[David Uloth]

From what I understand, once I’m finished with the editing of the image sequence, the speed of the action, the keying, compositing, and lighting, he then wants to do his colour correction in AE. Although he could be under the assumption that you can export some kind of image sequence in RAW which he could play around with in Color (or even Photoshop?)…

But that’s a good question that I should get him to clarify.

In terms of exporting the final project, if the comp is running in 12 fps, can I get a 29.97 fps export from it (for an HD copy)? Or do I need to render out a 24 fps comp on which I will then do a 3:2 pull-down to get 29.97 fps? Can AE do all of this?

Ideally, once the project is finally done, I would have something running in 24 fps for a 35mm blow-up, as well as have an HD master copy running in 29.97 which I could transfer to HD tape for video screenings (in case the 35mm blow-up never happens). And finally, an uncompressed version (running in, I assume, 29.97 fps) that I would store digitally on my Hard drive.

Thanks for the advice!

d.

Independent Producer/Director
Sure Shot Productions
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

[David Uloth]

Thanks Alan for the tip. I had heard about the free download but my DOP insists I keep the files in RAW for his colour-correction…I guess I’ll have to track down a newer version of AE… I’m still trying to find out which exact version can handle Nikon’s D90 RAW files…

Independent Producer/Director
Sure Shot Productions
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

[David Uloth]

Maybe I should clarify: There are no duplicated images. I didn’t shoot the film in twos, but rather played it back in twos at 24fps (so there were 12 separate images playing a second) to set the animation speed. So basically, the animation runs at 24 fps in twos. I did this because I hope to blow it up to 35mm film and I didn’t want to animate it at 30 fps in twos (or 15 individual images per second). I know my animation speed cold or hot…or even luke-warm.

So won’t the film run too fast if I set a comp to 29.97 fps when it was planned to run at 24 fps? If working in a 29.97 comp is how you think I should work, is there a way to make a comp in 24 fps (with doubled frames) and then do a telecine 3:2 pull-down to get a 29.97 comp while still keeping the doubled 12 fps speed of the filmed action?

As for converting the RAW files to JPEGs or TIFFS, my DOP insists I don’t do that so he’ll have more lee-way in the colour-correction. So I’m searching for a machine with AE 7 or later…

And as for the training DVDs, I’ll keep eyes open but I haven’t seen any on eBay this week.

(And the Canada thing wasn’t anything: I’ve noticed that the Americans I’ve worked with are very knowledgeable about their own country but not so much about mine…I’m glad to see your an exception, Dave. But I guess I gotta blame your frickin’ family for making me puke up all over a McDonald’s restaurant entrance window when I was 11 years old after a day at the LaRonde amusement park. Thanks a lot, I’ve been traumatized for life!)

Independent Producer/Director
Sure Shot Productions
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

[David Uloth]

Does AE 7 specifically support Nikon’s D90 RAW files? I hear that since there are some many RAW formats out there, not all are supported by certain versions of AE and Photoshop.

Thanks!

Independent Producer/Director
Sure Shot Productions
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

[David Uloth]

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my post, Dave. I appreciate it. I do, however, understand your quick run through of the work-flow needed, although I certainly don’t know how to effect it in AE. That said, I’m not worried about learning the software. That’s actually the whole point of this project. Up here in Canada we’re lucky enough to get small grants to research stuff like that so I used my grant money to shoot this stop-motion film in the hopes of learning AE’s keying and compositing capabilities. According to the people who own the suite in which I’m working, AE CS4 isn’t affordable for them right now…so I seem to be stuck with AE 6.5 unless I go the “A-hoy matey!” pirate route, which ain’t kosher.

As for the RAW files, I would love to keep the project as high-res as possible with the possible hope of doing a 35mm blow-up at the end, hence my desire to avoid converting them to JPEGs or TIFFs. I shot the stills “in twos” in a 24 fps sequence (meaning 12fps doubled) and I guess my AE timeline will be in 24fps (with each still doubled). Although who knows, if I don’t find the money to do a 35mm blow-up, I’ll settle for a 30fps HD video output. The pixel resolution of the RAW footage is 4288 X 2848.

I’ve been looking for an AE 6.5 manual but haven’t yet tracked one down. I’ve got a Visual QuickPro Guide but it doesn’t mention supported stills formats so that’s not a help.

I’m familiar with the very basics of AE but as I explore keying the footage (and then compositing it with the background plates) I would like to start off on the right foot. So I obviously agree with you when you say that I need to find out if AE 6.5 supports Nikon RAW. Although I wonder if that’s a finicky detail that would be printed in the manual.

Does anyone know when AE started supporting Nikon RAW files? Which version is it? With Photoshop, I think they started with CS3, but I have no idea about AE. Nikon and Adobe have had some issues, it seems…

Thanks again for the help!

d.

Independent Producer/Director
Sure Shot Productions
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

[David Uloth]

Ah, Mr. Nattress!

I didn’t even think to email you. I’m so programmed to head straight for Creative Cow whenever I’ve got a question…

I am using Film Effects for the colour-correction effects and had tried Standards Conversion for the 60i to 24p conversion. So they were both applied to the clips.

I’ve tried keeping the clips in a 29.97 timeline and using Film Effects’ NTSC to 24p plugin (2 fields with 100% motion blur, 100% anti-aliasing, and 100% tolerance). When I exported a 29.97 quicktime file of this rendered sequence and burned it to DVD with iDVD, the motion jerks. There’s no real artifacts or anything like that in the image, it just jerks, as if it were a key-frame or conversion problem. When I go frame-by-frame on the DVD I can see that each frame is whole and not interlaced, and that there are 6 duplicated frames per second.

So I tried putting the clips on a 23.08 timeline and using Standards Conversions’ plugin to go from 60i to 24p (using 2 fields, 100% motion blur, 100% anti-aliasing and 100% tolerance). Plus I added Film Effects colour correction plugins to the clips. The movement of the rendered clips in the timeline is very smooth but I can see horizontal breaks whenever there is too much movement in the image.

These horizontal breaks are very evident in the 29.97 exported quicktime file of the sequence that I burned to DVD with iDVD. Like I said in my last post, if the horizontal breaks could somehow be eliminated, then the conversion would be excellent because it is very smooth and film-like.

I’m not a pro with DVDSP, and I knew that iDVD had problems with 24p, that’s why I exported each 24p rendered sequence at 29.97 fps before I burned the DVDs…but I have no idea whether that has helped or not.

In any case, I finally tried using Film Effects to go from 60i to 30p and that worked fine. Not jerks and no horizontal artifacts. But the motion is predictably DV-like, not very film-like.

Would going from 60i to 30P and then from 30p to 24p make a difference? Or how about if I exported the 24p clips as 24p quicktime files? (But then I would run into iDVD compression problems, I guess, when I try to burn a 24p DVD)

Thanks for you help!

Independent Producer/Director
Sure Shot Productions
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

[David Uloth]

I agree with you about the film school basics. But the conversion from 60i to 24p adds jumps in the image that are not film-like at all, more like key-frame jumps and sampling jumps.

So while I would be willing to accept strobing from panning too fast, just like you see in a 35mm film, I can’t make any use of this type of video jerkiness. It’s not native to the filmed action, that’s the whole problem. It’s something that’s been added in post, which is obvious when you watch the movie, and makes it disturbing to watch because of this. It’s like if your DVD player wasn’t reading properly. It’s unwatchable.

cheers!

Independent Producer/Director
Sure Shot Productions
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

[David Uloth]

I did use this plugin. It’s part of the G Film plugin. I used the smart deinterlace with 100% motion blur, 2 fields, 70% anti-aliasing (with 15% tolerance). And I got choppy motion…

So what I’m trying to figure out is why the 24p rendered final movie doesn’t play as smoothly as the 60i video. Yes, it is missing 6 frames a second (or 12 interlaced frames) but I thought that the motion blur would have taken care of that. Instead I get really jumpy frames that are a distraction to watch.

Maybe I’ll try 3 fields next time. But the render times are killing me so I was hoping for some advice before I started just going at it through trial and error.

I may also try the 30p conversion and see if that gives a bit of a film look with smoother motion than the 24p. Again, the render times make this a time consuming effort.

Next time I’ll just shoot the DV with a different shutter speed and frame rate and avoid all this!

Thanks!

d.

Independent Producer/Director
Sure Shot Productions
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

[David Uloth]

Thanks for the advice!

I’m also adding some bleach by-pass effects to the edit, as well as some color correction, so the film effects plug-in has come in handy.

As for Nattress’ deinterlace plugins, I assume you are referring to the Standards Conversions plugins. I haven’t tried using them because I thought they were only used for converting from PAL to NTSC and vice versa…But I guess it is worth a try…

As for Film Effects making things choppy, I didn’t realise that that was a normal thing when going from 60i to 24p. I just would like a more fluid look, something that takes the edge off of the 60i video look, and I thought that 24p would look nicer, even once it is mastered in 29.97 on a DVD…

I’ve shot native 24p with the Panasonic camera and it always looked great when mastered on a 29.97 DVD. But obviously it wasn’t 60i being converted to 24p and then back to 29.97…

Thanks for you help!

Independent Producer/Director
Sure Shot Productions
Montreal, Quebec, Canada