Understand that for serious keying, you need serious programs with more controls devoted specifically to that operation: After Effects, Motion or dvMatte Pro.

When you're keying out a color to make a composite image that consists of layers of video in the Timeline, you're essentially eliminating one color from a video track(s) with the Chroma Keyer filter. (If that color also exists inside the image you're trying to keep on that track – the saved image can get fuzzy.

So if your background color is a solid blue – don't wear blue clothes while filming in front of it – or both your blue clothes and the blue background will both disappear when you key the blue color out. Understand?)

Here are the basic steps you follow in both FCP and FCE:

First, turn off the visibility of any layers in the Timeline that are interfering with your view of the video layer with the color (usually blue or green) being keyed out and the layer(s) you want to show through.

The image below points to the button you toggle for individual video layer visibility in the Patch Panel:

Then, give yourself ample visual space to see what you're doing, so make your Viewer and Canvas as large as possible.

FC Pro: Window - Arrange - Two Up

FC Express: Window - Arrange - Compositing

Place the playhead over your clip in the Timeline where you want the keying to occur and then click and highlight the video track to be keyed. Add the following filters to this track in this order:

Effects - Video Filters - Key - Color Smoothing - 4:1:1
Note: This is for DV or HDV footage in NTSC (PAL will use 4:2:2).

Then add:

Effects - Video Filters - Key - Spill Suppressor - Green (or Blue)

Then add:

Effects - Video Filters - Key - Chroma Keyer

Now go to Filters in your Viewer and turn off Color Smoothing and Spill Suppressor – you'll play with these later to see if you need them. Below you see Color Smoothing and Spill Suppressor checked. This means they are turned On and affecting your video track:

Below you see Color Smoothing and Spill Suppressor un-checked. This means they are turned Off and not affecting your video track:

Repeating what I said above, leave them both Off (un-checked).

Now open your Chroma Keyer filter and click the Visual button to make it go to Visual mode (see below):

This is the Chroma Keyer in Visual mode (see below):

Click the eyedropper button on the right side (see below):

and then click the eyedropper in the Canvas on the darkest part of the color you want to key out. (This will usually have you clicking the eyedropper as close to the subject you want to leave visible as you can click. If it's a person, that usually means close to their face or hair.)

Now, you can stay in Visual mode and tweak away using the controllers here, but I wouldn't recommend it. They are very finicky. It's best to go back to Numeric mode, so click the button in the upper left-hand corner and go back there (see below):

This returns you to Numeric mode. Now switch your Display Mode view to Matte (see below):

In the Canvas you should now see everything in black and white. The game is to keep the images that you want everyone to see remain white, and everything you want to disappear when you make the composite should turn black.

Keying/Compositing is an endless tweaking session – so slide and play with everything and switch back and forth between Matte and Final to see how you're doing.

Don't forget to drag the playhead back and forth over your entire clip to see if your results are consistent. If things change, make a cut and key that section separately.

When you're done with the Chroma Keyer filter, toggle Color Smoothing and Spill Suppressor to see if your composite looks better or worse. Spill Suppressor allows you to dial in the opposite color to the one you're keying out and helps get rid of any greenish or bluish edges on the image.

Any questions?

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