I have used XDCAM (F350) and pulled a good key over DV and DVCAM.

Haven't been able to try an affordable camera as EX1.

Is that a Sony EX 1 camera?
Street price is?
Thanks

Try the B&H website for street prices.

If you're willing to wait, Scarlet looks to be promising (Red's wavelet compression looks very good and extremely transparent for keying) and the camera would be low noise if it's anything like Red. But that's like 1-2 years away.

HV20 + HDMI capture looks interesting, though I've not used it myself. The camera does suffer from noise from what I've seen (live keying demo of the HV20 at NAB).

2- Bob's post has some good information.

If you're shooting stuff that really easy to chroma key (e.g. talking head, framed from head to shoulders) then it might just be a matter of lighting it right + good/decent keying software. In that kind of situation, noise is not that much of a problem since there aren't dark areas and it's just a matter of decent software.

More difficult chromakey would be something like this:
http://moviesblog.mtv.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/111907_spirit.jpg
That looks like a medium-difficulty shot... the shadows would be an issue. Some nasty spill and reflections in there.

Other option worthy of consideration is a hardware keyer. Always seems to me that a very big part of pulling off an effective key is getting the subject to look like they belong in the background and a lot of that is lighting. Problem you can strike is unless you've got a lot of seperation between screen and subject then you'll have problems with spill and shadows when you try to get creative lighting the subject. With a realtime keyer you can see what you're doing and the talents can see how they look as well.

Datavideo make some fairly reasonable hardware keyers. Seemed to work OK when they were demoing them at NAB, great interactive demo too. Haven't checked recently but I think they only have an SD keyer.

Other option is that Reflectomedia screen and LED ringlight. It's probably better suited to a permanent setup studio, if you've got one might be worth a look.

If I was setting up a studio for CK work I'd certainly be looking at Sony's EX1/3. You get HD or SDI out of that which is what a broadcast grade keyer wants on it's input. Even if you haven't got the budget for that kind of kit just yet your camera is ready for it.

Bob.

Thanks for all the comments folks.

I'm really researching what cam we should consider that is a step up from mini dv SD... that would eliminate or really reduce the inherent chroma key issues in the mini dv format.

I don't think we want real time as we like to make background choices and adjustments in post production.

So I would also would like to hear some better chroma key software suggestions...

We have Serious Magic Visual Communicator but it won't chroma key a pre-shot avi file... it requires you feed it directly from the cam and then saves the video in its own format... and Adobe won't sell us Ultra without making us buy a bunch of stuff we don't need.

Right now we are shooting talking heads in a small studio environment. They are seated on a stool about 6 feet in front of the green screen... but want to be able to shoot most any chroma key in our studio.

As mentioned, I understand that mini-dv has some inherent issues that make good chroma-key impossible... we use the Vegas Chroma-Blur FX and then the Vegas Chroma Keyer with some additional blur to manage... and results are OK...

But a local studio has an old Beta SX cam and they do really clean chroma key in their studio. We could search around for an old Beta SX and gin up all it takes to duplicate that but that seems like we would be going backwards in technology...

Thanks again for all comments.

Even if you bought an old SX camera you still need the hardware to get that into Vegas. Don't know much about SX as it never took off down here but you may need to add a VCR and SDI / Component capture card into your costing.

By comparison the EX1 which you can buy today could work out cheaper overall. If you wanted better keying in HD you could add the Flash XDR from Convergent Design when it comes out to get 10bit 4:2:2, it'll cost a bit but you're spending money on current technology.

On the other hand good keying software should be able to pull a decent key from the PD150. I'd suggest downloading the 30 day trial of AE + get a demo licence for Keylight and see how your PD150 files go with that. Plenty of free tutorials to help you get your head around it. It just looks so much easier to use, one plug that pretty much does all you need. Even if you don't want to go to all the drama of downloading and installing the software watch a tutorial. Not that I put much faith in those things for making buying decisions but given that it's one of the industry staple CK tools used in higher end apps than AE I think it safe to say you'd be in good company investing in it. You mightn't feel you need AE today but after you watch some of the tutorials on all the other things you can do with it I think it'll get the creative juices going.


Bob.

Bob, Thanks for the comments... but educateme a little...

- Is the EX1 is the Sony PMW-EX1 right?
- is AE Adobe After Effects?
- What is Keylight?

- Is the EX1 is the Sony PMW-EX1 right?
Yes.
- is AE Adobe After Effects?
Yes.
- What is Keylight?
A plug in for AE and other apps from The Foundry

I got it for free with CS3.

Bob.

Bob,

What does the Keylight plugin do?

I'm guessing that you use AE for the actual chroma-keying... right?

Thanks for the help.

Keylight is a plugin for After Effects (and a number of other compositing programs) that does chroma keying, much the same as how the CK FX works in Vegas.
AE comes with quite a collection of chroma key FXs and tools however Keylight does pretty much all of it in one plugin and then some. It has a quite large collection of controls to adjust the matte, smooth edges, grow or shrink the matte, suppress spill and remove the color caste that the color of the screen can add to the subject. What's more you can quickly switch views to see the various aspects of what the adjustments are affecting.
AE can be a bit daunting at first however having used Vegas to do compositing for years so far I don't feel overwhelmed by AE.

However before you go off spending time and money specifically what is the chroma keyer in Vegas not doing for you?

If you like to send me a couple of frames of a typical scene you're trying to key I'm more than happy to have a look at it for you. If I can pull a better key with Keylight than you can with Vegas then so can you as I'm no expert.

Bob.