[Chris Wright]

8(faster) bit or 16 bit color (slower). hdr compressed? uncompressed video codec is fastest, there’s no math to do. linear compression codecs use more processor, like huff. If you have a small hard drive, you don’t have much choice.

[Chris Wright]

1. add black moving square footage to comp as “grey square layer”
2. add color correction->curves effect to black moving square footage
3. invert the two dot points in curve channel so that moving square is brightest
4. add difference matte to same footage below curve effect and set view final output, diff layer grey square, change only tolerance slider, not the softness or blurs!
5. mode silhouelette alpha
6. double check your results with transparency button in comp window that looks like a checkerboard and lay a solid beneath footage to see checkerboard transparency alpha working successfully! delete solid after confirming alpha channel working.
7. export with uncompressed codec

note.Adobe Flash recognizes only premultiplied alpha channels. Ask what he wants.

[Chris Wright]

I have seen lots of commercials that use obstructions to shift transitions. Like walls, handbags, people walking by. Its actually more believable and less dorky than a magical sparkle change or fade.

You will need to match speed or timewarp for perfection. Frame match a walk with marker overlays on a realtime monitor for comparison and use distance markers to timecode to get precise speed match. speed=distance/time remember? This will then look fantastic and be continuous.
Either that or roto the whole thing, lol. lightsabers anyone?

Oh yea, most important, get good head and tail footage. Most running shots look fake because the film was shot the same second the actor starting moving. You want “pre-walk.”

[Chris Wright]

true strobe is breaking the shutter to fps law. 2:1 24fps at 1/48 24*2=48

We need more information because the posterize time will just make it jumpy like a slideshow. You want strobe. Remove all the blur you can with like something like Twixtor. or try adobe’s trick..

->60-field-per-second video footage can be locked to 24 frames per second (and then field rendered at 60 fields per second) to give a filmlike look. I haven’t tried that but I’m guessing it will create stutter not strobe, but if it looks fine, then use it. That’s probably your only option because you have pure non-blur footage.

[Chris Wright]

The strobe comes comes a low frame per second 24 but a high shutter speed way above smooth blur 1/48th/sec. The same effect can be done with dv by 60i at 1/100th shutter then fps reduced to 24 without adding motion blur or adaptive motion stretching to reduce strobe.
That’s why shooting from 60i to 24p film-look timewarp, you shoot at 1/60 shutter because blur is always best at twice your fps, but if blur is lower, your eye sees strobe from uncharacteristic sharp frame transitions.

[Chris Wright]

I’ve got an idea. Make a dust-mist layer with opacity keyframed to go down when the effect occurs and apply warp or another distortion. This will distort the mist and not the film footage. Ramp it up and down quickly so it only exists during the effect. Mode screen then view the results.

[Chris Wright]

cc twister or some other cheao transition trick

[Chris Wright]

its all about the lighting, lol no. You can key good even with bad lighting if you have good software. Primatte Keyer will key a green carpet, remove noise, and get your grandma into a flying spaceship. THAT’s how good it is. ae’s keyer is trash.

[Chris Wright]

layer->mode Stencil alpha from a bulb graphic then with a light or glow effect, keyframe it to pulsate. The stencil alpha will automatically make it look good. Two seconds done, and no arguing with the producer, lol.

[Chris Wright]

LOL keying fire and smoke, eeeyea.. no. You could try a black bg then luma or extract key because the brightness of the fire is the difference. Fire makes too many colors to key out, its famous for that.