comment by DrewADesign 1 day ago

Not even close. It’s a homemade dune buggy vs a unimog. Nuke is a giant beast that doesn’t really do what comfy does, and comfy doesn’t do 99.9% of what Nuke does. It’s like 4k/seat for a reason.

Comment by dgently7 2 days ago

comfy and nuke are not even in the same ballpark. they arent really even solving the same problems. some overlap but like wildly different approaches. other than both being "node based"

comfy is getting more features all the time but i dont think id put it in the same category of "professional imaging software" that nuke holds the top spot in.

Comment by 10111001 2 days ago

> I think it is an amazing example of how labs should take all of their fundamental research and turn into products entirely designed, limited and scoped only to empower artists instead of obsessed with trying to bypass them.

Or be made to do so through legislation meant to preserve human control and enhance human capability. IMHO, "we" (as in humanity) should be building advanced tools that are limited and work in predictable ways, rather than "intelligences" to replace us. Too bad our decisions are made by oligarchs (existing or wannabe) with different priorities.

Comment by DrewADesign 1 day ago

There could be a whole set of Yakov Smirnoff “in Soviet Russia” style one-liners about the tech industry. “In Silicon Valley, software monetizes you!”

Comment by wongarsu 2 days ago

Obviously this prioritizes quality over speed, but how far are we from real time? Hooking something of this quality up to a live webcam would be a dream

Comment by gpugreg 2 days ago

With a webcam, you usually have a fixed background, which is an easier problem to solve. Here is a project from 2020 that can do 4k at 30fps https://github.com/PeterL1n/BackgroundMattingV2

Comment by snitty 2 days ago

On the first image the arrows toggle between green screen and rotoscoped. On the second set of images, the arrows toggle between the images.

Comment by cubefox 2 days ago

I suppose for version 3.0 they will abandon the whole green screen thing completely and the model will just recognize by itself (possibly with a user supplied hint mask) what the background is that needs to be removed and what the foreground is that should be kept, without any need for green screen or blue screen footage.

Comment by sorenjan 2 days ago

Netflix has made a depth map model that can do pretty much that, although it's used for real time visualization not final production quality. https://eyeline-labs.github.io/FlashDepth/

Comment by cubefox 2 days ago

Even at production quality, depth maps presumably don't work for keying transparent surfaces or transparencies from motion blur (both of which CorridorKey 2.0 is very good at) since a depth map doesn't create something like an alpha value. Though they may be helpful for creating somewhat coarse hint masks.

Comment by keyle 2 days ago

Very nice, do they plan on doing a lighter version for OBS and real time compositing?

Comment by xfeeefeee 2 days ago

I'd love to use this but sadly my local GPU is just crap. I know everyone hates hosted offerings but I'd be a happy customer; I mostly use topaz's hosted stuff too for this reason

Comment by imaginationra 2 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by udbhavs 2 days ago

I'm not sure if this question is in good faith. I would ask whether you have any proximity to any sort of creative or filmmaking work (in response to "who keys anymore"- several, several, examples), but it's honestly worse if the answer is yes. I hope the field isn't so far gone that we're genuinely asking what's the point if, god forbid, someone wants to put a real person in front of a green screen instead of a generative avatar.

Comment by imaginationra 2 days ago

Haha- yes a filmmaker for 25+ years- had an original self made/produced animated feature film in the Sundance film festival, have made 6 original animated feature films- I've made several green screen heavy projects in the past- they suck for everyone involved except vfx companies/software or plugin companies. I'm still making films- heavily modified game engine cg + mocap- green screen is terrible for everyone and its a good thing its dead.

Comment by rtkwe 2 days ago

Movies are absolutely full of background replacement and other things that require keying.

Comment by imaginationra 2 days ago

So its for mainstream film studios? Thats tired status quo stuff.

Comment by zardo 2 days ago

Then cg is also tired status quo stuff. I'm working on brain generated imagery where a carefully engineered prompt causes the user to picture a scene directly in their mind.

Comment by cubefox 2 days ago

You seem unsure what to dislike more: "youtube slop peddlers" or "tired status quo stuff".

Comment by imaginationra 2 days ago

Both and now they are one in the same.

Comment by cubefox 2 days ago

One AND the same.

Comment by rtkwe 1 day ago

I wonder when an eggcorn has been around long enough it just becomes an alternative version of the phrase.

Comment by cubefox 1 day ago

I would of better not thought about this.

Comment by ilaksh 2 days ago

I think there is still a little bit of room for green screen. At least maybe until Seedance 3.0 in a few months.

But it is interesting how video generation turned the corner from several months ago to now. I think the next AI project they do probably has to be with a generative tool even though they may be very hesitant to do that because they don't want to emphasize AI models that threaten their own jobs.

But I remember when they did the Project Greenlight thing which resulted in a massive list of desired projects from subscribers that they could not possibly make a dent in.

I think in the next several months they may be able to revisit that or at least some of the projects that had to be shelved due to lack of time. To make that possible they would leverage the latest generative AI models and workflows, possibly a few that haven't been released yet. But we are rapidly approaching the point where the models plus tooling is good enough to replace 95% of the technical work, and it's down to creativity. I think it's only a couple of years before that progress bar really maxed out.

Comment by imaginationra 2 days ago

Indie filmmaker who had an original animated feature film in Sundance featuring lots of green screen in it many years ago- green screen is dead- game engines + pure cg/2d anim are the future of indie film-

Directors hate green screen, actors hate green screen- obsolete visual fx artists larping as storytellers/filmmakers love green screen.

Comment by Dylan16807 2 days ago

Actors dislike green screen but do you think they like pure CGI more?

Comment by imaginationra 2 days ago

No- but actors are unnecessary puppets- nowadays I don't need actors which is great for me as a director- as an animator you act out all the shots/scenes yourself anyway- and nowadays you can just do the mocap/change your voice etc- human actors are not needed anymore and thats a good thing. The status quo will slowly replace the human actors with ai one's.

Actors have been given this ridiculous unwarranted status in modern times- they are nothing but puppets so who cares what actors think? They are just puppets that play make believe that they don't even make up themselves = redundant.

Comment by vigilantpuma 2 days ago

What a dystopian view.

For what it’s worth, there have famous actors for literally thousands of years. As to “nothing but puppets,” the idea that actors bring nothing to the table and everything is just down to the director seems like a very self-aggrandizing thing to believe if you’re a director.

Comment by Alex13192 2 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by 0x696C6961 2 days ago

Jesus dude, go back to reddit.

Comment by imaginationra 2 days ago

I'm not on reddit this is hackernews- I am an indie filmmaker and a programmer amongst other things. Are you a bot?

Comment by ThrowawayTestr 2 days ago

"indie filmmaker" is that what YouTubers are calling themselves now?

Comment by 0x696C6961 2 days ago

The AI psychosis is palpable.

Comment by mathfailure 2 days ago

The hell is this?

Comment by hackingonempty 2 days ago

AFAIK, green-screen, a.k.a. "chroma key" replaces the green colored parts of the video with some other background image/video. However, you've noticed it works poorly around the edges, depending on the lighting and other things. This is software containing a machine learning model that produces more a accurate "key" (mask) than simple chroma-matching.

Comment by lrvick 2 days ago

I hope they open source it before someone else decompiles it and does it for them. Just charge for binaries that most will pay for anyway. Then things like Linux support could be handled by the community.

Comment by CiaranMcNulty 2 days ago

The core tool is CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

They’re charging for the bundled plugins for various editing suites

Comment by LeoWattenberg 2 days ago

It is not, there's additional restrictions beyond the CC license.

Comment by paaloeye 2 days ago

What are they then? It literally says "CC BY-NC-SA 4.0".

Comment by LeoWattenberg 2 days ago

  This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), the full text of which is included below, subject to the following additional terms and conditions. These additional terms supplement the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence and take precedence where they conflict.

"This tool" means the CorridorKey software in this repository and the CorridorKey model weights distributed for use with it.

By exercising any rights to the Licensed Material, You accept and agree to be bound by both these Additional Terms and the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Public License.

1. PERMITTED USE

   a. You may use this tool for any lawful purpose, including for
      processing images as part of a commercial project, provided
      that such use complies with the restrictions set out below
      and the terms of the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.

   b. The images and video You produce with this tool are Yours.
      The Licensor claims no rights in them, and You may use them
      commercially.

2. RESTRICTIONS

   In addition to the restrictions set out in the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
   licence, the following restrictions apply:

   a. NO REPACKAGING OR RESALE
      You may not repackage, redistribute, sublicense, or sell
      this tool, in whole or in part, as a standalone product or
      as part of a competing product, and You may not charge for
      access to this tool's code or model weights.

   b. NO PAID API OR INFERENCE SERVICES
      You may not use this tool to provide inference as a paid
      API service, whether directly or indirectly. This includes,
      but is not limited to, offering access to this tool behind
      a paywall, subscription model, or usage-based billing
      system.

   c. DERIVATIVES MUST BE FREELY ACCESSIBLE
      You may build on this tool, but any project, fork,
      derivative work, or modified version that You release and
      that incorporates this tool must be made available to the
      public free of charge. Voluntary donations and
      pay-what-you-want pricing are permitted, provided that
      paying nothing is always an available option.

   d. COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE INTEGRATION
      If you operate a commercial software package or inference
      service and wish to incorporate this tool into your
      software, you must obtain a separate written agreement
      from the Licensor. Please contact:

          contact@corridordigital.com

3. LARGE ORGANISATIONS

   a. If You are, or are using this tool on behalf of, a Legal
      Entity whose total gross revenue exceeded US $20,000,000
      (twenty million US dollars) in its most recently completed
      fiscal year, the permissions in Section 1 do not apply
      unless that Legal Entity has purchased a seat of the
      CorridorKey plugin from the Licensor for each individual
      who uses this tool.

   b. "Legal Entity" means the entity using this tool together
      with all other entities that control, are controlled by,
      or are under common control with it. Revenue is measured
      across the whole Legal Entity.

   c. Each seat of the CorridorKey plugin includes a licence
      for one individual to download and use this tool and its
      model weights. Seats are available at:

          https://corridorkey.com
Etc. Pp.

Comment by Dylan16807 2 days ago

It's a lot better than just "source available". You can do most things as if it was open source. The difference between "you can sell it but you have to provide code to anyone you sell it to" and "you can't sell it but you can sell support and development services" is pretty minor.

The two main restrictions on top of that are "no paid API" which also seems pretty minor when the whole intent of this is local operation, and excluding large companies which is pretty low impact.

Comment by LeoWattenberg 2 days ago

"You may not repackage, redistribute... this tool" sounds very much source-available to me.

Comment by Dylan16807 1 day ago

It's badly written. But section 2.c is all about how you can redistribute.

Comment by bikeshaving 2 days ago

None of the “decompiled” projects you’re alluding are legitimately open-source. Just because you turn the gaze of your plagiarism machine onto strictly licensed software doesn’t mean the result is a “clean room” implementation or even something that you yourself could copyright.

Comment by lrvick 15 hours ago

Decompile. Write tests. Delete de-compiled code. Write new code that passes tests with a fresh context agent. Huzzah. Clean room.

We can play this game forever. IP is dead.

Comment by ShowalkKama 2 days ago

it's already open source, only the plugins are paid.

Comment by LeoWattenberg 2 days ago

It is source-available, not open source.

Comment by echelon 2 days ago

Open source is not always sustainable.

The OSI was created by the hyperscalers to pilfer free work from the commons.

Redis and elastic got owned by GCP and AWS because they went for OSI purity. The OSI is the hyperscalers.

Good fair source is more like shareware. The community can do whatever they want. Companies trying to profit must give back or pay to play.

Developers need to be compensated. It shouldn't be a labor of love that gets commercialized by hyperscalers whose own products are not open source.

The Corridor Crew model here is fantastic. As are fair source licenses. That's the way we should have done things all along.

Comment by ben-schaaf 2 days ago

I agree it's fine and good that they want to sell this and keep it accessible for individuals, but modifying a CC-NC license and then calling this "open source" is not it.

If everyone followed this model instead of open source, then Corridor Key itself would have to cover dozens of software licenses for all it's dependencies.

Comment by LeoWattenberg 2 days ago

Even by the FSF definition it's not free software as it violates freedom 0 (run it for any purpose) and 2 (redistribute copies). Or at least that is how I read their "no repackaging or resale" restriction.

Audacity, Libreoffice etc. are regularly sold by companies in box stores and there isn't much of a problem with that. What's being sold there is really just a means of access, just like some pay an internet subscription, some pay for CD-ROMs or, heaven forbid, floppy disks.

But let's say that we don't care about the 4 freedoms, let's say the purpose is for developers to get compensated. In that case, this still is a bad license, as CC-by-nc-sa with redundant and contradictory terms isn't particularly clear. the way I'd interpret the license text differs from the intention stated in the README, "You may not repackage, redistribute...this tool" doesn't leave room for any shareware/donationware to get created in the first place.

I would have much preferred for them to be less sloppy about their licensing. The only way I can understand the current license is to ignore it, and go with the vague intention of "we want big companies to pay, and be the only ones allowed to make money off this plugin, otherwise do whatever" instead...

Comment by echelon 1 day ago

Audacity and Libreoffice aren't exactly the best pieces of software, and they're not supporting much of anyone.

I fundamentally understand what the Corridor Crew are doing here and know that it supports them. Yet they're not being overbearing or stifling the community.

Comment by slopinthebag 7 hours ago

if the dependencies that CorridorKey used weren't actual open source than they would not be able to release it under your concept of "fair use"...

we're talking like pytorch, numpy, and other large foundational libraries released not as shareware, but for free.

so either the foundational libraries are true oss, or the consuming libraries cannot be shareware. you cannot have it both ways.

everyone loves restrictive licences when it's their project of course