Greg Neumayer
Forum Replies Created
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With a hand-held shot, you obviously won’t have a “clean” plate. In the example of the pole, I once had a shot of a park that had some “don’t step on the grass, we just put it down” pink ribbon that lopped it’s way horizontally across the shot. I cut a soft matte around the ribbon to knock it out, then I duplicated my original shot and layered it behind my main footage with the hole where the ribbon was. By slipping my underlying shot a frame or two in time, the ribbon effectively slid out of the way (since it was a hand-held shot). I think I also physically moved the shot up or down a bit to help. This cleaned up most of the ribbon fairly easily, and since the footage showing through the hole was very similar in movement and distance to what needed to go in the hole, it matched pretty well. Of course, there were still other problem areas where I did see a flash of ribbon from the underlying plate, so I made myself small patches of grass footage to lay on top of the problem areas, being careful to use grass that matched the distance of the grass needed for the shot.
Anyway, one case study. As someone else said, every shot seems to be different.
-GregAntifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com -
Sure. In Photoshop, create yourself a nice little horizon hill, but make sure the vertical height on both sides of the screen is the same. Then, using “offset image” (I think it’s under the “video” effects), offset your image horizontally about half the width of your psd doc. You should have the left and right edges butting up against each other in the middle of your screen, with the the left and right edge wrapping around. Now, use whatever method works best for you (rubber stamp, etc.) to paint the seam out. Once you have something that looks convincing, save your psd (with the alpha transparency where the sky would be). You can make as many of these layers as you feel necessary to give the illusion of parallax motion. The more, the more convincing, although in Macromedia’s example, 4 seemed to be quite adequate.
Once back in AE, put one of horizon graphics on screen (it should be at least as wide as the comp you want to make). Put another one butted up to it’s right side. If you did a good job in photoshop, it should look seamless (you’ll have to slide the seam over to the middle of your comp while you’re doing this, or you won’t be able to see your seam). Set your comp to be 5:00 seconds long, and put a position keyframe at your start (:01 )for both comps. Move down the timeline to 4:29, your last frame. Move both comps together to the left until your second graphic is in exactly the same place that your first was. Your first graphic should now be off screen to the left, and AE should’ve automatically made keyframes for the new positions.
Once you’ve made sure it’s working as you’d hoped, you may notice that there’s a slight studder as the comp repeats itself. This is because :01 and 4:29 look identical. Move your keyframes at 4:29 off the timeline to 5:00. I only had you work with them at 4:29, because your comp goes grey if you try to work off the end of your timeline. Now, it should loop seamlessly.
Create 3 more comps like this, keeping in mind that closer hills should cycle faster, and further ones should cycle slower. So, if you make 4 total variations (one of them may be a sky background), you’ll want them all to move at their own pace, but also maybe want to cycle the comp that they all live in. If you want this to be infinitely loopable, you’ll need to find a common denominator that can be the loop point for this master comp. For example, if you have a 4 sec. looping comp, a 6 sec. looping comp, and a 8 sec. looping comp, you’ll need to make a master comp that is 24 seconds long, so that they can all end at the same place, ready to start over as your movie file loops. This looping ability may not pertain to your needs, so if not, all the easier. Your master comp can be as long as you need it for your shot to work.
Hope it helps,
Greg.Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com -
I’d say use anything that gives you good contrast for your tracker. You don’t necessarily need to track the actual frame or art, if marring is an issue. As long as you’re tracking relative to the frame (i.e. trackers on the wall near the frame) it would seem like you’d be good to go.
Now, this is totally presumptious of me, but once you put your image into the hole, make sure you take the time to match lighting, etc. of your filled element so it really looks integrated. We’ve all seen way too many video shots just slapped up on a billboard with no thought to the atmospherics. (not that a Creative Cow’er would do that!)
-Greg
Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com -
It looks to me like it’s just 4 loopable images that run horizontally. I don’t think there is any true 3D movement. You could make the loopable graphic in Photoshop. Ask me if you’re not familiar with the method.
-Greg
Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com -
Are you using lights or in 3D? I was just about to post a question about the same problem, except that I’m getting it as my light feathers out. Are lights not really 16bit?
(of course, make sure you’re in 16 bit mode, 8 bit will definitely cause banding. FILE-PROJECT SETTINGS)
Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com -
I export for the Adrenealine all the time using Avid’s codecs. (AvidAVDJCodec.component)
https://www.avid.com/onlineSupport/acsr/supportcontentGoogleACSR.asp?contentID=3555–I always work in 720×486 with a .9 pixel aspect (for broadcast.)
Use 720×480 .9 for DVD.
–Lower field first usually, although this is easy to swap on their end, usually, if it’s backward. (you’ll get weird horizontal banding in horizontal movement if it’s backward.)
–29.97 fpsIf you’re getting white flashes in footage after import, it’s probably an import problem, usually (for me) caused by trying to import directly off a CD or internet. Move the file to your HD first before importing.
Beyond that, we’d need to know more about your problem to really be able to tell what’s wrong.
-Greg
Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com -
Yeah, unfortunately I tried both types of track mattes. (single layer above the layer to be masked, or using the track matte’s transfer control to matte the entire stack.) AE seems to just ignore it.
-gregAntifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com