[Bogdan Brak]

well…lol… maybe I got it…^^

correct me if I’m wrong.
when i place a new camera into a comp the viewport exactly fits to the comp dimesnion. as far as i don’t move the camera, right?

so…that would mean:
I create a comp.(1920×1080)
I place a cam.
I place the TV-Screen (also 1920×1080)
I make a 3d layer out of the TV-Screen.
I place the room withot touching the camera
And I’m going to animate the whole thing beginning with the end(being in fullscreen mode of the TV) and ending with the beginning(where the camera starts to fly around)?
Or let’s say… animating backwards?

Would this be the best way?
Or is there a trick?

[Bogdan Brak]

Thanks…
got to check it out tomorrow.

[Bogdan Brak]

Hey great. Thanks. Got to play around a little bit with it.

By the way. Yesterday I found a way.

simply that code:
temp = thisComp.layer("Audioamplitude 2").effect("Beide Kanäle")("Schieberegler");
if(temp < 8){
temp = 0;
}
[100 ,temp*20 +140]

than I made the curve of the amp-values smoother. (There’s a function for this in AE / Window -> Smoothen)

finally I added a little bit of the CC Motion blur effect.

Acutally… it looks pretty good.

But still got to check your code.

[Bogdan Brak]

ok…now I think I know how to explain it in a few words.
The whole thing shoul act like a smooth VU-meter. It should not check the peak 30 times a secon. Maybe only 4 times. And after every check the animation/mouth is trying to come down to 100%.

[Bogdan Brak]

one more concrete idea how it should work (without knowing how to implement this)

let’s say we have three diffrent states:
1. no one speaking (if music value <10)
The mouths’ height = 100%

2. someone’s talking (if music >= 10 && < 20)
The mouths’ height = 130%

3. someone’s talking loud/screaming(if music >= 20)
The mouths’ height = 160%

The mouths’ height is ALWAYS trying to get down to 100%.
Maybe this way:
for(i = 100; i > 100; i–)

F.e. If the height is at 140% because it’s in the third state it should count down to 100%.

That would also mean, that after effects should NOT check the state every single frame. It must check it maybe every 500milliseccond.

I hope you can follow me…
I try to sum it up:

The audiospectrum must be devided and mapped into three states.
– no sound
– sound
– loud sound

after effects must check the state every 500ms and not every frame.
the mouths height should always try to close and animate the mouth if its value is bigger than 100%

and… the whole thing should get an Easing.

Any ideas how to implements this in AE?
cheers

and again…thanks in advance

[Bogdan Brak]

Well guys. Thanks a lot for your help. I’ve learned a lot. Well.. maybe it’s just 0.000001% of what I should know… but for me it’s still a lot and for sure I’m not gonna stop.

Whatever… I’ve still got some banding problems but they are acceptable. But the heavy banding problem is solved.
There were two main factors leading to them:

1. I used too big values for the field of depth. That caused “bad” blurs that are hard to compress without getting artifacts and stuff like that. By now I turned off almost all field of depth settings. Only in very important parts I used it(simulating a cam tring to focus something). And it works after compressing too. And even if in “good” movies the focus is only at the important objects and the rest is blurry… I think in tmy case it’s justified if everything is in focus… but that’s another topic.

2. This is my very big mistake I’ve made:
I said to the background: “Hey background… if light shines on you, than you have to be affected by it.”
Now I’ve said: “Hey background… be cool… if light shines on you, than light up a cigarette and don’t give a damn about it” 😉
The big banding is gone and the video lives happily ever after…erm…effects…erm or something like that 😉

Lesson learned: Take care of the field-of-depth- values and the light affectedness if you’re going to get a acceptable h.264 output at the end.

cheers

[Bogdan Brak]

okay…
maybe it helps when I show you what it looks like.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/0ez5zr

here’s an extract using this settings:
1280×720
25fps
PAL
Profile: High
Level: 4.1
target-bitrate: 20
max-bitrate: 25
2-VBR-Pass
(Keyframe-Interval unchecked)

i’ve tried it with changing
target: 25
maxbitrate: 30
keyframe-interval: 2!^^ and 5

results are visually the same.
problematic scenes:
– in the beginning while cam is zooming into the house on the right site of the city (the ground)
– the the black wallpaper on the right side
– the sky in the window while cam is focussing the face at the end.

maybe i’m too sensitive and what you see is completley ok… but maybe i’ve done something completly wrong. I need to know what…^^

[Bogdan Brak]

thanks for the link.
I think I’m getting a little bit closer to what it’s all about;)
However… in the AME h.264 settings there’s no option about affecting these frames (i,p,b). There’s no GoP-setting, M-Frame or N-Frame setting.
There’s only the “Keyframe-Interval”. Leading from the AME manual the value could be set lower if there are a lot of changes/cuts in the video. Sounds interessting for my piece.
But if setting the value to a small value it should be neccessary to raise the bitrate. That’s what the manual says.

I’m going to try what will happen when I use 5 or 10 seconds.
But I also don’t know (therotically) in which cases I should use which bitrate. Can you maybe tell which range i should use?
Well of course… I can imagine that using a Bitrate of 1 or 4 or 6 will be sensless in my case. And 50 will also be unplayable. But something between 10 and 40 is till not precise enough.
So which would be the minimum and maximum bitrates to test?

[Bogdan Brak]

@craig. I first have to read about what “Distance between Keyframes” is. Will do it tomorrow.
Right now I don’t know what you mean while talking about natural frames, forced frames and B(aseline?)-frames.

@jeff
my last try before leaving home was maxrate 25 and 2-pass. But I cant handle the bandings. despite of the vignette im not using any gardients. the only gardients that where created are those created by the flickering light. and right there it’s extremly banding.
I don’t care about the file size as long as it’s playable and goodlooking.

is there maybe somewhere an overview about the h.264 settings in AME where I can find out what every single setting point does?

[Bogdan Brak]

First… I don’t know if it’s important to mention that I’m NOT using video footage… (only a little part that’s not affectet by the problems I’m mentioning below) my whole animation is made out of PSD-Files. It’s a 2.5D animation.

Well… i figured out that I can only use the 720p sequence… because in the 1080p somethings are wrong and I have no time to fix it.

I know that for “best” quality it should be uncompressed but it’s impossible to playback the file by the systems i’ve mentioned. Finally I need to compress.. no doubt.

I’ve tried several setting… changing profil, bitrates 20(10) and max25(15). 1-VBR-Pass/2VBR-Pass.
Also tried the h.264 blue-ray settings…

Sure… the video is playing but I have very big problems on bandering(or banding?) issues. The uncompressed TIFFs look wonderful. But the h.264 output’s really sucks at certain points.

In my animation I am simulating light flickerings and playing with the cameras field of depth – blur adjustments while the cam is focussing etc… finally I’ve also used a vignette with noise. And everytime the light is flickering or the depth of field is changning, the compressed file looks terrible. There are 5 colorrings… no smooth gardients. And it’s neccessary to mention that almost all the time the light is flickering => I have all the time this bandering rings. 😉 (which actually is not funny xD)

in between… I’m always compressing with “progressive” (dont know the english translation… it’s Fieldsomething ..arrangment?)

@Craig I don’t know what you mean while talking about “Keyframe interval”
Are you talking about the “extended settings” in the Videosettings-tab? “Distance between Keyframes”? (I’ve got the german version, so I’m not sure if that’s what your talking about.