Darby Edelen
Forum Replies Created
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Honestly interlacing shouldn’t be an issue when creating a DVD unless the field dominance of the footage was incorrectly handled at some point. Either the MPEG-2 Encoding should know that it’s dealing with 23.98 footage that should be ‘progressive’ or it knows it’s dealing with 29.97 footage that should be ‘interlaced’ (I use quote marks because everything is interlaced in DVD stream MPEG-2).
It sounds to me like your problems are coming from either:
A) Poor MPEG-2 Compression/incorrect MPEG-2 settings.
B) Incorrect color management.
C) Both.
Are you using AE CS3? Who is doing your compression? How is the DVD being authored?
As I look at your initial post I also think your composition settings may be incorrect, I didn’t realize it at first but it sounds like you’re rendering out of AE with an NTSC D1 Widescreen Square Pixel comp… don’t do that! Use NTSC DV Widescreen (not square pixel)!
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
I would recommend looking at using a displacement map as well. However, I would suggest making use of the effect’s ability to use two different color channels for its horizontal and vertical displacement.
Instead of using a white-to-black gradient you could use something similar to a Normal Map in which the surface normal (a line perpendicular to the surface) is defined by the Red & Green channels in an image. I had never used this before for the Displacement Map Effect, but I did a trial run just now and it worked pretty darn well.
Here is the still image I used for the displacement map:
Feel free to use this image, I can explain how I arrived at it, if you’re interested, in another post.
Then I simply left the displacement map effect on the baby layer (see below) with its default settings of using Red for the Horizontal displacement and Green for the Vertical displacement. I increased the displacement to 15 for both horizontal and vertical.
Note: you have to pre-compose the displacement image in order for any movement of the circle to translate to the displacement map effect.
I animated the circle moving in its pre-comp, with the baby layer below it set to a guide layer. The displacement worked very well.
After that I took some steps to highlight one side of the bump and shadow the other, I can go into those in more detail later if you like.
For your reference, here is the same thing using a white-to-black gradient, notice how the baby’s head bulges outward on the left side (correct) and then becomes indented on the right side (incorrect). It’s a subtle difference, but reason enough for me to use the ‘normal map’ technique:
The white-to-black ‘height map’ technique actually offsets everything to the left and up, where as the red-green ‘normal map’ technique offsets everything equally out from the center of the ‘bump.’
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
I think your only option for a decent looking result would be a particle system (Particular is great, if you don’t have it you can try Particle Playground), possibly with some secondary effects applied like Median and Box Blur. The particle system would give you a sense of 3D depth that you’re likely lacking with fractal noise.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
I would offer up 2 other possible solutions:
1) A front jack-o-lantern layer with the face cut out, behind that a light yellow layer set to the ‘add’ blending mode and behind that a back of the pumpkin layer. Set the opacity of the additive layer to something like 60% and then wiggle it quickly, something like wiggle(3, 10) on the opacity property.
2) Do the same as above with 3D layers and put a light in the center of the ‘front’ and ‘back’ layers, wiggle its intensity.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[nothingboy] “I’ve been command-clicking each layer, going into interpret footage, and setting the interpretation to the comps ratio, but i never used to (and i’d get distorted images that were to fat or long and rotated strangely), does this solve the problem?”
You should never reinterpret your footage to have a pixel aspect ratio other than what it is supposed to have. If you created a PSD in Photoshop with Square Pixels, then that should be interpreted as Square Pixels in AE. Your composition, however, should have whatever pixel aspect ratio the device you’re compositing for has… 0.9 for NTSC, 1.07 for PAL, 1.2 for NTSC Widescreen, Square for Computers/Web.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
If you use Cmd-J (ctrl-j on a PC) then there is no dialog.
I do agree that it is a pain to have MyLayer copy copy 15 hanging around in your PSD, and I too am guilty of not naming my layers in a more intuitive manner, but just think of it as a way for Adobe to encourage you to (re)name your layers logically =)
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
I would suggest making the gradient white-to-black in a layer mask so that you can shape the lines independently of coloring them. Also make sure you use the Linear Dodge blending mode =)
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
If your project is going to be viewed on an NTSC or PAL device then the black strips should be well out of action safe… If you’re producing for viewing on a computer then you should crop in slightly on the footage.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[NutsyUK] “Sorry but still looking for my point a – point b plugin.”
I’m still going to offer you the Distort > Corner Pin effect, expressions and a high school trig book.
I’ll try and work it out for you, but I have my own work to be doing as well.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
I agree with Dave. I especially like his suggestion of using B&W and color footage.
A chroma key shouldn’t be necessary as long as you limit the morphing effect to relatively static/well controlled shots, the only variable is your talent, and for that there may be some necessary roto work.
Make it as simple for yourself as possible.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA