Jason Diebler
Forum Replies Created
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Have you tried customizing your FCP sequence settings to adhere to your desired format?
You could also edit as normal in Final Cut with a 4:3 timeline and reformat your video in Quicktime through the Visual Settings afterwards. This is essentially just changing the order of operations of your steps, but may save you from rendering in FCP.
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Deconstruct your graph into its different elements (the graph & the 3 separate color lines = 4 elements), and layer these in your timeline.
You can keyframe with your crop tool to slowly reveal the different layers.
You could also use a long slow edge-wipe transition.
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You could crop and feather out the black, or you could apply a luma key and that will eliminate the black. Otherwise create your highlight in a program like Photoshop w/ transparent background and export out as a png, that will give you an alpha channel.
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Don’t use iTunes, pull the track directly from your CD. You shouldn’t use mp3 quality audio… it should be wav or aif.
If its not copyright-protected on iTunes, you can export as an *.aif.
There are all kinds of audio software tools that can help you capture that audio despite the protections on it… I like to scour versiontracker.com for cool new apps. Audio Hijack is a good one, you can capture your own system audio (if iTunes is playing), or internet audio, for instance.
I’m not trying to help people become pirates, but I was a student once, and know that certain songs certainly help a project… if its allowable by the Teach Act or for personal use, not a big deal.
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I have multiple ways you can do this.
You could make your text graphics in Photoshop (if you have that available) and export out as a png… that might be the easiest way to stylize your text.
You can use the “Mirror” Filter and apply it to the text, mirror on the y-axis.
You can manipulate the text with Distort (in your Motion tab) and add the “Flop” filter in combo to create a mirrored/reflective look. Basically make the negatives positive and the positives negative when you distort.
You can use Boris 3D (its one of your FCP text options) and change your y-skew.
I also like to “nest” my text as its own sequence, and then you can add all kinds of cool filters and effects to it in combo… a fun one is double-up your text layers on V1 and V2 tracks and add a “glow” or “light rays” filter to the V1 (background) layer. This makes it look like light is shining on your text from behind.
Don’t forget to use drop shadows (in your Motion tab), and stick with san serif fonts…
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You need to use the Limit Effect tools inside of the Color Corrector 3-Way Filter… its hidden – you have to twirl down the arrow (>). This will allow you to effect parameters on specific color ranges that you can choose with the eye-drop tool and chroma/luma sliders. I’ve used this tool quite a bit to create cool “Sin City” like looks.
If you google search “pleasantville effect” you’ll find a lot of tutorials on how the Limit Effect tool is used in certain instances…
I think Ken Stone might have some more information about this on his site.
You could also key out the color of the sky and replace the background with another layer behind it.
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The particle emitters would work well for blood splatter. It depends on how real you want to make it look, but you could easily fabricate something with the shape tools and particle emitter. There’s also some media in the library that could probably be “colorized” to be blood-red!
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“Motion works best if you break your projects into pieces. I would leave the editing to FCP and the Motion Graphics to Motion.”
I agree with Stephen – Motion should not be used for long-format projects. It’s real time rendering is great, but it can’t keep 30 min movies in cache.
To speed up your project, flatten or “bake” your movie comps, especially backgrounds and things that won’t change too often as you tweak your project. Staying organized in the grouping of layers helps immensely, ’cause you can bake those groups down separately and re-import them back into your project. And yes, FCP and Motion are meant to work hand-in-hand. A 30 minute project should be edited in Final Cut, with gfx/fx added in Motion.
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It can be done very simply with a 4 to 6 frame additive dissolve for that flash frame look, but I agree, the “bloom” filter would work well for that and so might a “glow” effect.
Also play around with your compositing options. Compositing two layers (of the same image) together – one on top of the other – with a screen, multiply, overlay or something like that can give you interesting results.