[David Bogie]

Boris may be an economical plugin for you if you cannot justify the time and effort required to use the builtin AE tools.

There are several text plugs for AE. I have none of them. Check Red Giant and Toolfarm.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

John, thanks for the link, cool product.
The description seems to imply the keying is performed live during capture so all background sources must be rolled live. That is, the VeeScope Keyer does not appear to capture an Animation codec file that can be imported into a project and used as foreground.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

If they’re accepting DVD as MPEG2, their system is ingesting the MPEG2 and either playing it out native or converting it upon ingestion to an airplay codec, probably proprietary to their system.

If they want MPEG2, you can encode the files with Compressor—without using DVSP— and maintina a very high level of quality, assuming you knwo how to drive the MPEG2 transcoding.

If they just need yoru files delivered on DVD-RAM, find out what codec they prefer.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Create an empty sequence. Bring in all of your still images. Set timing for transitions. Render this movie and export it.
Import this movie back into your project and place it on an upper video track. Using the motion tab, scale it and position it. Add an edge or shadow or other filter or effects.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

You forgot to copy and paste the URL tag form the upload screen.
Moiré is a specific visual artifact caused by conflicts in pixel/scanning frequency ratios; never hear of boiling.
You will need to provide some basic information like the format and codec in which you are working. Most boiling issues are simple user errors such as not viewing the resulting renders on a the release medium display or attempting to use typefaces that are inappropriate for the release medium.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Two simple processes.
1. Simple 2d: Create the shape of your shadow and simply use it as a layer. Fill it with gray, add some blur, various transfer modes or transparency settings till you get what you consider satisfactory illusion.
2. Simple 3D: Build the shape and place it off the edge of the camera’s view. Add a light that projects the shadow the direction and intensity that suits yoru needs. If you seen is build as a 3D layers, the shadw cast by the object will interact with them beautifully.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

You’re seeing interlacing. It’s too hard to explain in this little posty and your FCP manuals include a huge section on video fundamentals. Your timeline is set to an interlaced format and you are viewing the output of the timeline on a progressive monitor. If you were to view the interlaced video on an interlaced video monitor, you would notice that the motion is buttery smooth because you’re seeing your motion divided up into 60 discrete (half resolution) slices, called fields, instead of 30 full frames.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[amarjeet singh] “when you save a frame by solo’ing the layer and saving as a psd or a 32b tga, you get alpha.
however this file is a complete waste since when imported it has a black fringe at the edges.”

Hmm, I’ve been doing that for ages, never had a black fringe issue. But I don’t export as psd, I usually use png or tif to carry alphas. If you pick up fringe pixels of black, you should be able to use a premutliplied setting. Suggest you try interpreting your alpha at different settings. Trish and Chris Meyer explain how to handle alpha fringes in all of their books. I’m not where I can get to my library of AE books.

[amarjeet singh] “question: how do i save a frame with the bg and other elements visible and alpha intact.
i get a feeling its something silly that i am missing out on.”

You can’t. AE produces a still image with only one layer. You just save an alpha or matte pass, the alpha information only. This is often done when handing off or importing shadow catchers to or from other applications.
Umm, I don’t have CS4 installed yet but I don’t think multi-layer stills are possible out AECS4 or we’d have heard about it by now.

Stay tuned for acouple more days, someone may have entirely different advice for you.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Try searching for your camera model here on the cow to see how others are using it and coping with what must be a common issue for them.

I don’t use that machine but it seems to me most similar questions turn out to be a simple misunderstanding of how the camera achieves a certain frame rate. Are you sure it’s absolute and not being baked into a more conventional tape format?

Sorry not to be of any real help, give the wonks a few days to chime in. Weekend here in the States.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Richie Tovell] “My only problem at the moment is this animation codec, as virtually every layer will have to have alpha channels I’ll have to find a better file format or compression technique.”

Yar, I stopped by their site and slogged through some of the marketing videos. But I didn’t have time or interest to find the crucial elements needed to help you more directly. I still do not understand how this application is processing the alphas from multiple, full resolution video streams. Several of their effects look more like a simple color key is being applied to achieve stacking and overlays. That’s an entirely different computing process than reading and compositing alphas from Animation codec-based video files.

Time to talk to other users of the application. There has to be a support community. of very hip video geeks.

Rendering out of After Effects to Animation is easy and a basic foundation in this business.

bogiesan