Cory Petkovsek
Forum Replies Created
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If the animation is fixed, then you need to recompose the music. You can use a program like ACID (Sony) or other programs to play with the tempo to hit the animation beats. You’re not going to do it in AE.
When I use stock music for corporate work, I first edit. Then I’lll tweak the music in my NLE (Vegas) and sound design program (Sound Forge). I’ll cut on phrases and remove or repeat whole sections of the song to get it pretty close length wise to my cut. Then I’ll tweak my edit for a little better fit. This gives pretty good results.
Beyond this you have diminishing returns.
Again, not related to AE at all.
Cory
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Cory Petkovsek
Corporate Video -
AE is memory and CPU bound. Put your money there.
However all systems are to some extent harddisk bound. This is more relevant with laptops because of poor manufacturing choices. If you get a laptop ensure your harddrive speed is at least 7200rpm, or an SSD. If it doesn’t say it in the marketing materials, it doesn’t have it. It will have a 5400rpm drive and will suck out your general computing experience.
Desktops typically come with 7200rpm drives, but it varies on where you get it. If you don’t see it, ask before you buy.
Do not buy a system unless it has 7200rpm harddrive or faster or an ssd. Mac or PC.
Buy the system for upgradability, especially for a desktop. If the budget only allows you to pick up an i3 processor, make sure the motherboard can support an i7 so you can drop it in later. If it’s a laptop, spend the money to get the i7 instead, because you won’t be able to upgrade it later.
If you can afford 8gb of ram, make sure the board supports 16gb, and the 8gb you get are the largest sticks the board will support. For instance maybe there are 4 memory slots, and the max is 4×4 or 16gb. Buy two 4gbs so you have two slots free.
This is true for laptops. Though typically you’ll have two slots max. Make sure that you can start with either the max memory, or moving in that direction, the memory you buy won’t need to be replaced. I have a laptop that I got with 3gb; two slots with a 2gb and a 1gb. To upgrade to the max, 4gb, I had to replace the 1gb stick with a 2gb stick. Plan before you buy the system how you’re going to max out the ram without having to replace sticks.
Having a fast laptop is nice. But for price/performance and far greater upgradeability, desktops are the way to go.
Cory
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Cory Petkovsek
Corporate Video -
Jeff Cadge >> In New York there is an extra $325.00 per year
Yeah, in california it’s $800 minimum to have a corp/llc. 🙁
Cory
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Cory Petkovsek
Corporate Video -
This is a one off for you, so talk with your client to come to a reasonable agreement.
If a vendor came back to me with an upload fee of (18.5×50) $925 charge to upload a couple files, depending on my relationship with them I’d either laugh or be pissed off; but certainly wouldn’t pay that.
Your technical issues are not their problem, and frankly not being able to check your email is perceived as a personal problem. It’s a low intensity job. If I were doing it for a client, I’d set it up on one of my older systems so my laptop can be free. If it was giving me problems connecting with other applications (because the upload channel is saturated, it’s can’t send any web page requests), I’d throttle it to 90% so I would have some bandwidth to continue working. There is hardware and software that do this, and your not using them is your choice, not your clients.
Some fee for your setup and management of the task is reasonable, but it’s more like $200 or less.
Cory
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Cory Petkovsek
Corporate Video -
Also, I forgot to add, check “Preserve RGB” on the color management tab for all the r3ds. You can use color management in your working space and output if desired, but you’ll get accurate results if you let the red sdk manage the color space.
Cory
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Create a comp that is 1920 wide and 1920/2.39 tall. Round up to the nearest multiple of at least 2 if not 4.
Add your 1920×1080 footage to it. The tops and bottoms will be cut off. Vertically space it however you like, whether you want to cut off the top or bottom or equally balanced.
Cory
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Cory Petkovsek
Corporate Video -
Ask the person who gave you the Prores files what process they went through to create them. What tool did they work in? What color and gamma spaces did they work in? What other steps did they do to the image before giving it to you?
The right image is not white balanced and the blacks have been lifted. The DP should have white balanced the camera. If that is the r3d then either it’s been interpreted in the wrong color space, or there is an RMD file accompanying the r3d that is providing an interpretation of color.
In AE Interpret the footage and click the more options button in order to access the RED sdk. Select “as shot”, which will show you the clip default ignoring any RMD files.
Now apply the same settings the person who gave you the prores used. For instance if they used redspace/redspace, or redcolor/redgamma, use that. If they changed white balance or lifted the blacks, do it here.
If they used redcolor2/redgamma2, these aren’t in AE yet and you’ll have to open the footage in redcine-x and export prores from that color and gamma space.
It may be useful to load the files into the latest beta version of redcine-x so you can see the clip defaults and read the meta data. You can see a lot of this directly in the red sdk options, but there’s more you can do in redcine-x, including access the new color/gamma spaces.
Cory
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It’s easy enough for you to test your own footage on your system. Also follow what Todd says about memory:
https://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2010/10/please-try-recommended-memory-settings-for-after-effects-cs5-and-give-feedback.html -
So your source footage is something, possibly PhotoJPEG. You cut off the black at the beginning in FCP. Then you export with PhotoJPEG to open it up in AE on a PC, and you see black at the beginning of the intermediate file. However you don’t see black at the beginning of the intermediate in Avid on the PC. Right?
Ok, why don’t you use another codec rather than PhotoJpeg? That should have been your second test, after the NLE. Good cross platform intermediates are Avid’s QT LE DNxHD codecs (free) and cineform ($) and they’ll probably give you a better quality/size ratio.
Other options to use are QT Animation or PNG Sequence, but they will take a lot of space.
Cory