[Austin Reeves]

Okay, so I’m back to admit my defeat lol. The setting I did works, but after batching files, I had sync issues again. To fix it, all I had to do was open the individual project files in STP, click save, and close it. Suddenly the sync issue (as well as the green line over each problem clip) went away. Needless to say I think this qualifies as a bug, and I’ve seen posts that Apple is aware of the problem.

Alas, I come with another solution though, one I think I will use for the time being.. Check out this screencast for a helpful tip on roundtripping entire sequences:

https://www.screencast.com/users/hatuckett/folders/Default/media/d781e0cb-8689-444e-9c49-7e8592e86052

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Austin Reeves
AR&C
Production & Post-Production Services
Washington, DC

[Austin Reeves]

Yeah umm… I was beating my head against a sharp corner on my desk for a short while on this one too… I looked everywhere but no responses from anyone, except Apple on “don’t change the start of your clip in STP”. Thankfully I found the problem… Atleast in my case.

HERE GOES…

Believe it or not, STP imports all info of the clip correctly, except your project frame rate.

Go to SOUNDTRACK PRO (menu) -> PREFERENCES -> PROJECT (tab) -> VIDEO FRAMES PER SECOND -> Change accordingly

I incorrectly assumed that since the video is referenced in the STP Project that it was correctly accounting for it. Apparently not. The video is played back, in sync, with the audio at whatever framerate you give it in the project settings. Once switched over (in my case, 29.97 -> 23.98) It synced right up. I did this in a project that already had material in it w/ effects, so the change occurs actively in the file, not just newly created projects.

Also for good measure I went in and changed the FPS in the SYNCHRONIZATION tab (which i believe handles only MIDI equipment) to 24p just to be sure.

Hope this helps guys…

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Austin Reeves
AR&C
Production & Post-Production Services
Washington, DC

[Austin Reeves]

Im having the same problem… Not able to display 4:3 projects correctly in Clip Notes. Its stretching the video to a 16:9 or beyond. Anyone successfully using Clip Notes for 4:3 or found a way around this?

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Austin Reeves
AR&C
Production & Post-Production Services
Washington, DC

[Austin Reeves]

Well that was the first thing I thought about was Andrew’s sky replacement tutorials. BTW, I have to plug the guy. He is amazing and cracks me up in his tutorials… that and I’ve shelled out a few bucks for many of his products (money WELL spent Andrew). That out of the way, like he says, maybe he’ll send me free stuff now for the plug! haha

Back to the subject at hand. Sky replacement is where I’d start. Leaves could be done in particular (best option IMO) or possibly CC Particle World (Texture map a leaf image as your particle).

Wind however needs to be done practically in your shoot. You need a fan or some other wind source to blow talents hair, clothes, etc or the effect won’t sell. You also need to take into account surrounding bg, such as trees. You’ll get into a lot of problems trying to get them to look right. My best recommendation would be a shoot around buildings and stuff that doesn’t react much to wind. Trees you might try Displacement Mapping using Fractal Noise to get the “Leaves” moving around and then another Displacement Map or even puppet tool-ing the Trees or light poles to bend them, but thats going to get very tedious.

Honestly, the easiest way to get that same effect would probably be shoot it near a building or two, and “set extend” w/ trees you add, allowing you more control over the image, or forgo to many trees and just use the buildings and leaves.

Austin Reeeves
AR&C Productions

[Austin Reeves]

Well if you’re talking in your example about a hand moving objects around on a desk, for instance, I would suggest this:

-Add Checkbox expression control to object in question.
-expression in onj pos that basically says “if checkbox true, pos=hand.pos; else value” value being the original position.
-you would need to see a keyframe where you wanted the object to begin and end, but when you toggled the checkbox ON, it would follow the hand, ie, it was picked up.

That make any sense at all? I’m tired lol.

Austin

[Austin Reeves]

I thought this would be a fun test, so here is what I came up with after fiddling for about an hour or so:

Force Bubble Test (low bandwidth)

The effect was done w/ Zaxwerks Invigorator Pro.

Basically:

-Create Sphere Primitive in Invig
-Colord Green
-Add Galvanized Steel Texture Map
-Create Matte comp using solids and “Cell” texture w/ evolution to give the slow organic movemnt
-Map Transparency to Matte comp
-Use Trans Map to cut off bottom and for “reveal” at beginning
-Map reflections of sphere to BG comp (still image in this case
-Use Glow fx on adjustment layers to give the bloom effect w/ bubble first appears. This tracks w/ trans map
-Displacement Mapping was done using the alpha of the Invig Sphere, using curves to extract the shadow out of the alpha and solidify the sphere.
-Render

Everything is Camera aware so you can reverse track your footage to have your bubble follow your target. I went w/ the cell texture rather than the “pentagon” look in Halo, just liked the organic nature. Besides, it was just a Proof of Concept. Let me know what you think.

Austin Reeves
AR&C Productions

[Austin Reeves]

Alright completely off topic, but I didn’t think the effect was overused at all. The whole point with the lighting in the movie was to give you a sense of awe and try and make the bots feel larger than life. I thought the light use in the movie was very well done actually…

Slightly more to answer your question, yes, I would try the built in Lens Flare or even better Knoll Light Factory. You can try dialing the effect down significantly to get rid of the steriotypical “canned” lens flare effect look.

—
Austin Reeves
AR&C
Production & Post-Production Services
Washington, DC

[Austin Reeves]

I could be wrong, but check and make sure of the resolution he outputed (comp settings). If the comp settings frame size do not match, Premiere will scale it up to match the current video.

In otherwords, if you render out a graphic that is 320×240, when you import it, it will be twice as big in premiere. Atleast that was the last version I was using and its been quite awhile. That, or if the comp settings were for a standard DV window and his premiere project is HDV or 1080, that would definitely cause it as well…

—
Austin Reeves
AR&C
Production & Post-Production Services
Washington, DC

[Austin Reeves]

Well hopefully I was able to help somewhat, but look at it like this…

If you shoot on film:
-acquire on film (grain)
-telecine to video
-edit non-linear
-post & color correct
-reverse telecine back to film (more grain, but more importantly, MATCHING grain)

If you shoot video:
-shoot on video (slight grain depending on format)
-edit
-post & cc
-film out to print (grain)

I think to TRUELY know for sure you’ll just have to buck up and film out a minute or 3 and see what it looks like, but yes almost always when I’ve added grain it was either for an effect (think Night vision), to composite in a CG element (so that it looks like it was shot with the camera originally), or to add slight “film grain” to video to make it look more like film. In the last case this was always for video that was to STAY video. I think you will probably find that everything looks good in the film out.

—
Austin Reeves
AR&C
Production & Post-Production Services
Washington, DC

[Austin Reeves]

Are you using Color Management? If so that may be your problem, and if not, you may need to enable it. Atleast for me, I’ve found that its just easier with CS3 to plan on using Color Management ALWAYS.

Right click on your 32bpc at the bottom or project window to bring up Project Settings. Set depth at 32bits.

Working Space if you’re going out to video, I’d use HDTV, SDTV or ProPhoto RGB for film.

Since you’re just doing the bluescreen you probably won’t need Linearize Working Space.

Check Blend Colors Using 1.0 Gamma

OK that. Click on your Composition Viewer window to make the display active. Then go to MENU -> View and turn on “Use Display Color Management”. Back to View and SIMULATE OUTPUT -> HDTV or SDTV.

That SHOULD get your display back in line.

I have a few issues that i’m trying to track down with mine where my second display view will go black or blue in 32bpc with occasionally. I’ve found setting OpenGL to INTERACITVE countered that problem.

Hope this helps….

—
Austin Reeves
AR&C
Production & Post-Production Services