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avid free dv is an option but I haven't had any luck getting it to work well.  The learning curve is pretty steep for a non-pro like myself.  Plus you have the mess which is avid in general.  My friend edits dv for a living and when he finally found a system that his avid liked, he still has 3-4 crashes a week.  His whole company might be switching to final cut soon.  Might be worth a shot.

Ditto on the Final Cut Express!

Thanks for the info.
So no Green Screen unless I go with Final Cut?

Thanks for the info!

Greenscreen can be done with a few different apps.  Personally I usually use After Effects.

The thing is, if you shoot your footage with DV or other consumer format, you're gonna have a rough go at it because those codecs are not friendly for making alpha channels from color.  The codec throws out alot of that color information when compressing the signal and that's the info you need to make a crisp mask.

In other words, you could buy thousand dollar software or download a free greescreen plug-in for iMovie and you're still not going to get a great key from a DV source.  It's not the app, it's your footage.

However, some of these limitations can be compesated for by doing proper lighting with a hard backlight.

Read up on green screen techniques before you try because there's a handful of things you can do to increase your chances of success.  Also be sure to read about the DV codec and try to understand it's limitations if you're going to be working with it.

Bean wrote:

Right. I've tried making my green screens look nice using a variety of programs (mainly After Effects) but i've had to accept defeat. The best result I have achieved still has the slight glow around the edge of the subject.

Here's a video podcast shot on greenscreen and composited in After Effects. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good.

http://freeverse.com/apps/app/?id=5012&view=videos

You can make use of the matte choker filter to lessen the halo effect.

-droo