I compared the internal FCP chroma-keyers with test versions of keylight and BorisFX.
So far I'm all for keylights - the internal FCP keyers didn't give me any useable results (either edges are green, or black and either jaggy, or wobbly - source is in DVCAM PAL with 4:2:0 compression...)
BorisFX chroma key seems okay, but not as good as keylights which seemed the only one that was able to deliver natural looking edges without too much blurring.

Are there any other chroma keyers available that I should be looking into? Preferably available as FCP plugins, but if you say there's this standalone program with a much better keyer I'd also like to check it out.

Thanks in advance for any hints!

Motion 4 has a great keyer built in (much better than the FCP keyer). If you have FCP you likely already have Motion too - so it's effectively free - and round tripping from FCP to Motion (and back) is simple.

I find dvMatte Pro the best keying software for FCP.
dvGarage - dvMatte Pro (http://www.dvgarage.com/dvmatte-pro)

As was mentioned taking your footage into Motion will also produce good results. but if you want to work and stay in FCP, then I highly suggest dvMatte Pro.

Thanks, I will try them both. I have never been working with motion (I'm not much of an editor really...) but it's definitely installed here, so it'd be the most cost effective solution, I guess.

*edit* @Dave, it looks to me like the Blue-/Greenscreen Filter in Motion 3 is exactly the same as the Blue-/Greenscreen Filter in FCP? They feature the same sliders and the exact same results, it seems. I also tried the chroma key filter in Motion and it only featured one slider and delivered the worst results so far. Where would the other keyer be, the one you said is much better? The version is Motion 3.0.2 by the way.

The one to use in Motion is Primatte RT - this is not in FCP and give much better results. Larry Jordon has a great tutorial on it @ Linda.com.

I use dvMatte Pro and this works every time and is the easiest way to pull a key in FCP and Motion.
Spend the money and get it if you do a lot of keying.

Cheers

The one to use in Motion is Primatte RT - this is not in FCP and give much better results. Larry Jordon has a great tutorial on it @ Linda.com.

Primatte RT is in my copy of FCP 7 and it works great.

I've been using primatte RT also and it does a good job if you mess with it long enough. I'm wondering if there's something better for use with HDV footage. I know HDV can be a headache for keying. unless its lit PERFECTLY, But i haven't seen anything better yet.