[Joe Moya]

Well thanks for clearing that up… I probably didn’t post this concept very well…But…

When I think of the term “lossless”, I think in terms of visual lossless as the definative benchmark… while data may not be lost… imho, lossless is defined by visual appearance not data.

Visual loss is what counts and most “lossless” formats (including the ones you mentioned) will work just fine for most instances… but, I am not going to assume this since I don’t know what the final output requirements are for the client nor what their computing capacity may be.

On the otherhand, when you reference storage compression… then, yea…as you mentioned… they can be uncompressed into the exact format they originated… but, in video this uncompression is frequently accompanied by some visual loss… and, it is not because of the original compression format looses the data but rather because of the camera, NLE or application/hardware limitations in thier ability to uncompress the data at a rate that the hardware/software can facilitate.

If anyone wants to have uncompressed format… then, that requires uncompressed format. And… to work in uncompressed format, you a bad “mamma jamma” of a computer to meet the data rate requirments.

[Joe Moya]

If we are assuming the client wants RAW also means they want uncompressed video… then, you are restricted to uncompressed video. If that is the case, then your problem is the media to which to copy this uncompressed needs a LOT of storage capacity. If so, then copy the uncompressed footage to a hard drive and give the client the video that way… DVD (in most cases) will not have enought storage space. Another option could be to use tape as a storage media,… but then you are assuming the client has a way to copy the tape to a digital storage system.

Also, I do believe Cineform has a way of exchanging Cineform compressed video into uncompressed so clients can view the compressed cineform format without having to uncompress the original footage… but, still… you will need a lot of storage capacity to uncompress the original video. And, if I read your post correctly they want RAW/uncompressed footage.

Bascically, you can’t fit a round peg into a sqaure hole… you can’t give a compressed HD format and meet the criteria of the client wanting uncompressed HD format. That being said… there are compression options that will be… what they call “lossless”… but, the reality is this… compression looses quality – period. Exactly how much is considered an acceptable “loss” of quality depends upon what the final output needs.

What is the “best” compressed formats? … Well,… that is a question that only trial an error through the massive number of options available will determine. Video compression is more of an art and is never consistant in it’s outcome. However, in your case… it appears the clients wants to have all their options open as how to compress the original footage… and, the only way to achieve this is to give them uncompressed video.

BTW… I just re-read your post… why not just capture using something other than Cineform… and, give that HD capture to them. That is about as RAW as it gets.

[Joe Moya]

If you mean the color…The easy way is to use Magic Bullet Movie Looks… Curahee (?) or Bleach Bypass or No 85 color filters (if my memory is correct)… or you can mess with the hue/saturation, grain and curves filters to achieve the effect.

If you mean the camera shake… then, you take the original footage using a hand held camera… or, you can add it by using ProDAD’s Mercalli’s Shake effect/filter… or, try and use Twitch with Andrew Kramer’s plug-ins. the sample looks like it was shot by a handheld camera.

[Joe Moya]

In general… you want to work in small edits… specially if are going to use a compositing application such as AE.

In fact, I think you will find it more advantages to work in groups of edits that make logical sense to the project.

At first it may make more sense to edit in larger groups (or all at once)… but, that is not the best approach.

Hundreds of clips – ORGANIZED … will most likely result in less headaches than larger and fewer clips.

Organization is simple to achieve compared to trying to deal with software conflicts and application failures. It is easier to locate and fix problems if the edits are small… not to mention, reduce the chance of application and hardware failures in the first place.

I am not a fan of the linking between AE and PPro… it tends to be very unstable for my projects… which happens to involve a combination of 3D graphics and HD source material (plus, if you are using Cineform as an intermediated render step you only added one more application that can cause unexpected problems).

Frankly… in my opinion, there are much more stable editing softwares available than PPro… specially with regard to AVCHD and MTV file formats. If it was me, I would use AE for your green screening needs and use another NLE as your primary editing software. But… then again… if PPro is all you have, then it will work… but, expect some unexpected issues to creap into your project. It is when those kind of “hair pulling” problems come into play that you realize that short edits are a god send. Rendering completed projects in AE then transfering them in a completed format to your NLE is likely to result in fewer problems than trying to link. Linking is a cool concept that in real world application can cause lots of mental anquish if things go bad.

Overall, your work flow isn’t bad a plan… but, you should reconsider the linking idea… as well as, the size of each edit. I think this is specially true since you don’t have enough experience working with either program. Good Luck….

BTW, let me put small edits into perspective… I just now am completing a project that is about 7 mins. long… there are over 242 pre-renders and about 62 diff. comps in AE with about 60 plus hrs of final render time (not including the pre-render time)… in my editing program (AVID)… there is a pre-editing of 2 hrs. of HD footage narrowed down to about 36 mins. which was then reduced to the 7 plus min. project containing 14 tracks and 6 containers of sub-tracts color corrected and timed to audio (which is a whole ‘nuther story in and of itself).

Even by my own admission this is more than normal… but, it is an example of how I do projects to prevent problems and when problems occur (which they will), you can more easily fine them… and… in this projects there were about a half dozen problems that I never really undestood why they occured, but I was able to find the source and location of the problems and eventually solve the problems. Without short edits, that would have been almost impossible to do… and, yes… it took A LOT of planning to cut the render times down and (believe it or not) reduce the number of short edits to a managable size for organizational purposes.

Editing is a lot like wrestingly a gorilla… your not through till the gorilla is through. It’s best to take the gorilla on in small doses.

[Joe Moya]

Since this is your first time using AE and PP… I think you are going to make one very fundamental mistake that will really mess with your mind and potentially cause a whooole bunch of grief…

That mistake is using the left and right arrow keys instead of Page Up and Page Down key in AE to move from frame to frame. In AE the arrow keys will move the layer and NOT the keyframe.

A simple concept (too simple in fact) that can really mess with your mind when using a compositing software and an editing software…. specially if you are constantly switching between the two.

[Joe Moya]

Zaxwerks can’t use multiprocessors… it only renders utilizing one processor core no matter how many you have available…

…add to the fact that you have multiple light setups plus shadows…

… and… viola’… glacial render times… no matter how “simple” of a 3D object you have in the comp.

[Joe Moya]

A couple of things…

First, what exactly are you going to edit or composite (or both)… and by that I mean, who is your intended customer?

If you plan on working with large format cinema (or, maybe in simplistic way… are you going to be working with Hollywood studios and/or independent movie studios)… then…

… I would recommend AVID… it tends to be the most common editing NLE that is best suited for complex and movie studio like projects. It is stable when working with HD or higher (2k+) media source (can’t say the same for Adobe Prem Pro). Also, since it is a commonly used NLE by studios, you will most likely find many students who have experience with AVID… in more recent time, same can be said for Adobe and FCP.

Knowing your source material you are going to create or take from you clients is very good information to know when developing a studio. Also, know your final output requirements is equally import. For example, are you going to do more local productions for TV or Weddings, etc.?If so, then Adobe should work fine… but, so would Vega or Edias for that matter.

A good editing software that has come a long way is Final Cut Pro and seems to straddle the capabilites of AVID and all other NLE’s in many ways.

IF you plan on doing primarilly compositing work… then, After Effects and CS4 productions suite will work nicely (…can’t put Prem Pro in that category of recommended because it tends to be problematic with certain common-ish HD file formats). A good second choice that is similar to AE (i.e., layer/time line based) is Combustion… more choices…but expensive… would be Fusion and/or Nuke which are Node based and popular among Hollywood studios.

Also, what is the final format requirements… DVD?… Film?… Internet?… etc.? Adobe is pretty flexible in most final format capabilities… but, you will find FCP Vega Edius have good capacities as well.

All that being said, for the money and in terms of stability… I have yet to see anything come close to the lesser known Avid Liquid capabilities. Unfortunately, it is an End Of Line software and is expected to be replaced by AVID… of course, they promised that would happen by the end of 09… as you can tell, that hasn’t happened.

If there is one thing I find very annoying with AE is that it is VERY RAM intensive… which (as of CS4) is very restrictive when dealing with HD video source. So… from a hardware and OS standpoint, go ahead and build a 64bit system using Windows (…assuming you plan on using Windows instead of Mac).

Now… you mentioned cutting edge… to be cutting edge you are going to need to specialize your style. To do that successfully, you probably want to find specialized software that can do things that most productions companies can not do… and, there is a reason. It typically takes very specialized software that is typically very expensive (2×6 times the cost of Adobe Production Premium)… so, you might consider how these specialized software fits into your idea of “cutting edge production”.

Finally, there is one BIG issue you should consider… CS5 will be 64 bity only…. which means… NO third-party 32bit plug-in will work with CS5. So… a lot depends upon how the third party plug-ins treat the new 64bit requirement for CS5. They may charge… it may be free…it may be discounted… don’t know. So… if you do buy CS4… you need to find out what the policy will be for third party plug-ins that are not 64 bit compatible (…and, I know of no third pary plug-in that is currently 32 bit compatible). Buying CS4 now and purchasing numberous third-party plug-ins today could be an expensive mistake if the third-party plug-in doesn’t accomodate (without cost) a 64 bit version that works with CS5.
On the flip side, 64 bit system might actually make AE more stable and capable of handling complex and longer compositing projects.

[Joe Moya]

Excellent tips… I wish Zaxwerks would place these sort of HD rendering tips (and, any other tips and/or suggestions) somewhere on their site in a centralized place or pin it to this forum.

Well… slow rendering is all relative…48 secs. per frame may be fast but whe you thousands of frames to render… well, you get my drift.

I am on my second pass of rendering for some blur and fading… and, the new render time has dramatically jump to 2+ mins. per frame… thank goodness this blur and fade needs to be done for only 8 secs. of video (240+ frames).

There at two things I hope the next version of Zaxwerks will include…

1) … multi-processor rendering (i.e., multi-thread).
2) … make it work better (and easier) with non-square pixels… 1.33 or any other non-square shaped pixel sizes seems to cause problems when trying to use AE cameras. The kind of problems has to do with placement of camera’s relative to where the 3D object is placed in Zaxwerks PA. Frequently, they go off the view in Zaxwerks and using Off-Line only helps but doesn’t really solve the WYSIWYG issue in non-square pixels relative to AE camera positions. This can be especially true when trying to use a camera rig in AE.

[Joe Moya]

Thanks for the insight…

I am using 16 letters with 16 different MOV files as materials… all HD video source.

I think it comes down to what seems be that HD (1440×1080) and 3D are tough combos. Plus, it appears that ProAnimator doesn’t take advantage of multiprocessors… or… AE’s RAM dependent software is doing something to prevent multiprocessors from being used. Either way… the only solution I have found is to render in uncompressed file format and wait for what appears to be a 50+ hrs. of total render time for a 1 min. 20 sec. video. NO compressed format combination was found that would work… AE crapped out on a 32bit 3G limited capacity system.

Unfortnately, the quality of the videos being used as textures/materials are HD source and because they are very large letters taking up to at least half the video screen… the video must be of equal quality as the letters themselves. There is no cheating on the quality of the video material.

That being said, I tweaked the render time down from an original length of about 55 hrs. to about 50 hrs. by making every frame count in terms of it’s use and discarding the need for any wasted computations by frames off screen. To put this into perspective, 10 frames of unneeded background or text removed saves about 50 mins. (give or take) of render time.

As for diffusion, the amount is 4 (the default) and when I get to the last portion I have yet to begin to render, I will move that down to 0 to see if there is a significant difference.

FYI, this system I use is not a wimpy system… just short of using the advantage of executable RAM in a 64 bit system… I don’t see how I can speed up the project without degrading the quality of the video… and, even then… trying every compression codecs I had didn’t work even if I was willing to give up on quality.

Finally, I still have one more layer to add… and that will be using Zackwerks Serpentine… is there any suggestions that might help to keep the render times down with this plug-in? At this point, I simply am going to use the plug-in to create a simple tube shaped 3d object and animate it like a fuse burning.

Thanks for your help and suggestions…

[Joe Moya]

Here is one way to do it using a 3rd party plug-in:

https://www.digieffects.com/support/tutorial/camera_mapper

There are a few other ways of doing this… do a search and you can find references to other tutorials.