If you work with DV, you must apply a chromablur fx before to get smooths results.

Bastien

Another thing, I've started adding the chromakey filter as Media FX instead of Clip FX whenever possible. In my head, that way when I do a downrez the key will be done at the clips resolution instead of whatever resolution I am downrezzing to. I think it makes a difference but I'm not sure. Does anyone know or have an opinion on this?

Laurence :

I think you're right. But this method could make some troubles if you use more than one time the media in your project.
So, another possibility is to apply the CK to the event and chose to apply the effect BEFORE the pan/crop operation (see in the FX window : there's a small triangle on the left of the fx's name, near the FX timeline. Click on it and it rolls !)

Thanks guys! All good stuff. And as I said I prefer to use the secondary color corrector method..it's a bit complex with the multiple tracks and all but it really works the best for me. This was just a curiosity question and after playing around it does seem to work.... after I played with the order in which the two key are placed. But still not a great key. Guess I just didn't want Premier Pro to get the better of us....

Thanks!
mp

there's a small triangle on the left of the fx's name, near the FX timeline. Click on it and it rolls !

Yes that did it. Now I can chromakey at the clip resolution without doing it as Media FX. That is how I'll do deinterlace plugins from now on as well.

Just to let you know if you have Boris FX with Vegas. Use Boris FX. I have Boris RED it's the best Chomakeyer out their. I have Combustion, Vegas,After Effect and Ultra 2. Boris is the fastest and the cleanest of the ones I use. Also,garbage matte your event before adding the Keyer.----"Crop"

I have so much to learn I read all these post and realize I know nothing

Here's my current favoured chromakey chain. It's probably a bad idea, but I start with the AAV 6 way colour plugin and use that to boost the saturation of the blue (I use blue myself, but green if you use that) to 100, and the lightness to around 50. Basically that brings out more the colour more making it easier to key.

Then I use the standard chromakeyer plugin. I make sure to adjust the 3 colour sliders which actually does make a big difference. Once I've got it looking the best it can be with those colour sliders, I then make adjust the high and low sliders.

Following on from there, if the clip needs any colour or levels adjustment, I'll add either right after the chromakeyer.

Lastly at the end of the chain I use the New Blue FX chromakey plugin. I used this for it's spill killer which doesn't seem to do much and the shrink setting. I'll set the shrink to no more than 8, and the softness to no more than 1. Just enough to remove any dark edges.

Now, if you end up with rough patchy edges, the chroma blur plugin will help there. Insert it before the Sony chromakeyer plugin. I wouldn't set it any higher than 2 though.

Lastly, I've found a way of faking light wrapping. It requires the New Blue FX chromakey plugin. Once you have your chromakeyed channel set up with the New Blue chromakey at the end of the chain, copy that channel and place in underneath the original. On that channel set the soften on the New Blue plugin to 100, or less if your subject is small. This will remove a huge part of the outside edge, which is what we want! Then on the top chromakeyed channel, set it's opacity to around 90%. Maybe more. This will reveal part of the background around the edges underneath, which works in a similar way to light wrapping. The only downside is that the background part underneath won't be blurred. That's why the opacity of the top channel still needs to be high, so not too much is revealed. Anyway, it does actually work quite well.

One other thing, I might add a bit of diffusion or soft focus to the overall video, which seems to help also.

I was using the secondary colour corrector before, but actually found the current method above gave me sharper edges.

I still use the secondary color corrector for close-up work on my green screen, preceeded in the chain of plugins by AAV color plugin to increase contrast a tad, and including a tiny bit of chroma blur so that edges will key cleanly; followed by New Blue chromakey to kill spill and to shrink the mask.

However, on the wide shots, I have trouble with the secondary color corrector keying out parts of the talent's blue shirt, so I use a procedure very similar to Glenn Thomas - except for his clever light-wrapping technique (I'll try that!).

One addition: I add the Sony unsharp mask at the end of the chain in all cases in order to "punch up" the image a bit (I'm producing mainly for the web)

I also have toyed with red gels for backlight/hair light - they give a complementary color to the hair and shoulders - looks nice sometimes and seems to make it easier to get a clean key on frizzy hair (I carefully position black flags in order to keep the red off the green screen). I wasn't sure I liked the red, but my wife, who has a keener eye for color, says it looks better with the red, so I'll probably keep it from now on.

Even with the red, I still need to use the New Blue to kill the green spill on frizzy hair (it does a great job). When used agressively along with the red gels, it can give too much red to the entire image - in which case I correct it with the AAV; that doesn't seem to hurt the ability to key properly.

If anyone is interested, I can post some computer screen grabs of the secondary color corrector settings, etc.

There must be something wrong with me! I've been following this post with interest reading all the seemingly complicated procedures that others are following. I'm just using the pure green screen in VP9b and it works great. Here are my settings:
Low threshhold = 875
High threshhold = 000
Blur = 227
The low setting and blur seem to be able to take a bit of variance without too much problem. I have a standard - green one side/blue the other - screen similar to that sold by Digital Juice a couple of months back but bought here in NZ. It is the one that rolls up in a hoop and stores in a bag. How come I can get great results with minimal effort and others can't?