I haven't tried the Newblue chromakeyer, but I've had great results with Boris Red using a combination of Chromakeyer + Matte Choker + Light Wrap. In particular, Light Wrap make the keyed images look very convincing by taking some of the replacement background image and applying it along the edges of the alpha boundary. I use it nearly everytime that I am compositing a clip that has an alpha channel.

Peter

Here is a link to a quick and dirty greenscreen I did one morning following a request from my grandson. He wanted to do a greenscreen video and post it to his YouTube account.

What is noteworthy is that my "greenscreen" is about $2.00 worth of green wrapping paper taped together with Scotch tape and hung on the wall. I used the Vegas 9.0 chromakeyer. Video was via my Sony CX7 HD camcorder.

Here is the link:

Thought is was a good tutorial, but I think the key showing him against the Vegas screen is pretty bad.

Boris Red is the best in Greenscreen also on stills. I used Affect Effects, Combustion and Vegas. Hands down Boris Red keyers are the best and fast. It takes less than 15-30sec a key.

Different source formats take different tools.

Even in Hollywood there is much arguing what's the best keyer at any price.

Primatte 4 rocks imho, but it isn't always the most time effective.

Lots of variables.

This might be of interest: http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/alindsay/story/greenscreen_primer_part_1/chroma keying article[/link]

Certainly was of interest, thanks.
In my own efforts I discovered some of it the hard way, anything with a larger weave than Lycra is inviting problems especially when shooting HD.
Those 6' Kinoflo tubes are pretty darn expensive and don't last too long. The ballasts push them to 100W and they seem to burn out pretty quickly. Added to that to meet the safety standards the glass is covered in some form of plastic which must make them even hotter. For anyone rolling their own fixtures or even buying something cheaper than Kinos, a grid is very useful for stopping spill with fluro lights. A lot of the cheaper units have no facility to fit grids.

For those who don't have scopes the camera's zebras can be pressed into service for checking screen illumination.

Bob.

I'm working on a new greenscreen project. Everything looks great except that the guy I'm keying is wearing some frameless glasses. Every so often as his head moves, you get bit of reflection from my lights and evidently there is enough green in the flash of white that it keys out. It means several hours of patching to fix it. Aahh!

While visiting a media lab at Rochester Institute of Technology, I saw an interesting alternative to the green screen. On the camera was mounted a green wide-angle laser that pointed at the subject. In the background was a white cloth-like material that was coated with microscopic retroflectors (corner-cube crystals). It worked sort of like Solex safety tape. Regardless of the unevenness of the back drop or other lighting in the room, the keying was perfect. Since the reflection could only be seen directly head-on, there was no green spill onto other objects.

Peter

Thanks Serena. Interesting article. I couldn't find Part 2, which may not have been written.

The author mentions the use of magenta in the back light on the subject. We've used that occasionally to good advantage, but he seems to feel it's not necessary when using green Kinos. We'll see next time we green screen.

Jack