Guy Thompson
Forum Replies Created
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The main issue is criticial mass. I worked out that you need 3000 clips online to be making $150,000 US a year. Popular clips average out across the zero earners. Its called cost based averaging and its how supermarkets make money. Get it – stock footage really is a supermarket….
Ok but who wants to sit around uploading 3000 clips and adding all those tags when you could be working on production jobs which pay up-front?
This is an investment process, you are building something which will make money over time
But here’s a different business model idea, if you have literally hundreds of tapes, would you be prepared to work with a freelancer who would upload and tag all of your clips for you and take a percentage of the stock earnings? Or would you rather sit on a pile of “potential revenue” and keep the “potential earnings” all to yourself.
You have got to actually be IN the market to make money, you can’t just dabble on the side like a weekend trader. Like any kind of investing, just dipping your toe in will earn you no sizeable income. Dump EVERYTHING you have on the market and see what happens, you will most certainly earn something, but if you sit on your tapes, you will most cetainly earn nothing.
Have faith any go for it. One day you’ll get a cheque from Getty offering to buy out your entire library and you can pay off your house…maybe.
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Wow, thats fantastic and quite terrifying at the same time – I’m guessing this is Java? Anyway, I inserted this into the Source Text attribute field. (After alt-clicking the stopwatch) and it works great, as long as there is only 1 text layer, and only 1 layer below, with no over lapping layers. (splice points only, as you mentioned) Left justifying the text object stops if from changing position on the x axis as the text width changes on each frame.
I couldn’t quite work out the syntax for getting the sequence frame number first, then the file name, then the clip timecode(source frame number only), if thats even possible?
Is there a line of code to use the current system time, it doesn’t have to be the creation time/date of the source, just the date when this output movie is being generated. (Or even just a “Insert Text Here” entry in the code.)
Fantastic tip, thanks a bunch.
Guy Thompson
https://www.oktobor.com -
Make sure your preview lenght is not too long. AE will try and load all the audio for your timeline into ram. Just preview 10 or 20sec and see if it loads.
Also try previewing at Half or Quarter res, this will mean less data to load into ram.
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Check your keyframe interpolation.
A work around is creating 2 nulls and attaching them to the camera, then animate the moves separately. (Move 1 Null, Move 2 Null, etc)
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One trick to attack any effect is to look at the real thing, what is happening visually to the pixels. A reflection is just a distorted image, plus some glows, plus some harsh blacks and whites to give the chrome look. a bit of lens flare, some rainbow to simulate refraction etc.
Lots of layers will help give you a really rich look. A couple of layers an a plug-in won’t really cut it.
My current project has about 50 layers for one shot, the whole timeline is 280+
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I still get weird stuff happening with keyframes in AE.
Make 2 Nulls and attached the camera to them.
“Null Move 1” for the first one and then “Null Move 2” for the second move. Keyframe them independently, and then you get really nice blended motion with ease in/out. I use this all the time to get nice drifts and smooth motion going.
Nulls allow you to split out and control motion as separate “motions” while you work. Much easier to find problems and fix.
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As far as I under stand it, any 3D layer in AEFX will move with the Horizon plugin. To put it another way, the Horizon panorama is “Camera Aware”, so anywhere you point the AE Camera the Horzon background will respond.
So just put a video clip in your comp, click the 3D Layer button so you can move it around in 3D, then to a key/garbage mask to see if moving the camera will work they way you want.
VPE from photoshop will give you and additional camera which won’t work. But it will give you textured planes which you could place in your “scene”.
Also don’t try and do anything with video in Photoshop…please. Just stay here in AE where it’s safe.
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You can also just make a nice orange image with a bit of paper or paint texture in it and then use “Overlay” mode.
Usually a combination of layers with layer modes with give you a quick look, a bit of experimentation is required. 😉
However, Chris mentions the “correct” way to colour correct above.
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Apple Animation Codec is a storage codec, not a playback codec for realtime performance in a video edit.
Which ever tape format you are using is the Codec you would work in. If I am working on a DV PAL project, my Premiere Project, and therfore timeline is set you DV PAL, and I render my Quicktimes from AE as DV PAL, yes there is a quality loss, but that is the compromise you make for realtime performance. (And a low-end format)
If I am working animation for Digibeta, I would render at 8Bit Uncompressed 4:2:2. Which is smaller quality than Apple: None RGB, because the colour sampling is in YUV. (Long story)
Short story, you need FAST hard drives to playback uncompressed video direct to high quality video tape reliably – all day, without dropping frames. Thats what a RAID is for.
A local post production company may offer direct output to broadcast video tape for a small fee, just supply your Animation Codec file, and pass on the cost to the client. Alternatively, spend $100K+ on your own gear…
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This is a common problem in traditionl 3D animation with a camera known as “rotation order”. You need to animate your rotation values separately.
A quick fix is to animate the Camera’s point of interest, to keep it looking at the target.
The long fix:
Create a Null called “Null Cam Pos” and attach the camera to that.
Then create another Null called “Null Cam Rot” and attach the first null to that.(Ensure the Cam and both Nulls are at 0,0,0 first (x,y,z)
Don’t touch the camera again, just use the nulls to animate.
Now you can set key frames and manupulate them separately. For subtle control, you could add another Null to correct the tilt of the camera, or perhaps use the Camera target.
Elegant camera work is not an easy 1 click process and there are many ways to get a shot to work well. Once you build a good camera Rig in AE and save it, you can easily bring it into a new project for specific tasks. Like an orbiting camera, or a Camera tracking on a curved path, or a crane. Just like the pros.