Brendan Coots
Forum Replies Created
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Sorry for the double post, The forum was acting weird yesterday and didn’t appear to submit my posts.
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I can’t remember where, but I saw some comparison tests that were done between After Effect’s compressed output (MPEG2, MPEG4, Sorenson and WMV9) versus using a third party tool on uncompressed files from AE. The difference was very obvious, both in quality and file size. For all of the formats tested AE’s output was always 20-70% (!) larger, and looked much worse in all cases.
So while AE can output MPEG2 files, and they aren’t horrible per se, you will likely always get better results using a compression app instead of AE for those tasks. There’s a free tool I use called SUPER (https://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html) which compresses to every format under the sun and does a great job.
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Depends on what you mean by a “normal computer like mine.” If your computer is a $400 Dell, the difference is night and day. Here’s a brief explanation of those different machines you linked to:
1. The Apexx – These machines have a lot of everything; tons of RAM, 8 or more processors and a built-in RAID system of hard drives. The point of these machines is shoveling massive amounts of data through the pipe in real-time. This type of machine would be ideal for working on film projects, such as special effects and color correction, simply because feature film files are HUGE. Each second of film (2k resolution) in a computer is about 280MB. Getting a computer to play those files back in real-time takes a lot of serious computing power. This computer would make very little sense for the average user, it’s overkill.
2. The 3dBoxx – These machines are more for 3D artists, where a great graphics card and plenty of RAM are the primary concerns. These machines also feature multiple processors, but with the specific intention of letting you run several RAM/CPU hungry applications at the same time. In the 3D world, it’s not uncommon to have Maya 3D, Photoshop, Zbrush and your favorite music player open at the same time, all of which need quite a bit of horsepower. These machines are pretty good for After Effects work as well, but more on the high end, demanding work.
3. The RenderBoxx – These machines are render nodes. That is, they aren’t meant to be used as a workstation for designing on, but more for sending your project files to and they render out the files, freeing you up to continue working on your local computer. Most studios (mine included) have quite a few machines like these networked together (anywhere from 5-5,000), so that artists can submit 3D jobs, After Effects projects etc. and the “render farm” will do the rendering for us. In a fast-paced studio they are essential. For the home user, not so much.
These days, the ideal machine in my opinion is the Mac Pros. For the money, they are a great value and really chew through anything you throw at them, especially with the new After Effects CS3. On the PC side, you should ideally meet the following MINIMUM specs:
– Dual-core processor, ideally AMD X2 / Intel Core Duo, at least 2ghz or better
– At least 2GB Ram. 4GB preferable.
– Minimum Geforce 6600GT or equivalent card, Quadro card prefered
– For video work, 2-4 drives in RAID-0 configuration, ideally 6+ drives
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Depends on what you mean by a “normal computer like mine.” If your computer is a $400 Dell, the difference is night and day. Here’s a brief explanation of those different machines you linked to:
1. The Apexx – These machines have a lot of everything; tons of RAM, 8 or more processors and a built-in RAID system of hard drives. The point of these machines is shoveling massive amounts of data through the pipe in real-time. This type of machine would be ideal for working on film projects, such as special effects and color correction, simply because feature film files are HUGE. Each second of film (2k resolution) in a computer is about 280MB. Getting a computer to play those files back in real-time takes a lot of serious computing power. This computer would make very little sense for the average user, it’s overkill.
2. The 3dBoxx – These machines are more for 3D artists, where a great graphics card and plenty of RAM are the primary concerns. These machines also feature multiple processors, but with the specific intention of letting you run several RAM/CPU hungry applications at the same time. In the 3D world, it’s not uncommon to have Maya 3D, Photoshop, Zbrush and your favorite music player open at the same time, all of which need quite a bit of horsepower. These machines are pretty good for After Effects work as well, but more on the high end, demanding work.
3. The RenderBoxx – These machines are render nodes. That is, they aren’t meant to be used as a workstation for designing on, but more for sending your project files to and they render out the files, freeing you up to continue working on your local computer. Most studios (mine included) have quite a few machines like these networked together (anywhere from 5-5,000), so that artists can submit 3D jobs, After Effects projects etc. and the “render farm” will do the rendering for us. In a fast-paced studio they are essential. For the home user, not so much.
These days, the ideal machine in my opinion is the Mac Pros. For the money, they are a great value and really chew through anything you throw at them, especially with the new After Effects CS3. On the PC side, you should ideally meet the following MINIMUM specs:
– Dual-core processor, ideally AMD X2 / Intel Core Duo, at least 2ghz or better
– At least 2GB Ram. 4GB preferable.
– Minimum Geforce 6600GT or equivalent card, Quadro card prefered
– For video work, 2-4 drives in RAID-0 configuration, ideally 6+ drives
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After Effects, and just about all video-related programs, expect 72dpi files. There isn’t much choice in the matter.
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You have no options in the matter – DVDs will only work with MPEG2 files. If you are using DVD authoring software (like Adobe Encore or Apple DVD Studio Pro) You should output from After Effects in an uncompressed format (like Quicktime Animation codec, or Windows Media Uncompressed) and bring that file into your DVD authoring program. It will automatically create an MPEG2 and the proper audio files out of your uncompressed video.
The reason for working this way is that After Effects doesn’t output compressed files very well, MPEG2 included. They almost never look as good as they will using the above workflow.
As for how Hollywood makes DVDs, they use MPEG2 files like everyone else, but they have (very) expensive hardware encoders that make the file as crisp and clean as possible while still fitting on the disc. Sonic Solutions is the main company that makes DVD encoding tools like this, if you’re interested.
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The worst thing you could do is re-render files over and over as you move them from app to app, as this will introduce a lot of quality loss.
Your options are limited if all you have is the output from an edit, but you could try pulling the full clip into AE, doing the color correction then pulling the rendered output into Premiere. In After Effects you would need to either split the clip up into its individual cuts so you can color correct each individually, or use a series of short adjustment layers over each clip, with color correction tools applied to the adjustment layers. Kind of messy, and not the ideal workflow at all.
My personal favorite workflow is to work on the original source clips as they were captured from the camera, or piece my edit together in Final Cut Pro and use Automatic Duck’s AE Import plugin to import the entire FCP edit into After Effects. This way, all the clips are already separated, with all edits, fades etc. intact, and I am still only working on those original captures, not re-rendered files. Then I output the final distribution version from After Effects. Using this technique, the only renders/codec interference is in the capture stage and the final output stage.
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When building projects in After Effects for widescreen, I usually opt to NOT use pixel aspect ratio settings to achieve it, but rather design in square pixel comps sized at 853×480 (for DVD) or 864×486 (for broadcast). When you go to author your DVD, these files will work fine but you will need to tell it you are using a square-pixel file. I use DVD Studio Pro and have never had issues doing it this way.
The reason I use square pixel, widescreen-sized comps instead of toggling aspect ratio on a standard 720×480 composition is quality. The pixel aspect ratio setting essentially takes your design and stretches it horizontally. This can (and usually does) result in a loss in quality because it is taking a set of pixels and redistributing them over a wider field.
The nice thing about this approach is that you don’t have to worry over render settings, making sure everything has the right aspect ratios etc., you just render it as is and pull it in to your DVD authoring app. When set up correctly, people with 16:9 viewing capabilities will see the entire video, people with normal 4:3 TV sets will see it letterboxed.
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Yes you will need Nucleo to take full advantage of more than one core using After Effects 7. The reason is that it is not a properly multithreaded application.
After Effects CS3, which is due to be out in July, DOES support multiple processors, so I would recommend not buying Nucleo, but rather save the money to upgrade to CS3 when it comes out.
Another thing to bear in mind with AE CS3 – Each process can use up to 2GB of RAM. Therefore, if you have two processors After Effects will be able to use up to 4GB RAM. You should probably add memory to your system to bring it up to 4GB or you will be giving each process half the RAM it needs to really sing.
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Here’s a way you could do it with no plugins:
1. Create a solid white layer
2. Create a circle mask on the layer
3. duplicate the mask, set it to “subtract” and shrink it in slightly using the mask tools (not by scaling the mask)
4. This should give you a ring. Apply Fast Blur enough to make it fairly soft ( Fast Blur is the exact same algo as Gaussian blur, but much faster render).
5. Animate the scale of the layer from 0 – 200% or so, so you have a ring growing from the center out past the bounds of your screen.
6. Duplicate this layer several times, offsetting it in time for each by maybe 10 frames. This will give you a rippling waves type of look
7. Precomp all of these layers.
8. Apply Displacement Map to your footage, and use the precomped ripples as the source of the distortion. You will need to set the distortion to be based on Luminance rather than colors. Crank up the horizontal/vertical values to taste.
9. For extra credit, you could apply Compound Blur to the footage as well, using the same precomped ripples as the source of the blur. This would cause your footage to ripple AND have a slight blur as the ripples pass through it, which would look more like a heat wave than, say, a time/space distortion effect.