Adolfo Rozenfeld
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[Mylenium] “Your only option to improve the situation is to slightly blur everything or re-build/ retouch the websites”
Of course AE has the Reduce Interlace Flicker filter, which is a subtle vertical blur. So that you can get rid of flicker without giving away horizontal resolution. In PS there’s a video action that does adaptive flicker removal, ie, tries to detect areas prone to flickering and only blurs those pixels!
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
As far as compositing goes, Combustion can be better, equal or worse than AE depending on your taste or needs. Many people swear by its’ motion tracker, for example. On the other hand, two important composting tools, expressions and material options, AE got them long before Combustion and probably better.
For motion graphics, they are not even close. AE is in another league entirely. Not even Apple Motion comes close to AE in terms of type animation, for example. Combustion doesn’t even begin to try.
I’ll tell you an anecdote that I believe will make you feel more comfident about you own opinion regarding what you hear out there. Last year I produced/directed a motion graphics spot for use in one of those big fashion shows. There were these guys which were accepting all the spots and placing them in single tape for exhibition. They told me they voted our spot as the best of the show, and then of them said: Wow, you really used Combustion a lot here, didn’t you?
The whole spot was made with AE.
The moral of the story is: there are a few snob people with preconceptions of what is better or what is worse based on things that are outside or beyond the nature of the application. Usually these people know very little about the creative capabilities themselves, since they’re worried in what they believe will make them look good, sort of speak. This is not to say there aren’t people with very valid reasons to prefer Combustion, but those people will surely have deeper arguments to give you than talking about taking a step up. Some of the most knowledgeable people I know in terms of motion graphics and yes, compositing too, use AE every day as their main tool.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
Congratulations, Aanarav!
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
Shake is strictly compositing. It’s also and EOLed product. Apple announced that Shake won’t exist anymore as it is now and that it would be rolled into a “next generation product”. Whatever that means.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
[Bret Williams] “It would be nice if FCP had lots of the keyframing of AE. Gotta hope some of that gets into “extreme” or whatever the next version is called. We’re pushing 2 years since an upgrade now.”
2 years? FCP’s keyframing model has remained the same since v1 in 1999. It already had a few shortcomings for the standard back then. In 2007, it’s really inadequate.
[Bret Williams] “As for the pixels per second on a credit roll, you really can’t find much easier math.”
Well, the way it works in AE and even Premiere Pro (which has the old AE keyframing model) rather than making math easy, simply takes math out of the picture. You have a speed readout that tells you the units per second for any operation. No math, just dragging keyframes.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
Of course, if the FCP keyframe editor had a units per second readout, like After Effects (even Premiere) has, these things would be much easier 🙂 Also, AE’s reduce interlace flicker (not motion blur, which is about simulating a shutter rather than dealing with interlace flicer) helps a lot.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
I’ve also seen the orange/unlimited bar appearing in perfectly capable systems (like MacBook Pros), and with the right settings, when the scopes are set to high-quality or RT update. Turning that off makes the orange bar go away and RT effects power is sudenly twice as much. Only turn on the hig-quality/RT scopes when it’s really needed.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
Nik: you hitted the nail on the very opposite direction of what I believe 🙂 That’s the beauty of web forums, freedom…
Let me say it this way: there is hardly *any* creative industry where the difference between Motion and After Effects is more evident than in commercial/adverstising production for broadcast. Which happens to be an area I myself do quite a lot.
Let me elaborate: there are products that are more specialized than AE at hard core compositing for fx, like Shake for instance. Others swear by Fusion or Nuke, etc. Then Motion has its’ own very interesting credentials for motion graphics (but really could benefit from a deeper toolset IMO). However, commercial spots production is the one area where AE shines, as it has one leg on compositing and the other in motion graphics. This produces an hybrid that it’s hard to beat. Believe me: having one application which is adept at both, is not the same as using two different ones. Example: Shake has a competent tracker, Motion has a competent text animation system. Only After Effects is able to use its’ motion tracker to drive text animation, see what I mean? That’s what makes it shine. I could think of 100 similar examples where compositing concepts mix with motion graphics concepts, and that is hard to beat for tv/commercial production.
As for AE standard, AE Pro, Motion and the whole price difference: I chose not go in that direction, because for me it’s not at all Motion vs After Effects, since I love both. I also chose not to go in that direction, because I love Apple and I hate noting Apple sells you (used to sell) a $300 application that wants a $600 graphics card and last night’s computer to feel well.
But the truth is that this a moot point: Motion can’t be bought for $300 anymore (or for any other price, for that matter) on its’ own. You get it for $1300 with FCS, or as part of a FCS upgrade, or you don’t get it. No $300. AE standard includes 3D, expressions, and the whole text animation engine, which as far as motion graphics is concerned, are really defining features. Also, you can get AE as part of a suite, just like Motion, at very competitive prices. So much so, that I have both 🙂
Finally, the important part: the subtle differences between the Adobe text tracking/kerning engine and Motion’s incorrect way of handling those (always my opinion, of course), makes a tiny yet huge difference when it comes to those car commercials you mean. When type design is such an specific aspect, it has to be elegant and beautiful. Cool animation is part of it, but not enough.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
You mean HD-DVD and Blu-Ray?
Since they use the plain 720P/1080i (plus the 480i you already know) standards, After Effects 7 and Photoshop CS2 already have presets for those in the new comp/new document presets. When you choose the presets, both AE and PS will give you action/safe for those too. In AE you have to check the frame rate because, unlike PAL or NTSC SD, many frame rates are legitimate for those standards (23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 50i, 60i, etc).In AI, it’s easy to do because these standards use square pixels: 720p is 1280×720, 1080i is 1920×1080.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
Having said all that, and to make this post more productive, here are some things in Motion that I would like AE to get.
* Motion Sketch-like functionality for all parameters, not just position.
* Separate XY curves (no separate Z for obvious reasons). Unfortunately, in Motion separate XY is the only way, not an option: I wouldn’t like that for AE.
* While the text animation model in Motion is less powerful than AE’s, the style pane makes it very easy to set and animate glows, drop shadows, gradients, etc. as text attributes. In AE, having those attributes for text animator groups would be really useful. I also like very much the ability to define and save gradient and style presets.
* The object selection system for filters and properties in Motion is amazing. In AE, layer selection menus for filters only allow you to select one item (think Particle Plaground’s layer maps, or Displacement Map, etc). In Motion, you can drag as many objects as you like to an object well. That would be really cool for AE. If not possible, selection of multiple layers in a layer selector menu would be good too.
* The ability to quickly group layers and create visual parent-child relationships is also very cool.Now, the list of things Motion could get from AE would require a whole afternoon of typing 🙂
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com