Solved Chroma Keyer 2

I tooled out the lights and green screen and re-shot my videos. It's drastically improved. It's very consistent throughout as far as camera, screen and lighting. It was helpful to get a 2nd shot at it, improvements to the script, etc. I can get the Chroma Keyer in Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 15 to work now. It's not great and from our last forum I now know that there are better tools out there. UR right, it's primitive. One of your suggestions was to upgrade to Vegas Pro 16 Suite for $349. Now I'm doing 3 episodes of my vids on spec and see if they get picked up. If they get picked up and I wind up continuing with Episode 4, then I could see paying for the upgrade. At that point I'll be in biz and it's a fair investment. But now, not so much - I'm an amateur just having fun. But they have a fee 30-day trial. Perfect. I've rationalized it to use the free trial for free Chroma Keyer use.

Would this be the correct strategy?: I do all of the editing in Movie Studio Platinum 15 except for the Chroma Keyer. When it's ready to go, I start the free trial. I open my file in Vegas Pro 16 Suite. I do the Chroma Keyer all in one shot on one line on the time line for the entire 3 videos. I break it up into the 3 videos and render them and have final videos. I've got 30 days to fix anything. After the trial, I could open the file in Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 15, but the Chroma Keyer wouldn't exist. The best I could do to at that point to do further edits is to open the final rendered video in Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 15 and add lines on top on the time-line. Is this correct ?

I definitely recommend Hitfilm's Chroma Keyer plugin.

Like yourself, I use to use the included Vegas Chroma Keyer plugin and thought I was doing something wrong, because it always looked terrible.
I then bought Hitfilm's software and was amazed at how good it worked, after watching their YouTube tutorials.

There is something important you need to know!
The free trial for Hitfilm's Ignite Pro plugins, that comes with Vegas Pro 16 Suite, is watermarked until you buy it.
So if you do any processing with Hitfilm Ignite Pro Chroma Keyer inside of Vegas Pro 16, it will have a watermark on top of the video after you render it.

You can use Ignite Pro indefinitely without paying for it, but there will always be a watermark.
Free trials from Hitfilm only give you the ability to experiment.
This means you can't complete your green screen work by only using the trial.

Your cheapest option is to use the free Hitfilm Express and buy the Chroma Key plugin by itself for $20.
fxhome.com/express
fxhome.com/store/hitfilm-express#composite-pro-keying
However, this means you would have to process your Green Screen video in Hitfilm Express and then import the finished video back into your main Vegas project.
I have never bought single plugins from Hitfilm and am pretty sure they only work in Hitfilm Express.

Hitfilm Ignite Pro costs $199 if you buy it direct from Hitfilm just by itself.
fxhome.com/ignite-pro

If you upgrade to Vegas Pro 16 Suite it costs $349 and you get:
Vegas Pro 16 (worth $399)
Vegas DVD Architect (worth $99)
Hitfilm Ignite Pro (worth $199)
proDAD VitaScene V3 PRO (worth $599 value)
Boris FX Sapphire Lighting Unit (worth $595)

The plugins that come with Vegas Pro 16 Suite will give you a large amount of new Video FX and Tools.

Good answer once again Dr. Zen and I'm so glad I asked the question. You spared me from a pitfall. One thing I've learned in my many decades is that the devil is in the details. Thank you again for the help, and let me ask more to get this clear. The best option - edit my video to the series of clips of just me in front of green screen. Match up the microphone audio track with the audio track on the camera and delete the camera audio. Save the file as a Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 15 file. Install the free Hitfilm Express. Buy the $20 Chroma Key plugin for Hitfilm Express. Open my Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 15 file in Hitfilm Express. Chroma Key the file and render as a finished video. Open that finished video in Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 15 and continue to edit - adding background and layers on top of Hitfilm video. Correct ?

Everyone likes to use their own methods.
The main thing is to work in a way that makes sense to you.

If it was me, I would probably do my green screen work in Hitfilm Express first and render out a new video/s.
Then import the new "greened screened" video into Vegas and go from there.