[Del Holford]

Hi Sophie
I try to oversample when I can for HD because I may use all or only part of the image and may want to move it around. I scan at 300 dpi and sometimes 600 dpi depending on how large or small the original image is. I also scale it 200-300% if needed on my Epson Expression scanner. It’s much better to down-rez in HD than the reverse. Then you can resize the image to fit in the 1920×1080 format, cropping where necessary or adding a color ramp or texture behind the sidebars.

I save my files as tifs but native photoshop files or picts do equally well. If you need alpha channels the tif works best for my system so I tend to use them most often, alpha or not.

HTH

[Del Holford]

Hi
You would do it best with a compositor like combustion, after effects, or shake to create the layers and combine and dissolve them to the logo. It is an arduous task and most who do it work on a higher end system such as Flint or Flame and do it often. I’ve done a small fly-in to create a brochure cover in smoke but the effects systems handle it a little better than the editing systems.
Go ahead and try it if you can – it is a great experience.

Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS
Charlotte Public Television

[Del Holford]

Hi Kim
Something similar can easily be done in Photoshop using the stylize>extrude filter, which makes blocks. I did the extrude on a photo, put a distort>twirl on it then another stylize>extrude and got an interesting effect. Not sure what you need but thought I’d throw in the thought.

Del

Del – fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS Charlotte Public Television

[Del Holford]

There are some pretty good character generators out there. One that is software only is Inscriber CG with TitleMotion. It has been bundled with a few non-linear edit systems. It is clunkier than a stand-alone but also less expensive. They now have a dedicated unit as well. Pixel Power Ltd. makes Clarity which is very powerful. Fox in LA uses them as do we. Pinnacle sells TypeDeko and various iterations and this might be what CNN uses, although they have 3 up at a time if I recall correctly. Finally there is Chyron, which has been through some rough times. They have a couple model lines and are trying to rebound.

Taking text through a scan converter is pretty much a no win situation. I’d look at something like the Inscriber to help you out.

Del

[Del Holford]

Often the end user defines the length of corporate logos. PBS national allows :03 at the end of a production for the presenting station’s logo. On our local productions we go wild and hold if for :05 and put it at the top.

If the series is corporate/training video, then maybe :10 – :15 would be viable as part of the intro for each show in the series. I’ve learned that good taste doesn’t necessarily coincide with what the client wants. I try to creatively suggest ways to give them what they want within the bounds of good taste. Sometimes they agree, sometimes they don’t. I always ask them what the target audience will think about the show: Will what they are trying to communicate be received by the audience based on the way they want the show to go together?

Del

[Del Holford]

We use an older version of Kaleido from Miranda in our studio control and other than computer memory leaks and inconsistant performance, it does what it is supposed to do. I’m still waiting to hear from them when I talked with them at NAB. I think “buy the newer version” was their basic answer.

For you solution, there are others competing with Miranda who may serve your needs.

Del

[Del Holford]

email me off of the Cow and I’ll reply with at tif file attached that I use for letterbox.

Del

[Del Holford]

I agree with Scott. You have CGs and loading the animations into them is time consuming at best. We have Pixel Power’s Clarity HD and while it does great SmartMoves, the RAM recorder has to preload them and that too takes time. We can load animations but that is a secondary function so again it takes a lot of pre-production time to do that.

With a DDR or other video playout device you can key your CG and DDR over video in real time at the same time with the switchers controlled by your editor controllers. I used to animate single frames off a Dubner TurboPainter onto D2 through a Targa 100Pro card and then key the animation thru my GVG 200 switcher with a Sony 9000 controller. Having AE output finished animations is so much easier.

This may be more heat than light but hope it helps.

Del

[Del Holford]

If your Playbox has adjustments for transparency you may just have to set it where you like it best. I use Glen Stephens Tools for Television Pro to make my alphas so no matter how many layers in the comp the alpha magically appears. Sometimes I adjust the alpha by bringing white down to 60% gray or use the gradient tool to go from opaque to transparent by selecting the white alpha channel and modifying it with the gradient tool. Then you can save it as a tif or tga or psd or any format the Playbox accepts. PAL or NTSC or HD is all the same to PS CS2 if you size it correctly. We use Evertz Insta-Logo and the bug box sets transparency so I no longer have to jump through hoops to get the bug transparent. Maybe Playbox does the same. HTH
Del

[Del Holford]

While Richard pointed out you didn’t state a price range, if you can go the freight the Epson Expression 1680 is an excellent scanner. It has a negative/positive slide adapter with it and works with SilverFast scanning software plug-ins for Photoshop. It can orient the picture anyway you want and has several settings for dust and scratch removal and various settings for scanning the object up to 16 times to get the best scans. The price on CNET’s Shopper.com is around $1K for the pro version.
HTH
Del