[Hey Chong]

Thank you to everyone for your replies. I took Kevin’s advice which worked very well. I also actually went through the Andrew Kramer tutorial and it is very good and comprehensive but for some reason I just kept getting stuck on positioning the light to look like it was coming from the side. It is probably just me. I do think the true 3d light looks better but again, Kevin’s instructions work just fine for what I am doing. Also, if I had Knoll Light Factory or equivalent I’m sure I could add the little details that give a 3d look. Anyway, thanks to everyone for your help.

[Hey Chong]

Hi,

Thanks for your response. The tutorial(aka “thingy”) that I mentioned does not cover actually sketching the motion path for a light. It picks up afterwards – going into setting the particle to follow it. It is very straightforward and the only part that I am having an issue with is getting motion sketch to work on my light layer. I just posted to see I there was a simple step that I was missing.

Thanks for your help!

[Hey Chong]

That expression works perfectly and saves so much time. Thank you everybody!

[Hey Chong]

Thank you!!!

[Hey Chong]

Thank you so much. That was actually exactly what I needed.

Is there a way to actually reverse the direction the object moves in? So, clockwise instead of counter clockwise?

[Hey Chong]

Very helpful – thank you!

[Hey Chong]

Thanks. I tried this (mpeg streamclip and prores) and got crazy noise and artifacts. It also didn’t seem to work on source footage that was not 720×480.

Do you know if field order is an issue with the noise? In Mpeg Streamclip you have to choose Upper or Lower and I read that you should convert it with no field order at all?

Also, does all source footage need to be 720×480 for Instant HD to work?

Also I should mention I’m using the trial version so maybe this is the reason for all the crazy noise? That would be a strange attribute of a trial version though.

[Hey Chong]

Got it. I finally got it to export as 16:9. If the final destination is for viewing on a large screen(as the trailer before all movies in a film festival) I should export as 16:9 as opposed to square pixel, correct?

This is my last question on the topic, thanks so much!

[Hey Chong]

Thanks for all of the advice. I have been exporting the clips at 720×480. I can now import them into FCP, though they look stretched, and then changing the item property to anamorphic and also the sequence setting to anamorphic. This changes it in the timeline so that takes away the stretched look. However, when I tried exporting it as a QT movie as a test the footage was still stretched and not 16:9.
Does anyone know what I’m doing wrong? I looked around this forum for an answer, which is how I figured out that I needed to change clip and sequence settings, but it didn’t work.

[Hey Chong]

Thank you for your response. I am using FCP 6.0.5. I see that both ProRes 422 and ProResHQ are both options in the settings. I tried both but same results. Could frame size be an issue? I wouldn’t think so if they were all the same size. I tried 720×480 which stretches the clips even when I check ‘preserve aspect ratio’.