Chroma key, dv

Question

I want to make a video with 1-4 musicians. I´d like to have no background (=color white), "chroma key" seems to be the word. I´m using a dv camera. Would this work with the chroma key effect in FCE?

Answer 1

Ok, so here's a voice from the other side.
I do chroma keying all the time. It's nowhere near as fussy as people make it out to be. I've even used wrinkled green fabric with less than stellar lighting and still got acceptable results. OK, it's not videophile hi def on a big screen, but it's quite acceptable for most viewers on a 'regular' TV.
You would shoot your musicians against a green screen background (make sure they don't wear any green or blue). Put a white slug on your base video track. Then put your actual video on the track above it, apply the Color Smoothing 4:1:1 filter, then the chroma key or green screen filter, and you've got your musicians on a white background - kinda like the Morpheus & Neo 'loading program' scene in The Matrix. Depending on how it looks you might also need to apply the Spill Suppressor and Matte Choker to clean up the edges.
Will you like the results? You'll have to try it and see for yourself.
While it's true that the DV codec isn't nearly as good at chroma keying than other (higher end) codecs, it's not terrible, either.