Adolfo Rozenfeld
Forum Replies Created
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Now that I think a bit more about it:
Both the particle animation and the type treament were classic and modern at the same time. That, at least for me, usually is a sign of good design . Especially, it was not (like so many other things we see) something forced to be cool or spectacular “against” the subject – it suited the communication pupose and style well, didn’t it?
As for the tools used, again, any current particle system can do that easily. If I recall correctly, particles came from several different points, so it probably wasn’t Particle Playground. Probably, anything else 🙂Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
It’s not very relevant which application they did, since I can’t think of any particle generator that can’t do something like that 🙂 Motion, Particular, Combustion, Particle Illusion, any of those. Since most of the stuff was plain 2D as far as I saw, Motion is not out of the question.
It was tasteful (the importang thing) but not especially original or hard to achieve. The type elements, again, were nothing unseen before, but still nice.Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Hey, ploughman.
First of all you need to design the particle layer. As an example, you could create a small solid with the “Circle” effect applied, and animate the circle’s color change over time (animate also Circle raduis if you like). For most cases, you will need to pre-compose that layer (because of AE’s rendering order, so that the Circle particle is “cooked” by the time Particle Playground asks for it).Very important: Unlike the layer containing the Particle Playground effect itself, don’t make the particle layer (or pre-composition) at full NTSC or PAL size, but rather make it at just the size needed to contain your particle shape. I hope the wording is clear….
For the two cases you mention:
1) In the Layer Map section, set Time Offset Type to “Relative Random”. Set Random Time Max to a suitable time range. Relative random means picking a random frame from your particle layer for each particle, and then animating the cycle for each cell from that random point.
2) In the Layer Map section, set Time Offset Type to “Absolute Random”. Set Random Time Max to a suitable time range. Absolute random means picking a random frame from your particle layer for each particle, and holding it stil.
Hope this helps!
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Open the files in Quicktime Player 7 Pro.
Go to Window > Show movie properties.
Select the the Timecode track and delete it.
Save the file.To tell you the truth, this is not very related to AE, because AE doesn’t work with the source’s embedded timecode.
All the best!
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
He used Firewire… It’s a half truth 🙂
The AJA IO is a device that captures uncompressed video and connets to a Mac via Firewire. But that’s not capturing through Firewire. It’s an uncompressed device which uses Firewire as a data protocol.
The codec they used is Apple Uncompressed 8 bit, which comes with all of Apple Pro apps (FCP, Motion, etc).
It’s not the Blackmagic codec, but its’ compatible with it. Good to know the Windows AJA codec too.
Watch carefully for gamma shifts, though. They’re very frequent with codecs which are almost the same, but not completely 🙂Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
That’s correct, except probably the last step, because if he does export from AE as Animation, he’ll have to re-render in FCP (because the AG-DVX100A is a DV device and FCP’s sequence settings are then set to DV codec). You will have this way a file that has five times the file size of DV, but you still end up with DV quality because that’s how FCP’s sequence is configured. Animation has much better quality than DV, but you loose that when you import it in a DV timeline.
You could probably render from AE using Quicktime DV NTSC.Unfortunately, multiple codec playback in one timeline is the one feature FCP is still missing. In that case, Barend’s recommendation would be completely right. But we are a couple of months away from NAB, and RT multi codec playback is probably the #1 user request for FCP.
tw0BALANCE0ne: There are workflows that are designed to avoid DV processing flaws for DV originated projects, If you’re interested in those, let me know.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
No, you can’t (because Microsoft stopped providing the WMV source for Mac developers). But you can use Flip4Mac either from Quicktime Player or with Sorenson Squeeze 4.3, for instance. As I undertand it, interframe/temporal compression schemes (like WMV, H.264, MPEG-2, etc) benefit from having a finished source anyway.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
If you have to choose, definitely 1 and 3. AE doesn’t care that much about hard disk speed, as long as it is adequate. A RAID might help if you’re working with uncompressed sources. If you’re video footage is DV or HDV, almost anything will be fine.
AE 6.5 takes a bit of advantage from powerful graphics cards, but AE 7 will make much better use of them.Used 1.8 or 2.0? If you go to the refurbished equipment section in Apple’s web site, they’re clearing 2.7 models for $2,050!
All the best.Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
AE 6.5 doesn’t come with presets for HDV (that’s what you have, rather than “high def” which usually implies professional variants like HDCAM or DVCPRO HD). The problem is you can’t even customize properly the settings yourself, because AE 6.5 doesnt have an option for using the correct pixel aspect ratio for HDV (1.33, I believe it is).
Fortunately, AE 7 does have the proper support for HDV sizes and pixel aspect. Everything will be easy if you upgrade (HDV wasn’t really around when AE 6.5 came out).One temporal workaround is to create the Comp at 1920×1080 with square pixels and 25 fps, apply Stretch to Fit to the HDV Layers so they adapt to that 1080i format, render with those settings and then have your NLE squeeze again the results to HDV aspect (1440×1080 with 1.33 pixel aspect ratio).
All the bestAdolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
From what I’ve seen is neither an Apple issue nor a Blackmagic issue, but rather a conflict between both. It could be solved by now, and I wouldn’t know because frankly, Blackmagic codec is mostly useful for cross-platofrm workflows. I don’t have it in my system. I know they were working on it.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com