Blaise Douros
Forum Replies Created
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Why change the subject? To make you look smarter? Nobody, especially not OP, said he only had $200-$300 bucks to play with. You made that up.
You still haven’t addressed OP’s real question, which is CPU performance of softRAID products versus dedicated hardware controllers. You’ve just named a bunch of midrange RAID products without addressing the actual question about whether different kinds of products will work differently.
Yes, in Zelingrad, the difference in SoftRAID vs hardware RAID performance might be negligible since everyone in that fair city has the budget to just “go buy the right equipment, right now.” But the reality is that not every producer can afford to do massive upgrades all at once, and might have to wait another six months to get a more powerful CPU with buckets of processor cycles to spare. Hell, I HAVE a corporate job and I still have to upgrade my equipment incrementally, because budgeting is for smart people.
So lay off, and don’t tell people trying to be smart about their options that their behavior “makes you vomit.” Yours is the only emetic attitude in this thread.
OP: Anecdotally, when I switched from the OWC Mercury Elite QX2 RAID 5 enclosure with a hardware RAID controller to a Thunderbay 4 with SoftRAID, I saw a marked change in performance after idle periods. The Thunderbay 4 has a very noticeable, something like 10-second delay after being idle. If I jump into AE to do some motion graphics work, for example, and then go back to Premiere, there is a definite moment where Premiere asks for the data, and the drive goes “uhhh…okay, just a second.” I did not see the same delay on the hardware-controlled QX2–that drive was connected via USB, not Thunderbolt, so I can’t be 100% sure that it’s not a difference in the USB connectivity vs Thunderbolt…but my money is on the SoftRAID. I have multiple Thunderbay 4’s and they all do the same thing.
It hasn’t been quite bothersome enough for me to go watch my processor and really figure it out, let alone return the Thunderbays. But if I had to go back and do it again, I might have tried to find a comparable hardware-controlled RAID to save my eyes the strain of rolling while the Thunderbays get going again.
There’s no science in the above opinion, but that’s been my experience. I hope it helps.
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Yeah, OP, SCREW YOU for wanting to wring performance out of finite resources. How dare you have a limited budget and try to understand the technology you’re going to be working with. Especially with video, where extra CPU usage by background apps NEVER impacts performance.
And next time, don’t waste anyone’s time here in the discussion forum asking people for help, when all you have to do is just know the information in the first place. NOBODY ASKS QUESTIONS HERE.
Instead, you should learn everything there is to know about a topic, and then berate, belittle, and demean people who know less than you do on a public forum. That’ll make you into a big man.
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Dave, come on. You have to make decisions in After Effects work, too, sometimes at the frame level. Play nice.
A quick Google yields the following:
https://www.digitalrebellion.com/cineplay/
$29 for an individual license.
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Why would you want that? Maybe specify what you’re trying to accomplish, and we can help you find a solution. If you’re only trying to track the camera for a short shot, why not trim the clip to only the section that you want to use?
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Test, test, test. There may be someone out there with specific setup information, but the best way to do it, in my opinion, is stick them side by side, and start doing A/B comparisons on a good dual-input monitor. Preferably with scopes.
If you can’t find the setups you need, I would shoot log profiles in each, and slate your scenes with a color chip; in post, your editor/colorist can set the black, white, and grey point, as well as fine-tuning the white balance, based on that chip. It won’t be completely perfect, but luckily both of these cameras shoot in enough detail and depth in the codec that you should have some leeway.
Obviously that’s not ideal, but if you can’t test, and nobody has the very specific camera setups to share, this would be the best way to give your colorist the tools they need to do it well.
This also might prove useful: https://www.xdcam-user.com/2015/04/s-log2-to-canon-luts-for-the-fs7f5f55a7s/
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No easy fix, but you should check if it’s showing up in the recorded image. If so, then you need to send it for repair and rent something.
If not, bring an HDMI monitor on-set and monitor your shoot that way. Then send it in for repair.
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Without a 3D program like Blender or Maya, you can’t. Notice that this person built a 3D model and matched the motion with the face? You can’t do that in AE or in Mocha.
You might be able to do something similar with the following tutorial, but you won’t be able to create that 3D, moving eyeball.
https://hollywoodcgfx.com/create-the-iron-man-3-glowing-skin-extremis-effect/
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No problem! I was having a slow day, and a little AE experimentation was just the thing to get me through it.
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Oh, and BTW, for some reason the keyframes on the Light 1 position got eased–switch those keyframes back to Linear for a better look.
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Yep, that will do it. Here’s what you do:
Do a 3D camera track. Enter a FOV for your camera–I made the assumption that this was roughly a 24mm lens, and entered 84 degrees as the FOV.
Once you’ve got the camera track, click a bunch of track points on the ground plane, right click, and set the Ground Plan and Origin so that the ground plane being tracked is completely flat. This is key to the next step.
Once you’ve done this, create a grey solid on the ground plane, and make it big–really big, enough to cover the car’s entire path. Set the blending mode to screen.
Now, create a spotlight. Set the spotlight’s Y position just above the ground plane, about as high as the car’s headlight. Set the point of interest waaaay down the road, the direction the car is traveling. You probably need to drop the POI below the plane of the road, so the lights will point down. Adjust the intensity and beam angle to taste.
Go to the first frame where the car enters, and position the light so it matches the headlight position. Now pull the transport ahead a few seconds, and use the X and Z controls to set the position of the headlight–leave Y alone, since the height isn’t changing. Do this for the length of the shot. Then, go back and in-between these keyframes you’ve set, until you’ve basically rotoscoped in the motion of the headlight all the way down the road.
Now, duplicate that light, and either copypaste keyframes with the appropriate X data transform to offset it to the other headlight position, or just do a quick parenting expression with additive math on the X position. Presto, you’ve got your second headlight.
Now you can add secondary lights, parented to these, to create a more complex headlight beam, with a wider, diffuse beam and tighter spot points.
For the taillights, a simple position tracker will do, and you can create some red glow easily, maybe with some very light lens flare to sell it.
10006_headlighttracktest.aep.zip
Here’s the AEP I built using the file I sucked down from your Vimeo; I’m sure you’ll have to re-do all the work on your higher res 1080p file, but you can at least see how it’s set up. Notice that I didn’t go through and in-between all the keyframes for the X and Z positions on the headlights, but I easily could have for better results. Add motion blur, fine-tune the color, add extra copies of the headlights to add complexity…and baby, you’ve got a stew going!