[John Cuevas]

Not sure how maya works, can you key or use matte channels in it? If you can, you could use a white solid with the mask applied to that, render it out and use either an alpha channel or luma key to pull it off.

Perhaps someone with more maya/AE experience will be able to help you.

Good Luck and Good Editing
johnny cuevas

[John Cuevas]

Just thought of something that might help you and your new venture out. First join the Chamber of Commerce. Company I’m with has been around 17 years, recently joined the Chamber and the contacts and new work/clients it’s generated have us thinking of adding 2 more people to the team.

Also, coincendentally we moved to a new building after joining. After we were settled, we threw a party/walk-through for clients, old and new. In the invitation we put bring a business associate that you think might like to meet us. Responce was incredible, reconnected with some of our clients, made new ones and our regulars were happy to get free booze. We had our new demo running in every room. Let people play with some of the equipment, gave tours of the facility.

Good luck to you and your associates, hope you succeed.
Johnny

[John Cuevas]

Hard for me to answer your question, exactly, as the rates will vary from area to area.

Here in the midwest, city of 650K, 350 and hour per Avid edit. 150 for graphics. So if you were just compositing for 7 hours and 1 hour of edit. 1050, plus music and VO. That wouldn’t be the least I have put a spot on the air, but it would be close.

Since you guys are new still, building good relationships and being known as the guys who can get it done, are probably more valuable at this time.

[John Cuevas]

Look at it as a lesson and hopefully they won’t tell other potential clients how little they charged, just where they got such a great looking spot. Worst case, you have gotten a long term client, great high profile stuff for the companies reel and some good word of mouth.

Good luck, welcome to the wonderful world of video production, as you take the inevitbable lumps, just remember why and try to learn from em.

Johnny

[John Cuevas]

Just my opinion, but the reason you are doing all there ads in the future is you did really great work below what they should be paying, just guessing.

Really it’s a matter of time, if you spent a day doing the ad, then you undersold yourself. Besides the labour, your overhead needs to be included, electric, cost of equipment. City the same of Phoenix, I would guess the going rate should be around 500 an hour.

Good luck and welcome to the biz.
Johnny

[John Cuevas]

If your editor has the sapphire plug in, you could try the shake effect, but that won’t neccesarilly match up to the music.

If you have AfterEffects available, I would suggest buying Trapcodes SoundKeys, 99 dollars. Import your video and audio track into AE and throw both into a timeline. Create a solid, apply soundkeys and anaylize the part of the audio layer you want to shake. Soundkeys will create keyframes based on the music, level….

Now you can just need to pickwhip to the scale properties and add a multiplier. Expression are really not my bag, so if you go this route, go the AfterEffects forum and talk to Dan Eberts, man knows all about expressions.

A third option would be to bring it into after effects. Set scale and position keyframes on the head and tail of the clip. Then apply the wiggler and turn on motion blur. If you can figure out the beats per second of your music, it should match up pretty well.

Good luck and good editing
Johnny Cuevas

[John Cuevas]

His way is one solution, when importing you need to click the first frame, then click the options button. In the lower left corner is “Autodetect Sequential Files” When you check that it will bring the targa into your bin as a sequence, if you use this method make sure you reverse your alpha upon importation.

Personally when I create title in After Effects, I use the quicktime for exporting. When you do this, in “lossless”, in the “video output settings”, just change your “channels” from RGB to RGB + Alpha. This way you are only dealing with one file rather then 200 to 300 for Targa or Pict sequences. Again, you will have to reverse your alpha when you import.

Even better, if you can find the Avid Quicktime codec at the avid site, you won’t even have to reverse your alpha, plus when you import it goes about 4 times quicker since the Avid will not have to convert the quictime to the avid codec. Rendering in AE takes the same time.

Good Luck and Good Editing
Johnny Cuevas

[John Cuevas]

Did you precomp the text? It won’t work if you forget that step. I have worked those examples before and they worked okay. If you have trouble I could work one up quick for you.

Johnny Cuevas

[John Cuevas]

https://www.creativecow.net/show.php?forumid=1&page=/articles/unguren_ben/shatter/index.html

That’s everything you wanted to know about shatter but were afraid to ask.

[John Cuevas]

Check out law school. 😀