[David Bogie]

Try the manual and search the index for HDV. There is an entire section on exactly how to prevent the situation are in.

You can easily batch process the media and reconnect or drop the sequence into a new ProRes sequence. You will make your decision based on your experience . tolerance for errors, and time allowed to figure it out.

The process of converting to ProRes gets posted or referenced here almost daily so searching or just scrolling down might reveal a method you want to try,

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

It’s not a dumb question at all but it’s really about FxFactory, not FCP.
Since you’re new, I can assume there is a function in the filter that you just haven’t found yet . Are you using the generator or the transition? They both work without evidence of a color cast on my machines.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Jonathan Lester] “I’ve tried exporting all the individual frames with the animation codec, using millions of colors+, into a single quicktime file, but then when I put it back into FCP, the background is solid black, even when placed on top of a second clip. (?)
“

the interpolation of the alpha is set incorrectly.
There’s not need to be doing this in FCP, you’re just adding several apparently difficult steps and, for you, complicated functions. Do it in AE.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Most of us would suggest you transcode to a more useful codec instead of trying to edit HDV.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

There are no must-haves. there are only needs and wants and job-specific tools that you must have to satisfy your clients’ needs. And we see this same inquiry about ten times each year. You’re only going to get a list of stuff people enjoy having or have found they cannot live without because that’s what they do. People who insist on using volumetric lighting in most of their projects need Trapcode. People who do lots of high end green screen compositing or lens flares have specific needs for the best tools that do that stuff.

I’ve been using AE since it was CoSA. I have no need at all for Trapcode’s stuff nor anything from Red Giant. I get by just fine with what I’ve got in the box. Your needs, obviously, should be different. But your purchases must be based on what you need and can market to your clients, not what I think you should have.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

You cannot do interactivity at all in After Effects.
Keep looking, maybe in the Flash forum.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Uh-oh, somebody’s feathers get ruffled? C’mon, buddy, you’ve got to have thick skin in this business.

Since we don’t have your images in front of us, only your lurid description, it’s easy to inform you it can’t be done. However, many Boris effects offer a cool feature known as Pixel Chooser. With it, you can get highly selective in what pixels are passed on to any particular filter.
If the blouse, or bra or negligé, falls within a narrow range of colors, you can key out that range by using garbage masks, selective keyers, and multiple copies of the keyers on stacks of the footage. You want to pull the best possible matte and pass the matte on to your blur filter. You’ll process the matte using chokers and edge treatments so it remains fluid and soft. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to suit your sensibilities.
The issue you need to resolve is what you’d replace the keyed out footage with. You can blur an underlying copy of the blouse but it will not track realistically since by blurring the pixels, you alter their scale, even if it’s just by a percentage or two. and the edges present their own issues.

Why not just put a black bar up in front of her?

I’d still recommend you check with the speaker’s agent to be sure you have any rights to do this to her. You could end up being sued for several things.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

A wrist is a joint, a hinge. it doesn’t bend, it rotates about an axis.
I have no idea what you’ve got on your screen so imagine this. You’ve got a still image of an arm that includes the wrist and elbow and hand. You make three copies of the image carefully masking each one so it begins and ends at each of the joints with a bit of overlap. You open up each copy as a separate item and move the anchor point to the joint location. You may need to reposition them in the main sequence once you’ve done this. Now you apply rotation to one layer to illustrate how the joint works.
Umm, it’s a lot more complicated than that because there’s no way to parent the layers together as there is in After Effects.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Yar, PBS acceptance standards are in a really B-I-G book. The beauty of this book is it’s all fairly clearly spelled out, in engineering and heavy geek terms, and the standards are exactly that: STANDARDIZED. Once you are finished, and the work you are going to be forced to perform may not be pretty, you will have built a deliverable that can be run on any PBS station.

You should immediately being rounding up your original media because you may be reediting, or at least reconforming, to a new format. You will NOT be delivering a DVD.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Isn’t he going to end up with lots of duplicated items?
You’ll have to go through the thing one item at a time, deleting what you don’t want.

I’d make some decisions upstream first and then follow Walter’s procedure. I’d open each project independently, save it as a copy, and then start deleting everything you know you don’t need; earlier versions of sequences, unused footage, obsolete effects and graphics, bad takes, duplicates.

Then I’d merge the projects.

bogiesan