[Bartek Skorupa]

Do you mean this one?

https://maltaannon.com/articles/after-effects/motiongrabber-preview/

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

First of all I wouldn’t even try to use any of the options from the color management tab. RED is a different story. Use the settings from the “more options” tab.
There should be something like: “As shot”. This should give you the starting point.
If this is not enough – there are options for gamma etc. If you know the values – use them.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

You don’t have to do anything with the interlaced footage itself to make it easier to track.
When you select to track the footage, you can go to tracker options and activate “Track Fields” checkbox.
It is good to analyze all the other options there. Sometimes it is worth changing something from the default settings, but it depends on the footage. There is no universal setting that will deal with everything.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

Key out the guy (Layer 1).
Place ants above it and key them out (Layer 2).
Duplicate the keyed out guy (Layer 3) and place it above the ants.
Set the “Track Matte” of the ants layer (Layer 2) to Alpha Matte.
Voila.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

“I have yet another question:
Is there an easy way to see which file from the sequence is currently displayed?”

I asked this question and in the meantime I found the answer:

Select the layer and hit Cmd+Alt+E. This reveals the name of the file in the info panel.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

Thank you all for the replies. I will check out those possibilities.
I was hoping that After Effect has some built in function that can do it, but it is very well hidden.
Unfortunately it seems that there isn’t one.
Thanks once more.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

Put your layer with the “silhouette alpha” on top of everything and then place an adjustment layer below it. Don’t apply any effect to this adjustment layer. The adjustment layer placed below 3d layer will cause the 3d layer above it to ignore the 3d space and use order of layers.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

This shouldn’t be any problem.
When you add a camera – you chose the preset, for example 50mm. This is the focal length. You give this info to the client and that’s it.
I assume, that you will not change the zoom value over time. If you do – it’s a little bit tricky, but also possible to calculate.

And now the distances:

You can easily measure the distances between the objects with a simple expression.
Add any layer and give it a “slider control” Add an expression:

length(p1,p2)

p1 and p2 are the positions of the layers. The expression will return the distance between them.
p1 and p2 can be easily pick-whipped. The result will be the distance in pixels.

Then you have to say how many meters, millimeters, feet or whatever this is.
And this is up to you. You have to simply ask yourself what is the size of your world.
You have to specify how much pixels represent some real world unit, like meter or foot.

It is good to work with square pixels in such cases.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

Would be good if you describe how you “have this under control”.
There are people who will search for the solution in similar case and the only think they will find will be that someone “has this under control”.
I personally know how to achieve this, but some people don’t.
The answers are useful not only for those who ask, but for everybody.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

I experience similar thing on CS4 and the solution is to set the proper video preview. I don’t know if this is your case, but try to go to preferences -> video preview and set it to computer monitor only, or if you preview on an external monitor – set the resolution to be the same as your comp. This way After Effects doesn’t have to render and playback two different resolutions at the same time.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland