[James St clair]

Hi, thanks for the response, I’ve done exactly that: outputted a self contained quicktime movie, basic DV NTSC format, imported that clip, put it into a sequence, tried to output that in compressor as H.264, and it is still giving me the Quicktime error: -120 message.

Did something go south in my compressor program?

thanks for any input. I’m really needing this H.264 setting to work in compressor.

JSC

[James St clair]

@Rafael
wow you were right. I just now learned how to operate the whole frame control thing in compressor, I chose the “Better Motion compensated” option for frame rate conversion (ntsc to pal) – had to wait for it, but was the wait ever worth it. That’s the best PAL conversion I’ve ever seen in my own work, I had the software all along, just didn’t know how to use it.

Thanks for the tip, that’s really going to help.

ciao
James

[James St clair]

I live 6 mos in Germany, 6 mos in the US, and my camera is from the US, it’s a Canon GL2, which shoots as far as I know NTSC DV 720×480. Frame rate for that – as far as I know – is 29.97 fps. The camera uses a miniDV tape, which footage goes into FCP, and I edit it in NTSC. Then if I’m here in Germany it needs to be PAL if I’m making both a DVD and flash video, which this project I am. So what I did was

1. export the edited clip out of FC usually using the QT conversion, and specify H.264, 720 x 576, I specified 25 fps, but it ended up 24.98 fps.
with audio as Linear PCM, 16 bit 44100 Hz

2. import it into CS4 media encoder where I exported it in F4V format (Flash 9 or higher), which has only AAC 44.1 as an audio option. at .190 mb/s variable data rate, with spike of 2mb/s. In an effort at impriving the quality I also tried at .250 mb/s variable data rate.

In the past it worked fine. Rafael above said to never use FC for a conversion, and recommended MPEGStreamclip, which I have, and that gives a lot of options like frame dom. which compressor doesn’t give for a preset. But there are a LOT of options in Streamclip which I don’t know anything about.

Basically, what I need is the footage shot and edited in NTSC in FC from the Canon GL2 to be converted to a PAL mv2 clip which I can put into Studio Pro and make into a PAL VTS video file I can burn DVDs from. Or pass onto the client to do same.

Secondly, I also have to get it into an F4V (Flash video) file. Of course the Flash video could stay in NTSC which will take care of the jumpy video, but I cannot get the sound to come out OK. So really that’s a separate problem.

I can take a look at frame dominenz for the video part. I should say also that I did run the original NTSC Quicktime movie from FC through compressor’s output setting of DV PAL, which is DV/DVCAM PAL, 48kz. I did not see or use any frame dominenz settings. It also came out jumpy.

In the area of specifications of video and changing format, I can see it’s a world in itself with a depth of knowledge I simply don’t have.

So, field dominanz, I’ll try specifying upper first for PAL. To be honest I don’t know what changing to 24 p as opposed to 25p (PAL standard fps (?) would do, but I can try it.
thanks!! Maybe I should just go into debt and buy a PAL camera.
James

[James St clair]

I tried the PAL conversion in compressor, still got the shaky footage. I have since tried several conversion methods in MPEGStreamclip, and it is definitely better, when the option for “frame blending” is checked. It appears what this is doing, basically is blurring the frames that are jumping, so it resembles minute 3-5 frame cross dissolves. However it does take the jumpiness out of the footage, so at this moment I’ll go with it in spite of the slight blurring occuring, it’s still a vast improvement.

Thanks for the tip.
James

[James St clair]

By the way,
I’ve been using forums for open source and retail software since 2004, but Creative Cow’s forum is the highest quality forum I’ve ever seen. Amazing resources from some impressively qualified people. The project I’ve been working on for 6 wks is finished thanks to the help here on After Effects, it’s a music video of a cover of All Along the Watchtower. Does Creative Cow sponsor any events where that could be shown?
James

[James St clair]

[James St Clair] “Question: How can I get the best quality export NTSC DV from FCP which will be editable if needed, and have 44.Kz audio?”
Change your sequence audio from 48 to 44.1

Oddly, I never opened that panel before, the sequence settings, I just set things up in audio/video settings before starting, and then figured that was permanent for the project after that. If I can change the audio in sequence settings afterwards, then that was what was needed.

In answer to your other question why I need a 720×480 flash movie, I don’t, however I like to output a complete QT movie which I can then compress to whatever I need for web in media encoder. It just helps to have one complete QT movie with the correct audio settings to do that. The requirements of AAC for a 44.1 audio track were creating problems.

thanks,
James

[James St clair]

“Your comp should match your best deliverable — not necessarily your original source files. If you’re delivering to standard definition NTSC, you can use a standard definition NTSC comp. If you’re delivering to HD and SD, work in an HD comp.”

No need for screenshots. That’s hilarious, I knew I was missing something. Someone in the beginning showed me how to import the PSD files into After Effects directly as a composition, so that’s how I was doing it. Import -> File, option “As Composition.” So the composition size was the size of the PSD file, a couple were over 6,000 px wide. Every time I moved the timeline I had to wait ten seconds for the preview to update, and I’m using a Macbk Pro 2.53 Ghz machine w plenty of RAM. Cropping accurately was a problem, and I had to wait 2 hours for a 20 second clip to render. I was thinking, my god I have to get a new computer now, this one is too slow. Lol.

I tried doing what you suggested, and that solved everything. I didn’t realize the 720×480 frame in the NTSC preset was also the preview window and I could simply import the PSD files as a group and dump them into the composition. As you can see, I just started with AE last month. The 23 sec. clip I just did that way rendered in 4 minutes. Thanks for answering all my questions.

thanks
James

[James St clair]

@Dave, @Walter
thanks for the replies, I think I must be missing something basic. The reason the files are so large is because I have a 720×480 video clip sitting in a landscape which is about 15 times bigger than the clip. I pan and zoom into the clip from “far away” across a large landscape.

So if I have a comp preset that’s 720×480 how am I going to get that video clip to be sitting in the huge landscape it needs so I can pan for a while and arrive finally at the video clip filling the screen?
thanks
James

[James St clair]

@Dave and @Jeremy
these were fantastic tutorials, they answered exactly the question of how to control the camera.
Just one little question more, to put icing on the cake, is there a video tutorial which includes how to easily add easing to the camera controls? That’s the only thing needed now to make it really first class.
thanks
JSC

[James St clair]

“In order to get the perspective changes that you get from moving a 3D camera around the still made in Photoshop, you need to prepare your Photoshop document as various planes: foreground, middle foreground, middle, middle background, background, etc. You then make these various planes into 3D layers, positioning them in Z-space and scaling as necessary to create a convincing image.”

That’s exactly how I’ve done it.
thanks
JSC