Brian Berneker
Forum Replies Created
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Are you sure you’re not making a youtube video for Hillary!!?? 🙂
…ANYWAYS…
Another technique that might dispense with some of the roto work would be to only mask-IN Hogan (Was it really Hulk Hogan? I keep thinking Dolph Lundgren?). Then you don’t have to worry about re-creating background and the ropes etc for each frame (a la “hidden Rocky removal”).
You would instead re-create the background entirely using AE tools and move the actors how you like. Having masked Hogan, you wouldn’t need to roto Rocky at all. (Think of it as a “negative space” approach)
It wouldn’t be too much to make a box with four sides of a ring in AE using 3D objects, and just create the ropes in a transparent PSD file. Import the PSD, make it a 3D object and rotate it 90 degrees. Make a copy and repeat 3 times. Create a Camera…
As for the far background, you can grab some audience stills and patch together a nice wide pano to wrap around the whole scene in a cylinder and put some box blur on it to disguise any flaws. The pano could be created in a nested comp with some blinking lights etc. to keep it from looking too static, or possibly even with looped moving footage depending on the crowd shot you have to work with.
I’m not 100% sure that would be less work, but it would give you tons more flexibility in re-creating the scene, and adding in extra punches etc at your whim, re-creating the whole scene! It’s probably more work than necessary, but it’s more fun than all that blind roto work with likely mundane results…
Brian
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Let’s say you have a really complicated comp that uses 5 HD layers in 1080. You don’t want to wait half an hour for each frame to be rendered just when you’re checking out position or movement. What you really want, is a quick way of getting the jist of it without all that overhead.
Enter the proxy… You create proxies of your HD clips in lower resolution (i.e. SD) in a simpler codec and suddenly your performance improves because you’re not rendering in full final resolution. You can even use lower res than SD if it doesn’t matter that much and make things go nice and swift.
Then when you’ve tweaked your animation and settings to your satisfaction, turn the proxies off and go back to the original full res clips, start your full res render, and go out to the cafe to calm the shakes while your masterpiece percolates. 😉
Brian
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Considering that it works ok with non-fast-moving objects doesn’t make much sense. I can’t say for sure it’s a codec issue after all, but possibly… what codec are you rendering to? Maybe if you try test rendering to animation, you can at least eliminate that as a factor. If it works, then it’s a codec issue.
Another concern could be memory settings running out of RAM to process the frames? Does anyone have those standard memory settings handy – I’m away from my AE machine? There are other posts in the forum about memory settings.
Brian
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I’m working with 1080p in AE with no render problems whatsoever, and with some pretty complex comps.
I’m guessing that LaRonde’s standard answer to video rendering problems might apply here, but I’ll just suggest you try rendering your source footage to another format that AE recognizes more readily and work with that..
I’ve seen some clips die simply because they don’t decode properly and AE craps out. If you have the hard drive space, use the Animation codec, or if you’re feeling ambitious and want to spend a few bucks, get Microcosm which is the same quality as uncompressed, but with smaller files.
YMMV: I’m using OSX Tiger on a 2.33 Core2Duo with 4GB RAM.
Brian
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Hey that sounds pretty interesting… I’d like to see how the ACTUAL light pattern goes out rather than the standard “Hollywood” cliche. I guess it all depends on your audience for how realistic it needs to be. For example, how many computer screens or HUD displays have you seen in movies that are complete B.S…? (Jurassic Park comes to mind)
Brian
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I wonder if there’s any way you can use, say, one of the track boards and put some rulers on the comp to set a fixed distance for a given piece to travel on a consistent number of frames. That way, you can have a TR keyframe every x frames and make sure the piece of track moves to the right ruler position for the anticipated keyframe, and move it ahead or back accordingly… Still a manual tweaking process, but at least with some semi-objective measurement…
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I wonder if you might have gotten away with adjusting the position offset in transform…
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Yeah, that’s where I first saw Liquefy, and noticed the clone tool, but still can’t figure it out… when all else fails, read the documentation… 😛
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That’s a valid point, but does assume that full blown editing will be immediate in the order of operations. The most I generally need to do in my log and capture phase is just a little trimming here and there.
I guess I can use FCP; it’s not a major grievance – it’s just that it would be nice to find a smaller app that I could keep handy running alongside AE that doesn’t take a lot of memory etc..
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I’ve heard that render times even on the same CPU tend to be faster on the PC version. I have no idea why, but I’ve actually seen it.
However, trade that off against the constant threat of the blue screen of death and virus attacks. I stayed mac, but fast render times are always welcome.
Anyone else have any comments on this? I’d be willing to share a project file if someone wants to do a render comparison. I’m on an intel 2.33 Core2Duo running 10.4.10