Aharon Rabinowitz
Forum Replies Created
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I don’t really know about SVCD’s – not even sure waht makes them “super.” Sorry. My DVD player can’t read them.
Again, if you are already at DVD resolution, why not just go with a DVD – it’s more universal, and the quality will be better.
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Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
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Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com -
I guess that option is not be available for VCD. So Sorry about that. They’ve constrained it so you can’t change it. It’s been so long since I used a VCD, I forgot that.
Again, no matter what you do, a VCD will never be clear when played full screen – you are blowing it up to about 2x the size and that will always end up fuzzy loooking.
Your best bet is to do it as MPEG-2 (DVD), which will also not give you the 2-Pass VBR, but it will look a whole lot better.
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Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com -
Also, don’t forget to ceck your local art/design school or college to see if they offer continuing education classes.
I teach advanced AE at pratt in NYC, and they charge about $850 for a 15-week (30 hour) course. Other schools may charge as much as $1500. But truthfully, taking a class is a great way to learn, if only becasue it’s hard to ask a book a question when you don’t know the proper terminology. A teacher can really help you solve problems.
That said, I learned AE by reading Trish Meyer’s books. Then I started making up fake commercials to animate, and learned a ton more. Then I went out and got some freelance work, and realized that up until that point I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did. EVen as a teacher I still do tutorials. There is always more to learn.
I don’t say any of that to discourage you – only to point out that we’re all in the same boat- so keep at it.
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Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com -
In the render queue – output module, am I going to render as .mov file? if yes, do i need to change the setting?
Well, it depends. Make sure the program you are using to convert to DVD or VCD format can read Quicktime files. A lot can’t. Sorenson can, and I think media cleaner can too, but I’m not sure.
If it can read MOV files, then set the output module to use Quicktime Movie, animation compression (which is not really compression, in the sense that there is no image quality loss), best quality. Animation compression *can* save a lot of space when compared to an uncompressed QT or AVI. But it doesn;t always – it depends on the video you are “compressing.”
If your program can’t read MOV files, you will need to render uncompressed AVI.
The size for the composition i use in AE is 720 x 480, but when come to VCD format is 352 x 240, during the render and conversion change of the size will it effect the quality of the video? or i should work on the composition size same as the Video CD size(352 x 240)?
Whenever you change sizes there is going to be some loss, but when you go from a large size to a small one, the loss can be minimal.
Think about it, if you scale a picture down to 50% of its size, you are hiding half of all the pixels. so some detail is lost no matter what. However, that’s going to happen no matter what you do, whether in After Effects, Vegas, Flash, Final Cut. This is perfectly acceptible. While you are losing pixels, image quality is still kept becasue you aren’t stretching pixels out.
When you scale up – that’s where your real problem is. VCD is attempting to strtch an image at half res to cover your entire TV Screen – so no matter what you do, you are going to get a fuzzy/blurry image – your scaling it up on your screen to about 200% – that’s a lot. There is no way around this.
If you are already working at DVD resolution, why not put it on DVD instead? Is cost a concern – You can buy DVD’s really cheap these days, and a double layer DVD burner can go for under $100.
Is AE suitable to use for Wedding album, because we are use wedding photo to work out a video, some of my frieds recommend Macromedia Flash, what is your opinion?
If you mean an on-line picture album, Flash is more suited for web stuff like that. Do you mean a wedding video? if that’s the case, then that’s a preference for which program you like and who your audience is (will it be watched off the web only?). I don’t work in flash, but if i wanted to do it in AE, I could always compress it in Sorenson for Flash. Also, if you go to “File > Export” in AE, one of the options is Flash Video (swf?) – though it can be very pixelated.
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Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com -
Make sure that when you are rendering you’re render settings are set to “best Settings” (in the render queue). If your uncompressed renders are still looking bad, that my be the problem.
That’s not the same as the Quicktime Best settings – The Quicktime quality settings are a choice between highe quality images vs. smaller file size.
As far as your other question, I didn’t quite understand. Can you try again?
Sorry about that.
Aharon
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Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com -
The Kid Stays in the picture is a great example of AE using “2.5D” (as opposed to 3D)
Do a search on line for “2.5D” and “2 and a half D.”
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Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com -
First off, since you are compressing again after you render, you should probably render fully uncompressed – Otherwise you are compressing material that’s already compressed, which is going to look bad, almost always.
Try converting that to VCD and see if it works.
Now, I know that uncompressed video takes up a lot of space, but it’s only temporary. Once you convert the Video, you can erase the original uncompressed footage. FYI – every minute of video (not including sound) takes up about 1.8 GB if it’s an AVI.
AE can render MPEG 1, but since it only does 1 pass, it doesn’t always look that great. A 2-pass render analyzes the video in the first pass, and then figures out how to best compress it in the second pass. Unfortunatly, I don’t think AE can do this – most programs don’t.
For that, you need a program like Media CLeaner or Sorenson Squeeze.
What I do is render out my video uncompressed (or using Quicktime-animation compression) and then using Sorenson Squeeze to compress it for DVD or VCD. You can set it to do the 2-Pass render, and it comes out looking pretty clean.
You can buy Sorenson Squeeze at https://www.sorenson.com. FOr anyone who compresses video regularly (Web, DVD, VCD, Flash…etc.) it’s an essential tool.
Hope that helps.
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Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com -
This is a great place for tutorials.
If you click on the word “tutorials” to the left (in the navigation bar) it will take you to a place where you can choose from different articles and tutorials.
A direct link to to just straight AE tutorials (as opposed to AE/Photoshop or AE/Other programs) is this:
Hope that helps.
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Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com -
You don’t need to.
As long as you import them correctly (so that After Effects knows that they are Square Pixels), when you work in a PAL composition, AE will automatically adjust your pictures so that they will work correctly in your compositions.
In other words, if I have a square pixel picture of a circle, it looks round in a square pixel comp. If I drop that picture into a non Square Comp, AE will stretch the pixles to match the comp’s Pixel aspect ratio. My circle will now look more oval then round – which is the way it should be.
Hope that helps.
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Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com -
I think I understand. Are you trying to open it through the “file -> Open” command?
That’s used to open pillusion files, not images.
To import an image do the following:
In the layer window (Top Left), double click on the gray box – it will open a dialog asking you to locate the BG image you want to import.
Check out this tutotorial to learn how to put particles over Background footage:
https://www.wondertouch.com/tutorials/aharon/basic/Tut_1.htm
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Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com