Chroma Key--iMovie w/3rd party vs. FCP vs. FCE

Apple's pro audio and video tech support department can't seem to answer this question and they thought someone here in the FCP forum might be able to give me some guidance.
I'm an independent trainer and I've been trying to put a "simple" head and shoulders shot of me in a nice backdrop using iMovie HD and various 3rd party green screen / Chroma Key plug ins. The results have been disappointing. I evenly lit a green background (a piece of green fabric), shot the video, and adjusted the tolerances. The background dropped out ok, but so did tiny bits of me, and the green was still visible along the edges of me. Any further adjustments would make me transparent. I know it may be a lighting issue (or the fact that I'm using a generic green cloth background), but I'm a fine art photographer as well and I'm being pretty careful about the lights.
Are there any pros who do Chroma Keying who can tell me if buying FCE or FCP will solve this problem? Does FCE have a dramatically improved way to accomplish this green screen thing or is it likely using the same math as the iMovie 3rd party plug-ins?
Really, I'm hoping that FCE will have the same features in this area, since FCP is out of my range right now and hard to justify since I only want to do this one thing.
If I buy FCE, will I be missing some project-critical Chroma Key features only found in FCP that will force me to upgrade or are the features in this category identical?
For example, a tutorial on Chroma Keys for the Pro version says that it has a Chroma Smoothing 4:1:1 filter that might help when using mini-dv cameras.
Any thoughts on this from people who understand both versions of Final Cut and get good Chroma Keys would be greatly appreciated. Any other approches or software to get this done would also be appreciated. Thanks.

Hi Bob - this is a copy of the answer I sent you in the FCE Forum.
I have never used iMovie for Chromakey as I believe that once you start buying third party filters etc. you can soon end up paying as much as if you had bought FCE outright!
FCE has numerous additional features (besides the Smoothing Filter) for fine-tuning the picture to get rid of colour fringing and other extraneous nasties. I would imagine that iMovie plugins would not have as many - though I do not know that for a fact.
As Tom says FCE and FCP are virtually identical in most respects. FCP's main differences are connected with the way professionals work - like feeding video from several cameras simultaneously etc. Most of us can manage without that!
Ian.

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