[Chris Zwar]

Basically, to get a smaller file you will need to use a compressed/ lossy codec. The problem is that they don’t have alpha channels, so you’ll have to render the alpha separately and trust that the guys in Japan know what to do with it.

I would try rendering out your main project with the PhotoJPEG codec, and a premultiplied alpha. At 100% quality it is almost lossless, and you can go down to about 90% before seeing artefacts. The file size should be significantly smaller than the animation codec.

Then, render out your alpha channel only, using 256 greys and the PhotoJPEG codec again (make sure it’s set to 256 greys).

-Chris

[Chris Zwar]

Make the 2D layer a 3D layer, position and scale it so it looks correct, then set it to auto-orientate towards the camera.
I do this a lot ot make bluescreen actors appear surrounded by 3D elements.

-Chris

Motion Graphics Designer
Will animate for food

[Chris Zwar]

Hi,

I’m replying because I’m currently rendering a 3D scene, and each frame is taking about 4 minutes (on an old machine).
While depth of field and motion blur will increase the time of your render, there seems to be a massive render hit for each light you add. Of course, if you use several lights then your scene can look better, but that’s the deal. My composition has 7 lights in it, turning them on and off in different combinations gives render times from less than 20 seconds up to 4 minutes with all the bells and whistles. I should add that I’m also using Knoll Light Factory Spectacular, which is the slowest plug-in I’ve ever come across.

But hey- I even have time to reminisce. When I was playing around on my Amiga 15 years ago it could take an overnight render just to get one frame…

-Chris

[Chris Zwar]

I recall a past thread on a similar topic (DV or BetaSP for archiving) where all who worked with Beta SP recommended DV, and those who used DV recommended BetaSP… the point being that neither format is perfect and you’ll have problems with both.

But Barend’s point about cameras is worth emphasising… DV is a format that can be used by a small, single chip consumer camera with a plastic lens, or it can be recorded from a high-end studio camera with a lens worth more than an entire XL2. The difference will be amazing. The only time I’ve ever tried keying from DV was with footage shot on Panasonic’s top-end DVC-Pro camera and the results were great. The amount of experience the camera operator has with bluescreen is important too.

So the camera is very important, as is the lighting, and will probably make a more significant impact on your results than the actual recording format. FWIW I hate analogue video, I totally agree that BetaSP is noisier and drop-outs/ bearding can give you grief too…

-Chris

Motion Graphics Designer
Will animate for food

[Chris Zwar]

This is extremely disappointing news.

You say that we need to look at Media 100 and FCP as two different products… well as a freelancer I can say that everyone I work with everywhere already sees them as two different products: Media 100 is old & dead and FCP is the way to go.

Around the facilities I work in, the recent press release and mention of AJA created a small flurry of interest and optimism that Media 100 and FCP could co-exist on the same machine, the first time I’ve seen interest in Media 100 for years. I’m really sorry that these hopes have been dashed, and from my experiences I can’t imagine any facility spending on a new Media 100 system. I’m sure some will, but there is such a strong tide flowing the way of FCP that it’s hard to see Media 100 resisting for long.

Last week I was at a facility where the system hard-drive died on an operational Media 100XR. Justifying only

[Chris Zwar]

There’s usually nothing to add to Dan’s posts about expressions, but in this case I was doing a similar thing last week. As Dan points out, expressions cannot maintain variables between each frame, so that means you always have to use Time as the starting point for your calculations.

In my case, I was moving an animated character’s eyes, and I had a source composition with all the different possible eye movements in it as a sequence of stills. The expressions I wrote was applied to Time Remapping of that composition, which would call up the relevant eye image.

If you wanted to take your project 1 step further again, then you could use the Time Remapping technique to get your character to blink with an animated sequence of frames- but you would have to set up an iterative loop, based on the Time of each frame, to calculate which frame should be shown when. It might sound messy but it’s kinda straightforward, and worked well for me.

-Chris Zwar

[Chris Zwar]

There’s usually nothing to add to Dan’s posts about expressions, but in this case I was doing a similar thing last week. As Dan points out, expressions cannot maintain variables between each frame, so that means you always have to use Time as the starting point for your calculations.

In my case, I was moving an animated character’s eyes, and I had a source composition with all the different possible eye movements in it as a sequence of stills. The expressions I wrote was applied to Time Remapping of that composition, which would call up the relevant eye image.

If you wanted to take your project 1 step further again, then you could use the Time Remapping technique to get your character to blink with an animated sequence of frames- but you would have to set up an iterative loop, based on the Time of each frame, to calculate which frame should be shown when. It might sound messy but it’s kinda straightforward, and worked well for me.

-Chris Zwar

[Chris Zwar]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the reply.

I have tried un-installing and re-installing Quicktime v7.04, and Media 100 8.2.3a, but I still have the same problem. FWIW, I have just replaced a faulty system harddrive in an old G4, so I have reinstalled everything from scratch.

I’ll simply not use the video preview function in AE, the video preview function in last version of Media 100 that was installed here didn’t work at all so this is still an improvement… and I’m very happy about the software rendering.

But any suggestions will always be welcome,

-Chris.

[Chris Zwar]

Hi Floh,

Thanks for the quick response.

I did install 8.2.3a, although the “a” was only mentioned in the download file name and installer. The “about Media100i” splash still shows 8.2.3 with no a. But the disk image etc. definitely says 8.2.3a.

The problem in After Effects occurs when you use media 100 clips while also having media 100 set as the video preview device. After Effects seems to work fine with Media 100 as the video preview device as long as you’re not using media 100 clips as well. In addition to the “resource not found (-192)” error, when you force-quit After Effects it won’t launch again (you get an “adm floater” error message).

So I can think of a few possibilities – 1) You simply can’t use media 100 as a video preview device while also using media 100 clips, or 2) The bug wasn’t completely fixed in 8.2.3a, or 3) The download at the media 100 site is wrong and although it’s called 8.2.3a, it’s actually still 8.2.3. I doubt the last one, but I would expect the “about media 100i” splash to say 8.2.3a…

Any suggestions?

Thanks again,

-Chris

[Chris Zwar]

Ayas,

The “best” and “easiest” are not the same thing…

The “easiest” way to deinterlace is to simply make sure your footage is interpreted as fields (which AE often does automatically), then render it out as frames. In the interpet settings, you can also select the option “preserve edges” (not sure what it’s exactly called) which will take longer to render but give a better result.

The “best” way is to use a 3rd party plugin such as the ReVision Fields Kit, mentioned above. I spent a long time evaluating Fields Kit and found that the results were very impressive and it was worth the price – however it works best when used together with RealSmart MotionBlur which is a seperate and equally expensive plugin. There are alternatives to the RealVision effects but I haven’t used them personally, although “Kronos” by the Foundry has been incorporated into AE 7 – this can make your deinterlaced footage look less shuddery, although it has nothing to do with deinterlacing.

In between the “best” and the “easiest” you have techniques like Barend’s, which is popular (free!) and frequently referenced.

-Chris

Motion Graphics Designer
Will animate for food