Brian Charles
Forum Replies Created
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You want to remove the hallway and isolate the dancing man. Rotoscoping frame by frame may be your only option, normally when you want to isolate a figure from the background you shoot to footage on a blue or green screen and then use a chroma key to remove the background.
There is no simple method if the footage wasn’t shot with that intention. No software (except on CSI) has that ability.
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Are you certain the older MacPro is a Nehalem? According to Apple’s specs the Nehalem doesn’t come in the configuration you describe.
I have a 2.8 Dual Quad Core Xeon with 16 GB of RAM and have worked on single Quad Core Nehalem’s but with very little RAM. For some processes the Nehalem is quicker with *render multiple frames* disabled.
I wonder whether the difference in speed its how your RAM is configured, Apple advises optimal performance is achieved by installing RAM in a specific order. From Apple’s site:
“For optimal memory bandwidth, all three memory channels shouldbe used, and memory should be balanced across the three channels”
“Note: Populating slot 4 slightly drops maximum memory bandwidth, but depending on the applications used, overall system performance maybenefit from the larger amount of memory.”
manuals.info.apple.com/…/Mac_Pro_Early2009_Memory_DIMM_DIY.pdf
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Either press Command + | or go to the Window menu and choose Workspace > Reset “Standard”.
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You can import the entire AFX project into the new one and delete the elements (comps and footage) you don’t need, or save a version of the current project and delete the elements you don’t need.
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Dave is correct, if you change the Preference settings for Display you can set the number of keyframes visible on a motion path.
Two other things may be an issue:
1) The type of light. Only point and spotlights have position that can be keyframed.
2) You must have a minimum of 2 keyframes to make the motion path visible.
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Look for tutorials on motion tracking. There are 2 types of trackers that come with CS4, a standard point tracker inside AFX and Mocha – a stand-alone planar tracker that sends data to AFX.
At a glance it seems that most of this could be done with a point tracker though there is some Z movement of the camera and hence the attached text. Also there’s a bit of roto work required when objects and actors appear matted in front of the text. I know the Cow has basic Motion tracking tutorials to get you started.
One tip, use a null as the tracker target then parent the text to the null for more flexibility.
As well AETUTS has links to many motion tracking tutorials here:
https://ae.tutsplus.com/articles/roundup/26-tracking-and-3d-matchmoving-plus-after-effects-tutorials/ -
Wave World
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I’ve done many projects that end up on large TVs or projectors with WXGA resolutions. If you want the file to fill the screen i.e. with no letter boxing or pillars – work in a 16 x 9 comp, the TV set’s aspect ratio, in square pixels as was mentioned before.
The real wildcard is the laptop and media player. Can they output to the required resolution? Most of my work has been burned as a looping DVD and so only required a DVD player (either SD or Bluray).
The projector work was run from a PC laptop using a Flash-based player we built that allowed the MC to control playback using the arrow keys on the laptop. We rendered the AFX files (48 of them) as H.264 full resolution and had an XML file load the files and play them full screen on the projector via the laptop.
Depending on your needs your best bet may be to make a DVD if you have either Apple’s DVD Studio or Adobe Encore. Then let the media player play the DVD as it normally would.
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You could duplicate the precomped fractal noise (or whatever you’re using for your displacement map) and use it to add shadow by blending with the layer using opacity and/or one of the blending modes.