Chroma Key Conundrum!

[Butch Mcdonald]

Without a doubt Keylight is the way to go.
I have achieved excellent results with keys that would normally bring tears to your eyes.
I had a green screen studio full of talent with fluffy blonde hair and frilly costumes jumping around a bunch of poorly lit masking props. It was the key from hell to say the least but it was shot on Dig Beta SD so that was a help.
Keylights spill suspression, matte and edge handling is the best I’ve seen and when used correctly with AEs matte chocker you can achieve seamless results.
When keying DV footage you need to be aware of compression artifacting (little blocky bits) that come into play when the keyer is on its edge. Learning all of Keylights functions thoroughly and practicing hard will teach you not to over use the controls and get great results with any key. It’s all in the algorithms (clever stuff) I think.
I have the Adobe collection and Keylight was bundled with it, I’m not sure on the cost of the individual unit but well worth it in my books.
Cheers
Butch

[Mark]

I agree that keylight is fantastic. I also agree that it needs practice to get used to the filter. I suggest Andrew Kramer’s training DVD as a good starting point.

You can chroma key without keyers however, and I have managed to get very good results.

What I do is duplicate my footage. On the top layer use the change colour filter. Select the baskground colour, then set the filter to -view matte-. This will create a great track matte for the underlying layer. You can then use gaussian blur to soften up edges of the matte. You can also use garbage mattes to get rid of unwanted footage. It has worked for me in the past. I am not sure if these filters ship with the standard version as I have always, and will always use the production bundle/professional version.

Mark

[Eugene Perepletchikov]

I think that you can get away with getting a clean key using AE Pro standard toolset. Use the difference key in conjunction with the matt choke and the spill supressor. Also check out the tutorial on this site (dont remember who by) where they use a copy of the keyed footage as a track matte for the background, so it slightly bleeds over your actor for better integration into your background image.