[Adam Taylor]

if you are happy that your kit is all properly calibrated and the output onto tape is all “legal” ie. correct video levels, chroma levels etc, then my next step would be to approach the transmission engineer at the station to see if they have noticed any problems.

Its possible that your chroma settings on your screen are over saturated, so that if you don’t use a vectorscope and rely just on your eyes, then you could be adjusting the image to look right when in actuality you are sucking out the colour un-necessarily.

Don’t take offence if i’m teaching granny to suck eggs – its just one possible out of many. Without seeing the problem first hand a solution is not always obvious immediately.

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

are you using calibrated broadcast monitors to view the material, or just computer screens?

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

Carl Larsen did a useful tutorial showing how to use expressions to accurately rotate wheels to look like they are rolling across a surface. I seem to remember they also worked for different sized wheels
I’m sure those expressions could be useful in figuring out your problem.

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/larsen_carl/vehicle_rig.php

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

probably not the right answer, but i am wondering if you use a wacom Intuos 3 graphics tablet? I have one, and until i disabled the little touchpad sensors at the edge of the tracking area, i was constantly triggering them with the edge of my hand whilst moving the pen nearby.

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

thank you – very helpful stuff.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

personally, i would stick to using the Animation codec. Prores 4444 is intended for much higher data rates than LT. Animation is a lossless codec so whatever frame size you set, is what you get. Just make sure you set the composition size and aspect ratios to match the LT frame size, and do the same when you set your output options.

I cannot say what problem you are having with your file names – i’ve never seen that one before.

As for wanting a completely prores lt timeline…tough! That codec does not support the alpha channel that you require. So use Animation within FCP. Then you will be able to use the alpha channel. You will need to render to play back a composite shot within FCP but that is not a major problem. Just how it is.

Putting the file into compressor to make an LT version will not solve your problem, as LT will not contain the alpha channel. The alpha channel is an 8 bit greyscale channel, which FCP uses to calculate which parts of the frame are opaque, which transparent and which are in between.

Without that channel, your video will appear with a black (or whatever colour you rendered it with) fill wherever you had transparency.

rgds
Adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

ahh – now it becomes a little clearer !

“All i want is to take my clean key from Keylight and to carry on editing in FCP, this shouldn’t be so hard surely? ”

Are you saying that you have keyed out something, and want to render out a video with an alpha channel so you can overlay that in FCP?
If so, then thats something very different from your initial description.

You can only render out video with an alpha channel using a few codecs…Animation & ProRes 4444 are the two most used ones. You can also use .tga image sequences. All will require some kind of rendering in your video app.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

my apologies…Steve is right. Automatic Duck is a one way solution.

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

hunh? a bit depth of 84,000 – what on earth are you talking about?

8 bit, 6 bit and 32 bit are the possible bit depths.

Is it a single shot you are working on, or an edited section comprising many different shots that you want to work on in AE?

Automatic Duck can be quite expensive, and its not really necessary. I used to get around it by exporting each shot from the edit separately, then importing them into AE and reconstructing the edit manually. Not too painful on a short sequence.

If its a single shot, then you probably do not need to bother with all the “round trip” stuff.
Safest way (ie – so it does not risk spoiling your original) is to export the shot from FCP – giving it a new name.
Import that single file into AE.
Set your Composition settings to whatever is appropriate for you…..and do your stuff.
Then when you are ready to finish in AE, click Composition/Add to Render Queue.
Open the Render Queue and where it says Output Module Click on the right hand arrow to open the drop down which should have various otput formats. You won’t see ProRes 422 LT so go to the bottom and click Custom.
This opens a new window – check that format is Quicktime, then in the Video Output section click the Format Options button and select Prores422 LT.
Then in the Stretch section, use the drop down selector to pick the relevant output format (ie The size you want the finished render to be.
Hit OK, then if you want to name the file click the Output To option and you can do justthat (and select where you want to save it to).
Give that a go…

You have to render the shot in AE – its simply not possible to send an un-rendered effect to another application and hope it will render for you. You wouldn’t go to a restaurant to get a chef to prepare your meal, only to take it home to cook yourself would you?

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

i think you’re confused – you can round trip between AE and Premiere (they are both Adobe products). If you want to round trip with FCP then you need to use Automatic Ducks plug-ins. There may also be other methods, but i l know the duck is a reliable one.

You need to set your desired output format in the Output section of the Render Queue.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk