HD workflow???

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

The best way for fx is to work with footage that is uncompressed.
You can try to get away with compressed footage, but you will not achieve the best possible results.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Walter Soyka]

[Tudor "Ted" Jelescu] “The best way for fx is to work with footage that is uncompressed. You can try to get away with compressed footage, but you will not achieve the best possible results.”

Agreed.

Also, if the footage is re-compressed twice (once by the editor, and then again once by you), it will likely be noticeably visually degraded, and may not intercut well with other original footage.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Lionel Kobi]

Depending on how complex your effects work is, you could do the compositing using the H264 video file and once you are finished, collect the files and send the After Effects project to your editor. They would then replace the H264 file with the ProRes file and render out the comp. I have done this successfully, however I was able to sit with my editor when replacing the footage.

Also, motion tracking with H264 can be quirky. Best to use an image sequence, however you might still get compression artifacts which interfere with your tracker.

[Mata Hari]

Hi,
Thanks for all the replys, but I’m running into major computing time even at 1080*720 res, how would I be able to get the same result on uncompressed footage? I have been exporting a 10 mins movie for 10 hours now and still have 3 hours left. Sure could use a better PC:)
So I’m still not sure what should I do but my tutor suggested to finish this export and just replace the video footage with the uncompressed one. the only problem with that can be (as far as I see) that the resolution is not the same so the effects would appear in different places (scaling problems too). But once I have the final export, according to the timecode it shouldn’t result any more complications. Except the computing time that would be 2 days at least.

[Walter Soyka]

[Tibor Bernscherer] “I’m running into major computing time even at 1080*720 res, how would I be able to get the same result on uncompressed footage?”

Uncompressed, intraframe footage is significantly easier to process than heavily-compressed, interframe footage, because the computer doesn’t have to work nearly as hard to decode the frames.

If you tell us more about your system (computer hardware, version of AE, multiprocessing settings, footage and effects, etc.), we may be able to offer better suggestions for improving your performance.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Mata Hari]

Hey,
The main problem is this; I have the footage in 3 different versions (the uncompressed one is abroad, my editor has worked on it). prores422 export, and 2 different resolution H264 exports. Following this link
https://www.frameforest.com/post/tip-how-to-work-offline/
I should be able to reduce the rendering time, but if I change the frame size within a 1920*1080 project, it will mock up the whole thing ( I suppose) as the effects won’t take place on the same spot on the video (masking, splatters, etc).
My editor suggested to work with offline files and then replace the video with the original one. I have tried it yesterday and after 13 hours exporting time (the movie is 10 minutes, I have never ever experienced such exporting time) the result was terrible. Although my computer isn’t the strongest one (Intel Dual Core, 4 gigabyte ram DDR2 and an Nvidia Geforce GTS 450, Win7 64bit), I have rendered 3D with full lighting in less time, so I’m definitely doing something wrong in terms of workflow.

[Walter Soyka]

[Tibor Bernscherer] “My editor suggested to work with offline files and then replace the video with the original one. I have tried it yesterday and after 13 hours exporting time (the movie is 10 minutes, I have never ever experienced such exporting time) the result was terrible. Although my computer isn’t the strongest one (Intel Dual Core, 4 gigabyte ram DDR2 and an Nvidia Geforce GTS 450, Win7 64bit), I have rendered 3D with full lighting in less time, so I’m definitely doing something wrong in terms of workflow.”

Offline/online workflow is suitable for editorial, not effects. You need to work online.

Compositing muzzle flashes shouldn’t require a terribly lengthy render. If you want help smoothing out your workflow, you need to patiently describe what you are doing in detail to us. You listed several kinds of footage — which ones are you working with? What version of AE? What are your multiprocessing settings? What other effects are you using? Can you pre-render any of the generative elements?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Mata Hari]

What I’d like to achieve that after finished the compositing I’d have a small version of the movie that I can send to the sound editor to work with as that would be the final length of the movie. The effects are various, I’m using adjustment layers for coloring, muzzle flashes and smoke elements (not many), and time re-mapping (slow motion). I’m using the H264 version as it’s only about 300MB. but I’m compositing only like 3 minutes of the movie, the rest is just effected by the coloring adjustment layer on AE CS3.
But I still don’t have a clue how I’m going to apply the same effects to the prores422 version, which is like 15 gigabytes, and my desktop would probably die if I tried to import the footage and apply the effects on it.

[Walter Soyka]

[Tibor Bernscherer] “The effects are various, I’m using adjustment layers for coloring, muzzle flashes and smoke elements (not many), and time re-mapping (slow motion). I’m using the H264 version as it’s only about 300MB. but I’m compositing only like 3 minutes of the movie, the rest is just effected by the coloring adjustment layer on AE CS3. But I still don’t have a clue how I’m going to apply the same effects to the prores422 version, which is like 15 gigabytes, and my desktop would probably die if I tried to import the footage and apply the effects on it.”

Use the ProRes version.

This may seem counterintuitive, but H.264 is extremely complex to decode. If you use the ProRes 422 media instead, your computer will actually have vastly less computation to perform and your render times will drop sharply.

Also, prior to CS5, AE’s support for H.264 (or any other interframe compression) was dodgy at best. Even if you can render, it’s likely you’ll have strange glitches in your final render.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Samuel Enblom]

Just to stich in with a comment. I’m pretty sure that if you export from avid with h.264 codec and then import into AE with current settings and then exporting again with the same settings the quality loss should be so slightly you wouldn’t notice it since it wouldn’t have to re-compress that much info…

On what platform are you going to publish it? (webb, TV, Cinema… ect?)