The chroma keyer in Vegas Pro is 15 year old technology designed for Standard Definition DV video. Under perfect conditions it gets the job done. Under less than perfect conditions it is woefully inadequate to handle something as simple as spill or choking a matte.

I would highly recommend Boris Chroma Key Studio from Boris Continuum Complete by Boris FX.

Here is a Webinar on how to use Chroma Key Studio:


Here is a tutorial on the standard Boris Chroma Keyer which Chroma Key Studio is based:


The nice thing about Boris Continuum Complete is that it's a huge collection of plug-ins that work natively in Vegas Pro. It's an unbelievable amount of functionality. You can also buy them as Continuum Units which are smaller and less expensive.

~jr

Along with with VP12 you should have a copy of HitFilm. It has an excellent preset for chromakey work.

I have loved and still really like Boris's key package but I had a key one that Boris was having difficulty with for some reason, probably me, but when I used Hitfilm's keyer it just nailed it right off the bat!!! I was impressed!

In my case I think it's better to have a few key options in your toolbox!!!

From my tests the actual keyer in Vegas s no different to any other. For sure Keylight has way more tools to deal with the issues that arise that aren't actually part of keying process.

My best tip if you want to use Vegas's keyer is to first off put a lot of effort into the shoot, use only daylight light sources and make certain the screen reads pure green. In any keyer I've found setting the key color to pure green rather than sampling the colour of the screen can work better. For difficult to key things like flames where need the transparency I use a luma key. Lastly using a high end camera helps, noise makes getting a good key impossible.

All of that said chroma keying is rarely 100%. Hollywood avoids it for critical shots for a reason.

Bob.

My standard answer to many questions here:

Fusion

It's free, it has a pretty good keyer and also comes with Primatte. Between those two you can handle almost anything and probably handle it better than with Boris or AE Keylight

dft zmatte is pretty good - in my experience it's almost one click in fact ;-)

Keylight. You can do in 3 clicks with Keylight what takes a half hour in anything else, it will still never look as good. I think there's Ultamatte, Keylight, and then everything else are an order of magnitude less. It also helps to get spill slayer for AE.

Yes it would be nice to do natively in Vegas, but using the prem/AE export works flawlessly, work in AE , then render out to cineform or uncompressed. Much easier than struggling with a lesser keyer.

Keying is only the first step in the process. If you want a "believable" result you need to also do spill suppression of the foreground and color edge wrapping of the replacement background upon the foreground. All three tools need to be of good quality.

Peter

thanks guys, looks like I'll stick w/AE keylight...

here's my process:

step 1: import camcorder mts into vegas
step 2: add backing track mp3s
step 3: composite/final edit (green bg footage)
step 4: render to big 20gig avi
step 5: open/key avi in AE
step 6: render to mov (select area)
step 7: put mov in Vegas w/video bgrd clips
step 8: render final wmv

that's what i did for these videos; www.tradingjazz.com

( I play tenor sax for fun)

If you liked your 1980's TV weathercast, you'll like Vegas' Chromakey.

:D

in passing, i found cat edits even worse than vegas's....

@ken c:

In looking at your footage on www.tradingjazz.com, I can see a distinct black outline in your foreground image. You really ought to look at doing a Light Wrap to correct this, as it currently looks pretty obvious that it was keyed. Take a look at these to see the difference:
https://vimeo.com/121163371
https://web.borisfx.com/helpdocs/?page_id=872

Peter

As Deusx said.. Fusion

Keying is an art even under the best conditions. Different tools work better with what you want to achieve. While Keylight gives you things like a matte choker, I personally believe you should not use them because mattes that are choked look exactly like that. It is better to use a lot of masks and filters toget a good key. I have tried Boris and the VP built in along with NewBlueFx's filter. (actually like NewBlue Chromakey Pro as the best "plugin"). I just do not like the way that this implements within Vegas. Currently I am using Hitfilm Pro and you get a very serious keyer along with a bunch of other stuff for about the same price as Boris Keying Suite.

My $0.02