Whats the best method to zoom around stills…

[Tim Kolb]

Well, for most things After Effects can do a very good job of course…and even PPro is far better in this regard than any previous version.

…but my personal favorite is Canopus’s “Imaginate”. It is far faster than any other software I’ve ever seen and v2 can now do multiple pictures in a “timeline/comp” fashion.

It’s not really expensive and it does a great job.

Its main competitor is a product called “Moving Picture” from Stage Tools. I’ve never used it, but it certainly has its fans as well.

TimK
Kolb Syverson Communications
Creative Cow Host
2004, 2005 NAB Post Production Conference Premiere Pro Technical Chair
Author, “The Easy Guide to Premiere Pro” http://www.focalpress.com
“Premiere Pro Fast Track DVD Series” http://www.classondemand.net

[Ash]

Great. Thanks for the info. I do have After Effects, however have never used it. I am in a little bit of a time crunch, as my deadline is Friday. I think I will stick to PremierPro on this one. Does After Effects have a steep learning curve to produce what I am looking for? Is it that much easier to use, than motion keyframing in PPro?

Or do you think I could be better off, using one of the other software titles?

[Tim Kolb]

With a deadline like that, I’d leave learning AE for another time.

The keyframing in PPro is fine…just be prepared for some rendering.

TimK
Kolb Syverson Communications
Creative Cow Host
2004, 2005 NAB Post Production Conference Premiere Pro Technical Chair
Author, “The Easy Guide to Premiere Pro” http://www.focalpress.com
“Premiere Pro Fast Track DVD Series” http://www.classondemand.net

[Creig Bryan]

Tim:

With respect to Imaginate: Any problems using the Microsoft AVI export files from Imaginate in PPro 1.5.1?

And, How (well) does the Imaginate plug-in for PPro work?

Thanks and,

Keep Smiling

[Creig Bryan]

And one other question:

I’ve all but sworn off 3d fx for stills in PPro, with extreme malice, due specifically to the rendering centuries. Does Imaginate do better(faster) in this category?

Keep Smiling

[Tim Kolb]

Imaginate is definitely faster in the render department which is why I thought of it for Ashley’s long project. The motion is very smooth and more importantly, the upsampling is simply astounding.

As far as the plugin…I’d forego it and simply render AVIs (save yourself some time and render to the correct AVI for your project to avoid re-rendering of course).

With a PPro timeline with several Imaginate “projects” on the timeline (as opposed to rendered clips), the PPro project has to sort of “launch” Imaginate in some form in the background and with several instances, it has to be launched several times as far as I can tell. The extra flexibility is really amazing, but when you have several in one project, the project takes forever to launch, the application slows down noticeably, and the render time for the project takes far longer than simply rendering in Imaginate and bringing in the AVI in my experience.

Advantages to having Imaginate projects on the timeline are that you can use alpha channels in the Imaginate project even when you are editing in DV (which you could also do by rendering Imaginate files out RGBA uncompressed and putting up with a little render time in PPro…) and by changing the length of the Imaginate project “clip” on the timeline, your keyframes are actually scaled in the Imaginate project giving you incredibly smooth motion and lots of flexibility.

TimK
Kolb Syverson Communications
Creative Cow Host
2004, 2005 NAB Post Production Conference Premiere Pro Technical Chair
Author, “The Easy Guide to Premiere Pro” http://www.focalpress.com
“Premiere Pro Fast Track DVD Series” http://www.classondemand.net

[Creig Bryan]

Thanks for the info. I’ve got several pix projects in the hopper, and had been putting them off, due to PPRo’s (in)explicable, poor handling of larger pix. The work-around of reducing their size, to (only) help prevent green/black render issues, is a bit more than annoying.

I’ll be ordering Imaginate.
I didn’t ask, but I’ll assume there are no compatibility issues or gotchas between it and PPro 1.5.1.

Keep Smiling

[Tim Kolb]

[Creig Bryan] “I didn’t ask, but I’ll assume there are no compatibility issues or gotchas between it and PPro 1.5.1”

He, he…never say “never” I guess, but I’ve not experienced any problems thus far with Imaginate 2 and PPro using AVIs.

Once either app is updated, all bets are off as with any combination of apps of course, but I would suspect that any compatibility pain would be in the plugin for handling Imaginate projects on the timeline (provided there ARE any issues of course…), AVIs are AVIs for the most part.

…once you render the first project (and experience the preview for that matter), I think you’ll be pleased.

TimK
Kolb Syverson Communications
Creative Cow Host
2004, 2005 NAB Post Production Conference Premiere Pro Technical Chair
Author, “The Easy Guide to Premiere Pro” http://www.focalpress.com
“Premiere Pro Fast Track DVD Series” http://www.classondemand.net

[Creig Bryan]

Tim:

Thank you most kindly.

Keep Smiling

[Mark Palmos]

[Tim Kolb] “…but my personal favorite is Canopus’s “Imaginate”. It is far faster than any other software I’ve ever seen and v2 can now do multiple pictures in a “timeline/comp” fashion.”

yeah, i would agree, imaginate is very fast and quality is excellent, renders are blazingly fast.
one gotcha, if you want to change the interpolation of the keyframes, you cannot be ON the keyframe, you must be past it, then you can change the keyframe interpolation in the dropdown for that parameter.

mark.