Ultra is the best "affordable" greenscreen application available. To go better, you'll need to really step up. Vegas does a good job with properly shot footage, but Ultra is a few steps up.
Search the forum for Ken Calhoun, look at the work he's done in Ultra. It's very well done. We've used it on a few projects, and Victor Milt is using it on a project right now. Well worth the cost if you want efficient workflow and plan on doing a fair amount of this type of work.

ok cool i'll do a search for him. what are some other alternatives. i'd like to see those just so i can compare and contrast the quality/cost. thanks in advance...

Here ya go but you've been warned....you'll need a second mortgage

http://www.ultimatte.com/

Ultimatte is very nice, but not for the DV market. This not a beginners tool. If you use AE and shake a lot, then you probably already know about ultimatte and your company probably is already using it, if you do HD or film work. Some mid-range IDF projects are starting to use it, mostly thru contracture agreements, etc.......

Why not try Vegas before buying another soft if you are a little short on cash?. You can make a pretty good keying with the stock chroma-blur + chroma-keying FX.

You can find cheap backdrop here (i did'nt try them yet):
http://www.chroma-key.com/chroma_key_green.html

For screen lighting, i use personnally stock fluos and it proved to work very well: 2 x 48" on the floor and 2 x 48" on the celling. You can use cardboards to avoid back spill on your subject. Try to have 5 ' distance between your screen and your subject. Use large soft lights for main lighting (you can experiment with some white pieces of fabrics that you use as diffusors in front of your lights if don't want to invest in true soft dome lights). I use that myself for a permanent installation with Fresnels and it works very satisfayingly.

The larges front lighting sources will not creates hard shadows on your screen and this really make keying easyer.

Hope this help...

Hi, thanks all (just getting back to the pc after a weekend in Denver, scouting hotels for upcoming seminars, so far I like Embassy Suites and Adams' Mark the best; any feedback re hotel meeting rooms that are good, anyone?) ...

Here's a few works I've recently done in ultra:

www.MegaSeminar.com
www.MegaSeminar.com/affiliates.htm

www.DaytradingUniversity.com
www.DaytradingUniversity.com/videotheater.htm

Best quality green cloth I've gotten is the felt via ebay seller www.eefx.com .. had been using jandkgroup (ebay) green cloth, the felt is much much better since more even. Just got some rosco chromakey green paint, will be painting a wall next, will let you know if that's good. So far though, the eefx.com felt cloth is superb, keys very well.

Lighting, got a JTB softbox from jandkgroup, it's made a huge difference, plus a spotlight w/barndoors, it's useful .. and I use a lot of 5K flourescents from home depot in various shop light formats for lighting..

hope that's helpful .. enjoy it -- ultra's a terrific tool..

agree re make sure to light the background separately (I have 6 lights on the key back alone) in addition to talent (which I use the softbox for), with a minimum 3 foot distance from talent to key cloth in back.

next challenge: figuring out how to light my feet to produce sharp keyable shadows like the MSL demo reels...

ken

Ken,
If you wanna hit me offline, we've done many, many seminars in Denver, and I can give you some tips/pointers.

Thanks Douglas, will do .. appreciate it.. it's my first time doing a seminar in Denver :p

30,000+ trained in hawaii/other places, but "never done Denver.."

ken

DSE & Ken:
Sounds like that discussion would benefit us all. Wouuld you mind keeping it public here?

> DSE & Ken:
>Sounds like that discussion would benefit us all. Wouuld you mind keeping it public here?

The offline discussion was about where to present classes in the Denver area. Is that what you think we would all benefit from?

The best green screen technology is a 4:2:2 camera, it makes it a lot easier :O)

For software, don't forget V4 of Discreet Combustion, due out next month, it will have the Diamond Keyer from flame, their Oscar-winning six figure post tool. And it's still less expensive than Ultimatte...

This lets you select 2-dimensional color ranges to key from a color space that looks like a CIE color chart. You can make for example a diamond-shaped election that often is the best way to pick only the colors that need to be keyed out while leaving the subject alone. For the most difficult cases (poorly shot DV), they have addditional tools on top of that.

"The offline discussion was about where to present classes in the Denver area. Is that what you think we would all benefit from?"

Sorry. I misinterpreted. Thought they were taling about lightin. My oops.