Horizontal Panning and Stutter

[Joey Foreman]

Framerate mismatch?

Also FCP doesn’t support realtime playback of the Animation codec without a fast RAID, so it might be your system struggling to keep up.

How does it play in Quicktime 7?

Try rendering to ProRes HQ instead.

Joey Foreman
Editor/Compositor/VFX Artist

p.s. If you’re working at 23.976 fps, pans can/will be perceived as less smooth than at a higher frame rate.

[Michelle Bonsignore]

Thx J!
I don’t have FCP on my system…handing files off to editor. I understand the ProRez codecs are only available with FCP, correct?
Are there any other render options as a workaround?

[Joey Foreman]

That’s for your editor to decide. Ask her/him.

Joey Foreman
Editor/Compositor/VFX Artist

[Joey Foreman]

A good bet, though, would be a .tiff sequence. The editor can then convert that to ProRes.

Joey Foreman
Editor/Compositor/VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

You have not mentioned if you work in 1080i or 1080p- it may be a matter of interlaced vs progressive footage.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Michelle Bonsignore]

1080p

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

So, if it’s not a matter of p vs i, then Joey is probably right on the money- the Animation codec is hard to play real time on most systems. Try rendering out from FCP and see if the final render still looks that way.
Also, do you have motion blur enabled in AE on the layer that is animated and the comp?

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Michelle Bonsignore]

..maybe it would help to back up here and have someone offer a proven process flow.

Here are the constants:
Source footage: 1080p (1920 x 1080) Apple ProRez 422

Now, let’s assume I was at the first stage of designing my animation.

What comp size should I start with?

Should I be adding motion blurs to the layers that are moving? (note: I have worked in after effects for years now and have rarely used motion blur on simple linear moves)

Ok..now I’m done building animation: on to the render.

Final will be delivered for use within FCP (I do not have FCP on my system so no corresponding codecs available)

What should Render Settings be?

I’m obviously missing some basic step/information in my process and hope that someone can clarify how they build animation with similar footage.

Many thanks…

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Comp in AE should be full HD 1920×1080 progressive.
It is not always necessary but with movement motion blur provides a smoother animation especially when working progressive.
Render out a sequence of frames- .tga or uncompressed .tiff should be fine.
Again, your final animation may be just fine. The playback may be jittery because it’s an Animation .mov. Have the editor render out a second or two out of FCP and that will test it.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Cory Petkovsek]

Render out with a codec with a smaller data rate to test on your machine. You might be pumping out 900mb/sec of data through the animation codec, which is hard for a system to deal with smoothly. To see if your animation is not smooth, use something like mpeg, xvid, h264 (if you have a video card, drivers and media player that supports hardware acceleration of h264) or anything with a reduced frame rate and see if it plays smoothly. If your system is too slow to play 1080p footage in general, render out to 720p or half res to check your animation.

If it looks funny in these other codecs, you have a problem with your animation or comp settings. If not, then it should play fine with the animation codec; just make sure you are delivering the specs that the receiver of the project desires.

Whether you use motion blur or not is a style choice. Most motion graphics look better to me with motion blur, which simulates a physical camera. Motion graphics without motion blur looks more computer generated. Simple camera movements like a straight pan, track, tilt, or crane, can produce artifacts in motion graphics, which motion blur can hide.

Cory

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Cory Petkovsek
Corporate Video