[Brian Horn]

[Dave LaRonde] “For example, you now know that you shouldn’t include power lines in a shot.”

Well….sure. So no water (except sometimes) and no power lines or tumbleweeds. But does that mean it’s process of elimination for every scenario we might shoot in? If so, maybe it’s better suited for trailers, sports videos, or promos where you can eliminate shots based on their look. If you’re relying on a shot to fully tell a narrative story, you don’t want to be forced to cut it because some random element in the shot created undesirable results.

-Brian
http://www.bullbythehorns.net

[Brian Horn]

I’m having similar problems with this. I’ve tried Twixtor and Timewarp and the equivalent effect in Apple’s Motion, all with less-than-stellar results.

From what I’ve seen, it depends almost ENTIRELY on the footage. I have a lot of ocean wave footage shot at 60fps 720p on a go-pro and it mostly looks good, but does result in those strange moments of water morphing that Tim mentioned.

I also have a shot for a short film I’m doing that is a wide of a couple tumbleweeds being thrown over the hood of a car. They cross over some power lines in the shot and the shot was intended to be a sort of “Zack Snyder” slo-mo nod. All these crisscrossing lines and fine detail of the tumbleweed branches drive Pixel Motion insane and the whole thing morphs from beginning to end. Not to mention the crazy aliasing of the power lines I’m getting from this 720p footage.

I’ve tried matting, adjusting parameters (in all three programs) and still nothing looks right.

Here’s the shot:
https://www.vimeo.com/28831317

I didn’t make this next video, but it’s supposed to be an example of how “awesome” this pixel motion stuff is. Check out the bike tire treads at :30, :40, and :45. Same warping going on.
https://vimeo.com/17905045

If Optical Flow’s effectiveness really does depend on the subject of the footage, doesn’t that make it entirely unreliable when you have to plan out a shoot?

-Brian
http://www.bullbythehorns.net

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[Brian Horn]

I’m having the same issue with CS5. From what I can tell, it creates a brand new solid and puts the opacity on THAT?!

That would be pretty nutty if that’s as close as it gets. Especially since Automatic Duck does it just fine from a Final Cut xml…what gives?

-Brian
http://www.bullbythehorns.net

[Brian Horn]

Good news! We fixed it. Trash the preferences. [forehead slap]

Also, we’re trying to stay away from wrapping the image sequences twice. One single, clean transcode is what we’re aiming for.

But…lesson learned…TRASH THE PREFERENCES!

Thanks for the thoughts!

-Brian
http://www.bullbythehorns.net

[Brian Horn]

Well….Although that’s a great temporary workaround that I will certainly do, here’s the rub with that.

I need to convert about 30-50 image sequences every single day. I’m working with some other programmers that are helping me create an automation setup to have compressor churn these out in the middle of the night, ready for editing the next morning. But we have to be able to rely on compressor if we’re going to do that.

I don’t think Quicktime can handle repeated, automated tasks…or can it? It definitely doesn’t support batch processing. To my knowledge.

thanks for the response!

-Brian
http://www.bullbythehorns.net