[Bearbiter]

I use the Dynamic Link “New AE Comp” in PP and then copy a single clip from my sequence. Just highlight the comp in AE and paste and it automatically ads the black at the head or the tail — it seems to be placing the clip at the same time in the comp as it was in the PP sequence — which is not very useful.

If you follow those steps do you not get the same things? Is there a betetr way to do it?

[Bearbiter]

Here are the best answers we can wrangle from engineering. Thanks to Emile Tobenfeld (aka Dr. T) and Mike Massey:

>> > > Directional Mix and Nearest Mix as sort of look both ahead and behind vs
>> > > look at the nearest (either/or) I frame from a current B/P
>>type frame, in

The difference between nearest mix and bidirectional is that nearest
applies the optical flow to the nearest source frame, while
bidirectional applies it to both adjacent source frames and mixes.

If the optical flow were 100% accurate, these would give the same
result. In the real world of using this filter, the advantage of
nearest is that each output frame uses only one input frame so you
won’t see an overlaid image at any point. The advantage of
bidirectional is continuity. If you do crazy things (as I did just
last night) like slow down abstract moving water footage by a factor
of 10, nearest will give noticeable discontinuity when you switch
from one source frame to another.

I suspect that bidirectional is likely the better choice at velocity < 50%, and nearest likely the better choice at higher velocity. The best way to learn this filter is to take a 1 second piece of footage and render out multiple variations and look at them. > My thinking was
> that a faster moving object might need to look at a wider region in the
> frame to find where it came from/should go to.

Low Velocity correction kicks in when the motion estimator finds motion
perpendicular to an edge. In that case (an edge), and little or no
motion, Low Velicity correction will constrain the motion vector. An
example can be when changing lighting appears as motion.

>>> >
>>> > I’m also confused about Min. Edge Contrast which “sets the
>>> threshold for the
>>> > minimum amount of detail in a region.” Just not sure how edge
>>> detail or
>>> > contrast on those edges are affected by Optical Flow given one is
>>> avoiding
>>> > the softening of Frame Blending.
>>

The motion vectors are weighted by edge contrast. No motion estimator
can detect motion along an edge. BFX optical flow relies on contrast
variations over relatively long ranges. Some footage shows artifacts
from motion detected in areas without long-range contrast, such as
grass. If there is no detail, the estimator result in that region is
unreliable. Min. Edge Contrast sets a threshold for the min. level of
detail that the estimator expects.

>>> > I thought displaying the Vectors would help in my tweaking but I
>>> find the
>>> > vectors aren’t visible in Draft Only. They are when set to
>>> Render, which I
>>> > can then turn off before the render. The problem is when doing
>>> Option-p
>>> > (FCP – Play all Frames) and try to park on a frame at issue, it
>>> jumps to another frame.

You may get different results (read: motion vectors) when rendering in
Draft. Draft just sends a smaller frame to the estimator.

HTH,

Steve Bayes
Media 100/Boris FX

[Bearbiter]

This calls for an engineering response! I am afraid the marketing guys can only fake it so much 😉

I will track down who worked on this UI to give you a better answer.

Steve B.
Boris/M100

[Bearbiter]

Craig,

I have seen your footage and this is a pretty good example of “occlusion”. As with all optical flow algorythms, the smoothness of the motion effect is created by predicting where pixels will be in the next field. When you have objects that come in from out of frame or cross over other objects, then they are momentarily occluded. The ability to predict where a pixel will be is messed up since the optical flow algorythm assumes a pixel will be one place and then it is blocked by another object or edge of frame. Optical flow doesn’t “see” objects, just individual pixels that appear to be travelling in a particular direction at a particular speed. So yes, it is a bit abstract to explain.

The short answer is that there will be particular shots which will work perfectly with any optical flow effect, others that can be improved with the controls shown in the DVD and some which will be better served with another form of motion effect. As a very last resort you might try to use some masking to make part of the image optical flow and another part of the image masked to use a different type of motion effect.

PS except for the moving cart and the funky hand you mentioned, I thought the effect looked pretty good and I was the designer for the Avid optical flow.

Sincerely,
Steve Bayes
Media 100/Boris FX

[Bearbiter]

Peter,

The HDX board is a PCI-X, not PCI Express which is a completely different architecture and form factor. We will not be compatible with the three new G5

[Bearbiter]

We will definitely continue to look at ways to lower the cost of a full featured Media 100 HD system. Can’t say just yet until we get all the Boris engineers looking at the possibilities.

Stay tuned!

Steve Bayes
Director of Product Marketing
Media 100

[Bearbiter]

That’s a really good question and I don’t think I have a definitive answer for you. Basically the HDX board is used for high quality I/O and up/downconverting (including aspect ratio conversion in RT) and right now is a very powerful, integrated solution. We are always looking for ways to offer more value to the Media 100 installed base, so like with the Media 100 sw product, we find we can also release a really valuable product with no hardware at all (except, of course, the shiny G5)!

You will see continued support of the HDX board and you might also see more RT effects through an Open GL card — not a new rev of the HDX with a proprietary DVE. This is something Boris already has well underway for development like in the Blue product – no promises, but tighter integration of the Boris product line with Media 100 is an important short term goal. I guess this is the long way of saying that we will continue to evaluate cost effective ways to add features and functions to the Media 100 products through both hardware and software development to stay affordable and competitive at the same time. The best outcome of this strategy would be to give you more cool stuff without forcing you to buy a new HDX board sometime in the near future for an upgrade.

HTH!

Steve Bayes
Director of Product Marketing
Media 100

[Bearbiter]

Boris engineers will be supporting the Media 100 code which is a good thing. The immediate plans are to get the M100 sw out the door and then start integrating Boris products more deeply into the M100 products.

There will be very little difference in the short term, more improvements as more people come up to speed, and continuing good engineering and support in the future.

Steve Bayes
Director of Product Marketing
Media 100

[Bearbiter]

Greg,

Are you not getting the e-mail reply? We have discovered that AOL subscribers are being “protected” from receiving our e-mail with the download link. We are currently trying to get AOL to fix it, but if you have another e-mail account you should use it for the registration and the download.

[Bearbiter]

OK Here’s the deal with PC CODEC’s:
<” target=”_blank”>https://support.media100.com/KBSearch/kbDocument.aspx?id=193> is the OS X transcoder for Media 100i.

<” target=”_blank”>https://support.media100.com/KBSearch/kbDocument.aspx?id=257> for 844/X Codecs (PC)

<” target=”_blank”>https://support.media100.com/KBSearch/kbDocument.aspx?id=196> for 844/X Codecs (Mac)

<” target=”_blank”>https://support.media100.com/KBSearch/kbDocument.aspx?id=181> Media 100i Transcoder for OS 9

<” target=”_blank”>https://support.media100.com/KBSearch/kbDocument.aspx?id=201> iFinish Transcoder files

HTH
Sincerely,
Steve Bayes
Director of Product MArketing/Marketing
Media 100/Optibase