This opens up a big can of worms, but the basic issue here is that, especially in the early days of compressed DV, people didn't believe it was possible to get successful chroma keys. Although others may disagree, I would say that this is patently untrue. It may have been truer several years ago, with less sophisticated digital keying software relying only on the chroma channel (because of DV's 4:1:1 compression ratio, there are 4 luma pixels for every 1 chroma pixel, meaning that the COLOR resolution of the frame is only 1/4 of the LUMINANCE resolution). Now, however, it is perfectly common practice to key DV footage. I've done it extensively and, although it can be difficult and the results certainly aren't as good as uncompressed video, it is certainly possible.

That being said, although Final Cut's built-in chroma keyer is decent, there are much faster, better alternatives. One option is to take the footage into After Effects. This gives you the most control and allows you to quickly and easily deal with poor source material. Another option is picking up the DVMatte plugin from dvgarage.com (you can get it for Final Cut, Motion, or After Effects). I haven't used this very extensively, but from fiddling around with the demo I can say that although it doesn't offer as much control as After Effects, it is very fast and can produce stunning results.

Especially if you have a high-end camera like the XL-2, you should have nothing to worry about.

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Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
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