[Erik Pontius]

I also don’t think that the “hollywood” guys are simply using an $$$ keyer and just taking footage and clicking a color to key and out pops a perfect key. I think those compositors spend a lot of time tweaking their mattes and rotoscoping to get good keys. I don’t think that there is a professional magic bullet one-click solution for a really good key.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Once you have your video source entered in to Windows Media Encoder. You need to modify the compression settings. Assuming that your AVI source file is 1920×1080 square pixels. Choose the “file destination” and the high definition preset. Click the “edit” button. On the general tab, click the “allow non-square pixel aspect output” option. Click the Kbps tab and change the video size to 1440×1080. Click OK.
Click over to the Video Size tab. The box along the right-hand size should indicate that your input source video is 1920×1080. On the left hand side will be a “pixel aspect ratio” pull down, choose “anamorphic 16×9”. The information on the right-hand side should indicate aspect ratio change 1:1.
When played back Windows Media Player will recognize the pixel aspect and stretch it back out to 1920×1080. The file properties should indicate the size is 1440×1080 and Aspect ratio of 16×9.
If your source AVI was 1440×1080 1.33pa, then set things up the same way, but choose the option for “same as input” for your Pixel Aspect on the video size tab.

IMHO, WME is extremely limited as far as what your source video is. If you plan on doing this thing a lot it might be worthwhile to spend the bucks on a multi-purpose, multi-format encoder like Canopus Procoder, Sorenson, etc…

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

You’ll find sometimes that Avid errors don’t actually correspond to the actual cause of the error. Check your tif files, tif files can be CYMK as well as RGB, you need RGB. Also, tif files support compression, you might see if not using compression is an option when creating the file. If all else fails, try creating a PNG or Photoshop PSD.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Trapcode plugins are very useful…shine, 3d stroke and particular are extremely handy and can be used in my different ways for many different projects. They are also really affordable.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

There are many ways to do this. You can create your motion menu in AE and have your buttons come up and then ride that out for a set time…say a minute or two. Then in Encore, set the Loop point to the time at which the buttons in the animation have come up completely. The loop point is the point at which the button overlays will appear. At the end of the two minutes it will loop back to that point again.
The other common method is to create your animation, have your buttons come up…Export a still frame from AE of the menu with the buttons all the way up. Import the animation in as a timeline and import the still frame PSD as a menu. Set the animation as a first play and have the end action for the timeline be the still menu. When the disc is inserted, the animation will run, the buttons will come up and then it will drop you to a still of the menu with your buttons and overlays.

There are other methods I’m sure…these are just a couple of ways to do it.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

You might want to get more specifics on what they will be using it for. If they are truly using it for Avid, it might be best to render it to a QuickTime either using a lossless codec like Animation or download the Avid QT codecs from Avid and render it using them. I edit almost exclusively on Avid and either method works well.
Rendering to an AVI can be a hassle…If I recall, Avid doesn’t like AVI’s over 2GB in size. MS DV would be a common denominator but would impact your quality… Uncompressed is another option, though the file size will be HUGE. Some like the Huffy codec. But, like I said, probably better to get specifics on what they need specifically to make sure that what you do render can be used for their purposes. 5 mins spent talking about that is worth not having to re-do it several times and risk you and your client’s frustration.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

dead link?

[Erik Pontius]

If you normally edit/capture NTSC projects, make sure that you remove and re-add your deck in the deck configuration. There are separate machine templates for NTSC and PAL decks. Avid won’t change this automatically when you start a PAL project…you have to manually remove and add the deck again.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

RAM preview is just that…it fills up your available RAM at your current frame size and resolution and plays from RAM.
You can preview more by lowering your frame size (50%, 25%, etc…) and resolution (half, third, quarter…). Complex comps, it rare you’ll be able to preview much of your comp at full rez…set your work around around the area you are trying to work on…preview, tweak and repeat…until you have it where you like it…

E.

[Erik Pontius]

720×540 is 4×3 using square pixels. If I remember correctly, 856 X 480 is widescreen 16×9 using square pixels.
Creating your graphics in Photoshop using the NTSC widescreen settings should create a 720×480 image with 1.9 pixel aspect. You’d want to import it into Avid as 601 non-square.

Erik