Jonathan Shohet
Forum Replies Created
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hi Vince,
thanks for the response.yes premiere did tell me what filters are missing at startup. without that I would have never even noticed anything was missing.
Obviously premiere knows exactly where the missing filters are, since that information is saved somewhere in the project file. I was hoping there was some way to get that information.
I ended up going manually over every clip in the timeline for every sequence. I found every instance of the filters save one, for which I had to open the project file in notepad to finally pin point a short clip that was completely “covered” by a cross dissolve and would not reveal itself in the effects panel until I trimmed the dissolve.
I can’t remember the name of it – there’s some recommended XML utility that you can open project files with and it’s easier to make sense of them than in notepad.
If someone else has any more ideas – for future reference, I would love to know.
Anyway, many thanks again vince
Jon
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Hi vince,
Been thinking about getting a dock like this but a bit worried about long term safety of keeping bare drives without enclosures.
How do you store the bare drives when they are not in the dock?
thanks and sorry for the slight thread hijack 😉
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Premiere 6.5 was the last version to include the stop motion feature if I remember correctly.
If you have access to a windows system, there is a very good free software called “Helium Frog Animator”.
For the Mac, I konw of two free options –
https://web.mac.com/philipp.brendel/Software/FrameByFrame.html
and “SingleFramer” –
https://www.zachpoff.com/site/software/software.html
but I’ve never actually used them, so I don’t know if they are stable or suit your needs.
“FrameThief” used to be a mac favorite, but I think it’s not been developed for a long time, and it’s not free.
If you can’t find a solution I suggest you take a look a the stopmotionanimation.com forum for help.good luck 🙂
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Just for the record, MP4 is not a codec, it’s a container – like AVI and MOV – that is often used for H.264 video and AAC audio streams.
MPEGStreamclip does indeed provide AAC audio, as do lots of other free and commercial encoding apps. Other popular freeware encoders that can do MP4 with H.264 and AAC are “SUPER” and “MediaCoder”.
In fact, AE can also do this – if you choose the H.264 format in the Output Module you have the option for MP4 with H.264 with AAC using the Mainconcept codec. I can’t say how the quality compares to other encoders because I’ve never used it, but it seems it can’t do 2-pass encoding, which is usually used in high quality encodings.
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In the Title Properties tab, under “Properties” -> “Graphic Type” choose “Filled Bezier” from the pop-down menu. Your shape will be filled.
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[Brendan Coots] “All told, you can spend $200-$400 to have a perfectly suitable system for uncompressed. If this is too expensive for one’s budget, I would question how said artist can even afford the software, After Effects being a solid $1,000 on its own.”
Charming.
Just for the record, I’m currently editing and compositing a project with about 8 hours of hdv footage. At roughly 4-6 gb (depending on content) for 1 minute of uncompressed QT Animation, that’s well over 2 tb, just for source footage, without taking into acount backups, renders, intermediate renders, archiving previous projects and so on. That’s definately more than 200-400$, even without “fancy” hardware raid card/enclosures.
Just for example, a 4 bay, 4 tb “burley” port-multiplied enclosure costs a little over 1000$, and that’s by no means a high-end, fancy solution.In any case, I never said, at any point, that I find 400$ (or 4000$, for that matter) unaffordable. All I said is that I’ve found working with hdv in AE an acceptable compromise, and that I have a limited budget and more urgent expenses.
I do low-budget work, true, but I still work with paying clients. Just because I have to think longer and harder about my expenses, and make compromises that someone with a bigger budget doesn’t, does not mean I will put up with anything (like gardening my yard with a teaspoon…).
As I clearly stated before, I compared rendering times between hdv mpegs and uncompressed/lossless formats. I also worked a few test projects to check for stability issues.
I do not have the results with me any longer to post, but have no objection to re-do the tests when I have some free time if you are interested.I have been working for over a year with hdv footage in AE, and as I said, it is far from perfect, but it has not cost me any deadlines or clients. This is why I still insist that working with hdv can be an acceptable solution, depending on your budget and needs. Even if that’s not the industry standard.
I realise that what one would find “acceptable” is relative, and that people with different budgets have different priorities and needs. I am not insulted by that in any way.
If you think that my priorities are off, and insist that it is wrong to use hdv even for low-budget work, fine. I am not insulted by that either.But to go as far as to suggest that anything I have said in this thread is a pile of politically correct standardless anything goes, that compromises the professional integrity of this site?
To label me a “hobbyist” because I have less money and experience than you, just to prove a point?I’m sorry you see it this way.
I hope at least the OP has found the expert advice he was looking for in this thread.
Happy new year to all.
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Ron,
I know you are one of the masterminds behind this amazing site, and for that I am extremely grateful and respectful.
But I have to say, I am genuinely offended by your post.Whether or not this site is “for professionals”, the OP has clearly stated he is asking a newb question, and there’s a world of difference between informing him about the pro’s and con’s of a format and just stating flat out that After Effects wil NOT play nice with HDV, and that he HAS to convert to uncompressed.
All I was pointing out was that it can be done, and it’s an acceptable compromise, depending on yours needs and budget. I can’t for the life of me imagine why this simple point is causing so much antagonism. It’s as if the very notion of working with HDV in a AE is a taboo, and just suggesting it is unacceptable.
Yes, hard drives are quite cheap, but capture cards, hardware raids cards and enclosures are not; uncompressed HD file sizes are HUGE, and the costs CAN add up.
An uncompressed workflow does not automatically suit everyone’s needs, regardless whether it’s “how the pro’s do it” or not. What’s wrong with pointing that out, in response to a “newb” question?
I never argued against working uncompressed, and I was very clear and careful in stating that what I am saying is from my own personal, low-budget-work perspective, which I still think IS relevant to this thread.I do not do broadcast/commercial work. I am an artist, and my paid freelance work is mostly (by choice) with/for other artists, and therefore usually at a limited budget. Maybe the considerations I make due to the low budgets I am used to working with means I am not a professional by your standards, no problem with that. But I still take great pride in my work, I often have very tight deadlines to meet and tough clients to please, and I certainly do not appreciate the “hobbyist” remarks. Sorry, but I find them condescending, even if they are coming from the co-founder of creative-cow. I am sure you had no intention to offend, but still…
Sincerely,
Jon. -
[Brendan Coots] “I’m not trying to argue with you, but this is a debate worth having.”
Same feelings here 🙂
(And although we “hijacked” this thread a bit, I also feel this is debate is relevant to the OP’s question about the importance of a capture card…)From my posts it’s probably easy to gather that I am a low-budget all-in-one director/photographer/editor/compositor. I guess you are right that if you only work in AE and do not edit as well, uncompressed has less of an overall impact on your system needs.
STILL… for uncompressed you need LOTS of disk space. Even the link you gave mentions that. If you are working on a few minutes in AE, maybe it does make sense to go uncompressed. But what if you are working on a complex project that uses lots of HDV footage?
AND… what AE loads into RAM, it needs to read from disk first. Uncompressed requires more bandwith, therefore disk speed will still have an impact on AE performance. If you do not have the correct hardware, you may just end up moving the bottle neck from the processor to the hard drive.
Yes, I did compare performance in AE between HDV and lossless/uncompressed, with every free codec I could possibly find. As far as I can tell from my own tests, PhotoJpeg at 75% was the best compromise between file size and near lossless quality, and it did not improve AE performance in a noticable way over using HDV.
QT Animation, HuffYUV and Lagarith actually took more time to process than HDV. I am pretty sure that if I had a fast raid-array, and/or a fast codec like Cineform, performance could have been much better.I’m not saying my tests were scientific or conclusive. All I am saying is, as long as you realize that working with HDV shot footage is a compromise in any case, After Effects CAN “play nicely” with it. Please don’t tell people it CAN’T.
In any case, using reduced-resolution proxies whenever you can, is the best solution for decent performance while working, regardless if your final render will be from HDV or Uncompressed.
with respect,
Jon. -
Hi Brendan.
(First of all I’d like to mention, everything I say regards working on windows. I have no experience with HDV on the mac, and of any issues on that platform).
You don’t have to convince me that working with HDV mpegs is a compromise. All I am saying, is that it CAN be done, and dogmatically saying it CAN’T is misleading.
The link you gave is really outdated. With a decent new core2duo/quadro processor and enough RAM, AE CS3 performance with m2t in my experience is stable and good enough for most situations, and I have so far done some very complex projects.
Would performance have been better had I worked with uncompressed? I’m sure it would. But for the moment, working with HDV is good enough, and I have more urgent needs than getting a capture card/more hard drives/raid controller.
Of course working with such a highly compressed inter-frame codec is a compromise, but so is working with uncompressed (in terms of hardware cost and/or re-encoding time). It’s up to everyone to work out which workflow works better for their needs/budget.I am unaware of any FREE lossless codecs that will not require raid to run smoothly. Prores is not available without Apple/FCP, people say Cineform is great but it is very costly. Maybe PhotoJpeg 75? that’s still lossy though. If you can suggest a viable alternative, I’d be thankfull.
I know that re-encoding a highly-compressed-shooting-only inter-frame coded (HDV) to a compressed-shooting-only intra-frame codec (DVCPro HD) is NOT something I would do.cheers.