Joseph W. bourke
Forum Replies Created
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Absolutely right, Jeff. When you look at what passes for standards these days, it’s pretty pitiful. I see national spots airing in which the buzz from illegal whites is enough to drive you crazy!
The trick to making colors accurate is convincing the client that there is really no way to get PMS colors accurate on a TV screen, and that they have to approve by eyeballing it. And also to make the client responsible for any color space conversion (CMYK to RGB) which has to happen as part of the process. Past that, it’s plug and pray!
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Sorry Sean –
I didn’t realize you were in charge of this forum. I use XMP personally, in the Adobe CS, and it makes my life a lot easier in terms of tracking massive numbers of assets. I jumped in to put my own personal point on the pencil when Bill Davis diverted slightly from the main thread. Sorry to offend you, sir.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Hi Heather –
In my broadcast station days, we called this an “animated snipe”. It’s really an offshoot of the “bug”, which, before these things got animated, was just the station, or show, logo in the lower third area, usually on the right, so as not to conflict with network graphics or other graphical elements. I’m sure you’ll find as many different names as there are stations. Many of the terms come from the printing industry, from looong before there was television, bug and snipe in particular.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
You want scary? In 2009, I was Art Director at a broadcast station in NH, having been there for fourteen years. One morning the “human resources” person walked into my office, the Production Manager’s office, and several other key people’s offices, and laid us all off. Nothing personal – the bean counters (the owners had 28 broadcast properties) felt they needed to save some money. From a staff in the Production/Promotion department of seven or eight, and some freelancers now and then, they now have a staff of two, and those two are expected to do the same workload, AND manage all of the projects as well.
Scary, yes! But it was the best thing that could have happened to me. Two years later, I own my own company, doing exactly the same job (plus a lot more)that I was doing in broadcast, but I name my hours (way too long most of the time, but that’s fine – I own the biz), take in everything I bill, and I have more of a say in what gets done and how it gets done. The only thing different, is that none of my work goes to broadcast – it all goes to the web, or DVD, or smart devices (iPhones, iPads, Blackberrys). Don’t be scared – it’s only the distribution system that’s changing. The broadcast model is dead – they just haven’t figured out how to kick dirt over it yet.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Pond 5 has some really nice looking HD fire (of all types) for from 12 dollars to 30 or more. Cheap! Their footage quality is very good.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
You may have tried this already, so I apologise if it’s too obvious. Right-Click the Comp tab you’re working in, and set the length to about 1:15 (longer than your longest clip). Then look at the view scrollbar (or the little “mountain” icons on the bottom of the screen). Drag or click these until the full view of your comp is back. Hopefully you didn’t delete any of the pieces. You really have to go out of your way to lose or cut off something in AE, since it’s not like an NLE in respect to chopping stuff where you don’t want to. Good luck!
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Gerry –
Also bear in mind that it’s going to look different everywhere it gets played back as well, unless of course you’re on an inspect monitor in a control room at a TV station.
When I was in broadcast, I would have commercial clients tell me all the time – “our logo has to match the colors in our print ads”. And then they would proceed to send me a CMYK copy of the logo which had to be converted to RGB – can you say “color shift”? This is just to help you understand that once you spend all the time and care making sure the colors are accurate, every stinking computer it will get played back on will have a different setup, or no setup. Or the playback software will have its’ own idea of what it should look like (Quicktime, for example).
We used to joke at the station, that “once it’s been strained through a sock into a tin can”, no one will no what color it was. That’s the nature of the distribution world. You get it as close as you can, and hope someone on the other end cares.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Alex –
You don’t say what it will render from for 8 hours. Will playback be from a laptop or from a DVD player, or otherwise? This is very important to your decision of output format.
I regularly output graphic loops for use on a News set monitor. We chose (of course), the cheap, reliable way: the cheapest possible DVD player purchased at the cheapest local store. You don’t need any advanced features to make a loop play back. When you encode the DVD, there’s a choice to make it replay. Our tactic was to put multiple copies of the loop on the timeline, so that our looping covered an entire half hour Newscast, so there was no chance of it resetting (a slight pause, or frame of black) during the Newscast. You might want to pick a random time which would allow the most viewers to see the full production several times, then chance the slight “hiccup” in the playback.
For DVD you need a 720 x 480 file. Weigh where your viewers will be against the quality you are seeing with your nose right up against the monitor. You will most often find that the viewer will be at a distance of from 2 to 6 feet at a convention/tradeshow, so don’t worry too much if it doesn’t look great close on.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Yeah, Kevin –
Any “real” 3D package has a big learning curve associated with it. That’s just the nature of the beast. I’ve been working with Max for over 8 years, and I’d say I probably know maybe 20 percent of its’ features.
Finding another way to do what you’re trying to accomplis is always a good thing. There’s never any one right way to accomplish a visual concept, and coming up with new ones expands our creativity. Good luck!
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Brian is right – I’ve been thinking about a workaround which might use angled rectangles to cut the curve of the corners, but it would be more work than it’s worth.
If you can sit tight for a bit, Video Copilot is just about to release Element 3D, an affordable plugin which looks as if it will put real 3D capability into AE, including 3D text, shapes, and other features which aren’t yet being discussed:
https://www.videocopilot.net/blog/2011/07/first-look-at-new-plug-in-element-3d/
Short of Zaxwerks, which I don’t like because of it’s limited shading capabilities (it just looks flat (Phong) to me, even with custom reflection maps), I would take a hard look at Element 3D when it comes out this month. Of course, you’re probably on a deadline, and maybe can’t wait for it, but I’m going crazy for this to release (and I own and use 3DS Max 2011). For projects which beg for 3D, but don’t have the full 3D budget, this will be killer! (by the way – I have no affiliation with Video Copilot, but I love their Optical Flares lensflare plugin, and other tools for AE).
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com