[Guy Thompson]

You are talking about tracking a 3D scene, which AEFX cannot do.

Here’s the trick:

You can use an external tool, like Boujou/Mocha/PPFTrack to track or “solve” the scene (the corners of the table), which will generate a 3D Camera and key frame data which can usually be pasted into AEFX, or exported as a file for AE.

I know this sounds REALLY complicated, but it isn’t. There are lots of tutorials out there and software demos so you can track the shot and get some data to use.

Once you have a camera in AE which matches the motion of the camera in your original video, you can put any layer in the comp, and it will look like it is placed in your 3D scene. You then just put the “floating screen” where ever you want.

Use deinterlaced footage to track on.

Trying to fake it in Aefx will take you hours and look crap. I did my first track and import in to AE in about 1.5 hours, it always looks like magic when it works. You can then create anything, and it will look like it is attached to the table, or actually sitting in the scene – the “solved” camera will do all the work for you.

[Guy Thompson]

Deinterlacing everything will allow you to control the look better in AEFX and ensure you graphics are working perfectly with the footage.

1440×1080 is the pixels which a Sony HDV camera actually records, the frame size is 16×9, so you can safely de-interlace your footage and scale everything down to 864×486 for NTSC D1 wide screen square pixels. (Then scale to 720×486 NTSC in your render output settings)

A progressive master will look a lot better than weird HD field mush if you get it wrong.

You can even just separate fields in your interpret footage settings for the HDV. Half of 1080 is 540, so that is still plenty of res when your NTSC frame size is just 486 high. Just scale it down and maybe sharpen it a little.

Note:

You would only ever stay 1080i if you were delivering an interlaced HD master. And even then, the rendered image can be progressive, you just don’t want to mix interlaced footage with progressive GFX. It must me consistent.

[Guy Thompson]

The corner pin trick is a 2D fix to a 3D problem. If you have a camera in AE and want to get from the corner pin to the full screen you will need to do a dissolve. This is a common problem and is usually hidden by blending through the glass of the TV or a window or whatever you a moving into. Maybe up-rez and sharpen the corner-pinned clip so you have more resolution to blend into.

[Guy Thompson]

You have a few things to consider:

1. Do you need to combine motion graphics with interlaced video?
2. Does your final SD DVD need to be interlaced?
3. All of the fields you have in 1080i will not translate into SD.

A sports programe for example may need to be 50i to retain really smooth motion, but most other projects would ideally be de-interlaced for output to SD.

Combining animated motion graphics which are 25p with footage in FCP which is 50i will produce strobing on an interlaced CRT TV, but you will not see it on an LCD which is progressive. (Even if your source is interlaced)

To make an interlaced master, I would work in AE at 1920×1080 square pixels at 50fps. When you come to render your HD master, render at 25fps Upper field first. (Or at least matching the field order of the HDV)

Another alternative is using Magic Bullet (or similar tool) to de-interlace your HDV footage in AE, then you can create a fully progressive HD master. That would be my best choice. (Tip: de-interlace each shot, not an edited sequence for best quality results)

Then you can just use Compressor/DVd Studio Pro to down-res the MPEG2 for the SD-DVD.

If you project is longer than 5 minutes, I’d probably down-res the footage first and create my entire master at SD, if it’s never intended to be seen as HD, it could be a more time-consuming process for rendering. Then you know your SD master is perfect before putting to DVD.

This is by no means a perfect workflow, I’m interested to see what other people’s approaches.

[Guy Thompson]

An alternative method is booting your Macbook in Firewire Target Disk Mode. (older macbooks…) This is more for convenience, not performance.

Assuming you are working on your Macbook internal drive, this allows you to open the project on the Mac, as if it was on an external hard drive. Keep working on the Mac Pro, and then when you are done and want to go home, just eject the MacBook HD from the desktop, and all your files are still together, you don’t have to wait and copy everything back to your MacBook.

Ideally just store your Project/Footage on a fast (FW800/400) external HD, and plug it into which ever machine you are using, you will certainly notice a performance increase over 5400rpm internal laptop HD.

[Guy Thompson]

If you select “Third” res, instead of Full Res in your render settings, you will get a frame size of 640×360.

The render is taking forever because of the resize from 1080p to 592×332 has to be calculated for every frame.

Quarter res would give you 480×270 frame size. (Rendering every 4th pixel, rather than scaling the image)

You could get away with 200-250kbps/sec, depending on how action packed the animation is. Try compressing as hard/low as you can first, to get an acceptable movie which streams well online, then use those settings. Try this with a 10second clip rather than the whole thing.

Good old trial and error…