[Alan]

Thanks John. I need to do some upgrading. I’m only on Compressor 1.2.1 and Quicktime 6. whatever. The tricky part is having to deliver as a Windows movie (not AVI as I said earlier). So QT is out of the question.

[Alan]

Wait. I got all excited because I get the key part, but I’m a little unclear about the off-set “silver” video thing. Exactly what do you envision with “off-set”? A duplicate of the video image that is either shifted, blown up, blurred, distorted or all of the above taht will be composited inside the water bead ? And what do you mean by “silver”?

So basically we’re talking about a luma key to bring out the water bead. Describe the steps on how you would layer them in your timeline….that is if you have the time and patience.

Much appreciated!

[Alan]

Now that’s what I’m talking about!

[Alan]

plus you can double it up, change the colors to appear as though their not just sunflowers and just fade into a normal text element as they’re blooming.

go wild.

[Alan]

Yea, but that’s the trick. The video images will have a garbage matt to appear as though they’re inside the bottle. You won’t realize this until the final seconds of the spots. Until then, the images are pretty much full screen. The subtle giveaways are the occasional warping of the images as if under water. Maybe some bubbles here an there. To add to this , I want to roll a bead of water down through the frame and over the video image. There’s got to be some tricky Photoshop treatment combined maybe with a warp effect in FCP that I can roll through the frame as if it’s a bead of water. Maybe a plug-in????

I wish it were as simple as shooting!!

[Alan]

I don’t know if this helps but I’ve had similar problems with changed Photoshop files not updating correctly in FCP. To correct this, I simply deleted the old file from the browser which made it go off-line, then reimported the new revised file and replaced it on the timeline and everything was hunky dory.

[Alan]

It seems simple enough. I’ll try it. Will Compressor give me better results?

[Alan]

Thanks Leo and John,

It’s comforting to know that pros like you guys are always around for good advice.

Al

[Alan]

John,

Do you think that Panasonic will or has addressed this “noise” issue with a software update? By the way, I had the camera set to video mode not film, so I think I’ll get better results right away. Bare in mind that everything I shoot is for braodcast so, beyond what you have already suggested, is there anything else I should pay attention to?

Thanks Leo or your input as well!