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HP commercials
I had to produce a spot similar to the HP picture perfect commercials. I couldn’t find a simple way to do it so I came up with a work around. This may not be the easiest way. Please let me know if there’s a better way using parent/child or expressions.
At first glance the effect seems simple to achieve in AE. Yet when we get down to compositing the problem becomes one of proper scaling. As posted here many times, the effect begins with corner pin tracking using the perspective tracking option. Choose the tracking areas based on your frame in the field footage. I used the inside corner edge as a tracking area.
Make sure the little + is positioned at the exact inside corner. This is where each of the 4 replacement footage corners will land.
Track away. I had to stop a few times and manualy adjust the tracking area when the background behind the frame changed drastically. It would be way better to use a colored dot on the frame if you can. I didn’t have this, and it worked pretty well.
Ok, now we make a duplicate layer of the same footage placed above the tracking layer, find the point we want to freeze on this layer. Add a time remap function. Set a key frame in time remap at the freeze point. Delete the ending time remap point. Set your layer inpoint to this frame. We now have a still. The bottom layer video plays and the comp freezes at this point.
This is where the problem with corner pin in this effect appears. If we simply apply the track to the still layer, the entire frame will be scaled into the frame.IOW, you’ll have your person holding the frame scaled down inside the frame ala video feedback. If you had masked the inside of the frame in the still layer, a tiny version scaled way down will be inside the frame. This won’t work. Rescaling the still layer doesn’t work either. The track will no longer follow correctly. I’ve been racking my brain trying to overcome this problem. Here’s what I came up with…a work around, that isn’t perfect, as it adds some scaling artifacts, but it’s pretty darn good.
Plan B. Since the corner pin effect wants to map the extreme corners of the target layer onto the new tracked corners of our frame, we need a still layer that is almost the same size as the inside of the frame, it also must be perspective corrected. So…before you apply the track…do this
Select the still layer, precomp it. Open the precomp. Change the composition settings and adjust the size of this comp to reflect the size of the inside of the frame. For example, if your photo frame is 1/2 the size of the video, the new comp size might be 360 X 240 Reposition the footage to place the frame in the center of this comp. Add a corner pin effect. Now manipulate the corner pins to make the inside of the frame fill this comp. We want to remove all of the sourrounding frame footage so only the inside shows. This will also perspective correct the inside of the frame. We end up with a smaller comp entirely filled with our still.
Now, in the original comp apply the four point motion tracking data to this new precomp.
Done.
Well some tweaking and color correcting may be needed but it’s pretty convincing.
Dave Beaty
Dave Beaty
Dreamtime Entertainment
3613 Del Prado Blvd.
Suite 202
Cape Coral FL 33904
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http://www.dreamtimeentertainment.com -
3 Replies
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I’ve done similar but haven’t tried it with motion tracking. I got decent results.
Render out the stopped frame to a photoshop file, crop it there and import it layer size. That way you won’t have to scale, and its easier on your processer. You will still have to color correct but you’ll want to create some light glints and shadows anyway.Rob
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A probably easier way, I haven’t had to do it, but could work, I don’t know.
Once freeze frames, draw a mask on that layer, exactly where the trackpoints are. Menu: Layer/Mask/New Mask. That will automatically create a mask that covers the exact real edges of the layer.
Now the trick: Effects/Distort/Reshape. Put the masks correctly and the desired content of the photo will be expanded to reach the edges that get handled with the corner pin effect, that will scale down the picture to be exactly as it was, but with the difference that they will handle the edges correctly.
Anyway, I am no guru of the Reshape filter. I just presume that will work.
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I haven’t tried the reshape filter. Sounds like a quick way to avoid the precomp, resizing, corner pinning.
But the Photoshop method would be good too. That way you can go in and crop the shot, add a distort or perspective transform to it and end up with a still exactly the size of the frame.
The biggest problem I had was tracking the frame as it moved with motion blur and the outside background changing, the track would get lost after a few frames. A small dot of color green or red or something on the frame would have made it so much easier to pull off the track. Then change the color of the dot to match the frame color in the end.
Dave Beaty
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