[Arthur Vibert]

Hi, Joe –

Try this for a start:

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=2&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/deane_elvis/disintegratePeople/index.html

Good luck!

Arthur

[Arthur Vibert]

Get the book After Effects 6.5 Studio Techniques by Mark Christiansen. It has a great section on light wrap (without plug-ins, aside from what ships with AE) as well as TONS of great tools for compositing, rotoscoping, etc. It does for compositing techniques what the Meyers’ books do for Motion Graphics.

Arthur VIbert

[Arthur Vibert]

option command r

Arthur Vibert

[Arthur Vibert]

Art Center in Pasadena, CA. Since your goal is to hang your own shingle, you need to learn more than techniques (which you don’t need to go to college for anyway). Art Center will teach you discipline – working in an intense, competitive environment. They emphasize excellence and their students have done consistently well over the years.

I’d avoid places that just teach you techniques. You can learn that anywhere.

Arthur Vibert

[Arthur Vibert]

Walter –

I couldn’t agree with you more. Which is why I said “if you MUST work in HDV…”.

As long as you’re going to commit the drive space and associated cards etc. to cutting uncompressed HD, it makes sense to originate it that way and avoid all the HDV problems completely.

Arthur Vibert

[Arthur Vibert]

I recently finished a 1 hour film using footage originated in HDV. In addition to straightforward footage, there was a fair amount of greenscreen material. Poorly shot greenscreen, I might add. I found it was possible to get a decent key BUT it was not easy. Still, after a lot of work I even managed to get a fair amount of detail – even around hair.

But it’s a lot easier with uncompressed SD. There’s so much compression that I found the moment the HDV surface is scraped the soft underbelly is revealed and it’s not pretty.

My advice if you MUST work in HDV is to import it in an uncompressed format and never return to HDV again. Then the damage is minimized. HDV can be quite beautiful. And it projects reallly well. It’s just very fragile.

Arthur VIbert

[Arthur Vibert]

Knoll Light Factory at Red Giant Software may be what you’re lookin for.

Arthur Vibert

[Arthur Vibert]

dvMatte Pro from dv Garage is very good, especially if you are working with DV. It creates a core matte AND an edge matte and has a slider that allows you to determine the balance between the two.

One other tip (and if you know this I apologize) you probably won’t be able to pull a matte in one pass. Try pulling multiple mattes, concentrating on problem areas (you’ll need to garbage matte these out – hair, motion, etc.) and then combining them.

Good luck!

Arthur Vibert

[Arthur Vibert]

Does this mean you’ve figured it out, or do you still need help?

Arthurr Vibert

[Arthur Vibert]

I’m a Tejava man myself, in copious quantities. Until I’m done. Then I’m with Graeme.

Arthur Vibert