Brendan Coots
Forum Replies Created
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OS X features software-based RAID 0 (included with the OS), and virtually all PC motherboards now include multiple SATA ports and BIOS-based software RAID as well. No fancy, expensive cards needed at all to set up a three drive RAID system which will handle uncompressed SD.
Uncompressed 8-bit SD uses roughly 1GB per minute, and depending on subject matter Animation codec can require even less. Assuming you dropped three 500GB drives in for your software RAID, this would cost you just over $200 and you would have sufficiently fast storage that holds 25 hours of uncompressed footage and renders. This far exceeds the storage needs for the vast majority of productions.
Adding to that, you can get a Blackmagic Intensity HDMI capture/monitor card for $199, although this is absolutely NOT necessary for working in uncompressed. You can still capture as normal, then set up batch renders to convert the HDV footage to uncompressed, letting it run overnight or whatever.
All told, you can spend $200-$400 to have a perfectly suitable system for uncompressed. If this is too expensive for one’s budget, I would question how said artist can even afford the software, After Effects being a solid $1,000 on its own.
For the record, my studio does a lot of uncompressed HD work and we don’t have any of these fancy trappings on many of our workstations, and they handle it just fine. The reason is that workflow habits can reduce system needs by up to 50%. Even our editing systems handle uncompressed just fine, since most editing apps these days have on-the-fly quality adjustment which ensures real-time playback no matter the source.Cheers, and happy holidays!
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Ah sorry, Luma Matte is indeed what I meant to say. Alpha Matte “borrows” the alpha channel from the layer above, Luma Matte uses the luminance.
Glad it worked out!
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
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In After Effects, import both your animation and the alpha channel frame sequences. place the animation on a timeline with the alpha render above it. Every layer in After Effects has a pair of drop-downs, “Mode” and “Track Matte.” On your animation layer, set the track matte to “Alpha Matte *YOUR ALPHA LAYER*”
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
You can try inverting the file (Effects>Channel>Invert I believe) and then use a different blending mode like Darken, Multiply or similar.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Hey Dave,
I’m not sure what you’d make of this, but for widescreen work I usually render out from AE to 856×480, and let my DVD app make the widescreen disc from this file (or pass it to an editor for use).
The reason I do this is to avoid the horizontal stretching widescreen DV uses, which I have found effectively lowers the overall resolution of the file. I have definitely noticed an improvement in widescreen quality since I started doing this, but do you know of any potentially negative side effects?
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
I’m not trying to argue with you, but this is a debate worth having.
You keep saying that working with uncompressed requires a bunch of special gear but that is just not true. Most of the gear you keep referencing is beneficial in a real-time environment like editing, not a RAM preview system like AE.
In After Effects, you have to load every single preview and output to RAM no matter what the format is. As a result, the only real difference between video format choices is in how long they take to load into RAM, and the question of generational loss. While it can speed things along to have more RAM (with multiprocessing enabled) none of the gear you reference is necessary to work uncompressed.Choice of source format CAN, however, negatively impact render times quite a bit. Because HDV has interframe compression that takes longer for the system to manage, it probably takes as long or longer to render than an uncompressed or lossless file like Animation Codec would. As a result, you are probably BETTER off working uncompressed, fancy gear aside. The only way to know for sure is to do speed tests on your own system.
You say you haven’t noticed any problems working with HDV, but have you timed renders with footage in HDV and the same footage that has been transcoded to a lossless format? Just because you aren’t getting BSODS doesn’t mean you’re not experiencing any downside such as lost productivity.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
“I don’t know on what you are basing this claim. I know of many people, both personally and from forums, that share my experience of not having issues.”
It can’t really be disputed – After Effects, FCP and virtually all other video programs dislike interframe-based codecs including HDV. It’s just a known problem with using those formats. I have no reason to try and convince you of anything, work however you please. BUT you should search this forum for “HDV” or, better yet, search Google for “after effects HDV” and see the first link that pops up:
https://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=332583
“I have to wonder if there people out there that work in uncompressed who never even tried working with native HDV in AE…”
You seem to be assuming that people who dislike HDV only work in uncompressed. Your only choices aren’t uncompressed or using a highly compressed interframe codec that was always meant to be a “shooting” format. Converting HDV to just about any other suitable format (such as DVCPRO HD) would work.
If you are working in After Effects, using uncompressed footage would probably deliver BETTER performance than HDV anyway, because of the interframe issue.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
As usual Dave is totally right here.
Doing the entire key in AE is highly advisable. If nothing else, it affords you way more control over the final result. No horn tootin’ or anything, but you can check out a COW tutorial I wrote on green screen color correction that outlines some keying options you’d never be able to get in FCP.
As for the source of your problem, dealing with motion blur when trying to key is a drag and is probably the culprit here. It usually results in gray mush between the fingers and other tight spaces that move. The only clean solution I’ve found is to hand-roto those elements – suck.
I always ask my DPs to avoid 24p when shooting green screen, 30p has much less motion blur and, as a result, tends to give cleaner composites.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
“at least not any issues that are not present in DV, or any other compressed format as well. Of course processing time are longer, do to their more complex high compression, but that’s about it. “
Pretty much all video-related applications expect to be able to step through your video one frame at a time. HDV uses interframe compression which means it doesn’t contain a solid string of individual frames from beginning to end. As a result, this trips After Effects up pretty bad, along with MPG4, H.264, MP3s etc. Glad to hear you haven’t noticed any problems, but universally across the board most people report miserable experiences using HDV in any app, especially AE, without first converting it to a working format like uncompressed.
“You can preview your work on an sd monitor in your editing app via your camera/firewire connection.”
You can, but you can’t trust that at all for color correction work, and you definitely can’t trust it for anything that will be shown on TV. Previewing video on a proper broadcast monitor is probably the biggest advantage to getting a capture card. The AJAs and Blackmagic cards offer proper BNC video outs.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com