Joseph W. bourke
Forum Replies Created
-
It’s the same old story, Stephen. Ever since I entered the “I own the software, so I must be an Editor” era, I have wanted every graphics and NLE software package to have a disclaimer on the side saying “TALENT NOT INCLUDED.”.
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com -
There’s another possibility that you might try – I haven’t used it in a long time, but Norton/Symantec used to have a product that came with their utilities called Unerase. It seems that when you delete a file from your system, the data is not deleted until you overwrite it. The file system simply adds a “?” to the first character of the file. With Norton, I could do a search on the files I needed back and it would fix the file by simply replacing the first character with whatever you chose.
Here’s another possibility – it’s freeware:
https://www.geckoandfly.com/2007/11/27/how-to-recover-deleted-files-and-folder-in-windows/
This may be worth a try as well, before you go off on the data recovery (expensive) trail. I’d give Norton/Symantec a shot first – it saved my bacon in the past, and is at least worth a try – given that you haven’t overwritten anything. Good luck!
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com -
Brandon –
I’m sure you don’t want to hear this, but the best way to do it is with a 3D package which contains a physics system. It will actually allow you to create wind, setup the density and flexibility of the paper, bend/crumple it, and make it fly away, all the while looking pretty realistic.I had to do this a couple of years ago, and fortunately had 3D Studio Max as part of my arsenal. I started out trying to accomplish it in both Combustion and AE, but the effect was just not up to snuff, since it had to be composited with live-action footage. The suggestions above sound doable, if time-consuming (amazingly enough, doing it in Max turned out to be quick – set up wind, set up gravity, stack the paper, setup a few keyframes for varying the wind direction and velocity, and good to go).
Good luck with the project. I just wanted to give you an alternative that would give you a better looking result.
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com -
Chaz –
You’re right on the money when it comes to thinking of Photoshop and Illustrator first. I’ve designed and created many weather map elements, but in “real” systems, the map data generally comes from a feed from WSI or some other weather data provider. Generally the look of the map is a realistic aerial map (check out your local weather forecast for ideas) with bump mapped features.The other pieces come from Photoshop, Illustrator, or After Effects (if you want animated icons – which is pretty much what everyone is doing these days). I’d start out in Photoshop or Illustrator with the base icon, then, if you want it animated, bring it into After Effects, and create each in in a separate comp. You can do the animations, with the sun as an example, by putting a lens flare behind the sun, or distortion animating the rays, if your rays were done as still elements. Rain icons are pretty easy – AE has a rain plugin, I believe, and it’s a simple matter to grab a still shot of a real cloud (or paint one, if you’ve got the talent) and bring it in to AE and add the rain. Lightning is built into AE as well. It’s just a matter of doing your research, checking out what’s on the tube, and deciding whether you want photo-real or iconic weather elements. The isobars, if you use them, can be done in Illustrator, then brought in and warped in AE.
This should give you a good start. Just use the sources that are out in the real world to give you a starting point. I assume you know that you have to shoot your “meteorologist” on a greenscreen, then key him/her in AE.
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com -
Hi Eugene –
While dissolving clips end to end will do the trick (if you know the max amount of time you need the clip to play), there’s another way. It’s called a dissolve loop. You split your clip in the middle, swap the two pieces end for end, and put a dissolve where the two former ends were. You will need to tweak how long the dissolve is depending on whether it looks better with a quick, or slow dissolve. That’s a content issue, subject to the editor’s taste.
It works well with most footage, especially when the dissolve loops are used as background pieces. You can set up a template in After Effects specifically for this, then just drop your footage into it and render. Have fun!
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com -
Tom –
There are plugins that deal with numbers in AE. I think they are actually in a section called “numbers” in the plugins. You can keyframe them like just about any other parameter. When dealing with time, you may have to use Expressions – I can’t quite remember whether time is dealt with without them. If you need info on expressions and time, just do a search here; the question has been asked many times. As far as temperature, if you’re doing something like showing a guage on the screen over time, with degrees changing, it should be pretty simple. Keep the numbers that are animating separate from whatever guage interface you create (Illustrator would be best for that – Photoshop a second choice for me).
Take a look on the web if you don’t have any particular guage design in mind, there’s lot of reference there.
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com -
The quick fix is a small amount of blur on the area that’s giving you a problem. There’s no set amount – it requires experimentation, but it usually works.
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com -
Peter –
To expand on that a bit, here are a couple of ways that I regularly export animations with alphas:1. Render numbered stills that have alpha capabilities – I tend to use either .tif files or .png files. Both should have the alpha render choice picked in the output settings.
2. Use a Quicktime Animation setting – I use Quicktime Animation, Millions of Colors Plus (the plus is the 8-bit alpha channel). This will give you a QT file which, when imported properly, will key perfectly over your other footage.
3. The old fashioned way – Output the fill and the alpha channels separately – then bring them in as separate clips, and line them up on frame 0. I can’t think of a reason to use this nowadays, other than having to send out keyable animations on tape. With tape, of course, you can’t have an alpha, so you have to provide the matte channel as a greyscale clip the same length as the fill channel. It works, but is obviously more time consuming.
Good luck!
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com -
Hi Robert –
While the art of creating animated lower thirds may seem like a complicated process, it’s simply a matter of creating a looping animation, and then designing the still pieces that it fits within.
As to loops, if you have an animated image you want to loop, you need to create what’s called a dissolve loop – the image doesn’t really loop seamlessly, so you split it in the middle, swap it end for end (so the end of the animation then loops), then put a dissolve between the parts that don’t loop (where the cut is).
I generally design my lower third elements in Photoshop, then bring it all together in AE. Bear in mind title and action safe, and whether your comp is HD or SD. If you look at something such as the lower thirds on the ABC Nightly News, notice as you switch your tv between cropped and full HD views, that they’ve designed for both SD and HD; the main body of the text falls in the SD view, while the design ramps off into the HD space. I’m sure this will change as more and more sets become HD, but they’re covering their bases with the current design.
I couldn’t navigate to the site you mentioned above, but the above information will get you there. When I’m ready to go with my design,
I output it as a Quicktime Animation with Alpha Channel (Millions of Colors plus). This gives me a file that can then be used in post, or in most any playback server. It will loop as long as needed. I usually output my lower third loops blank, and send along a reference still with the type layout I want, so the CG Ops can get it right. Good luck!Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com -
Trevor –
My new system, which I had configured by a MnM Computers in Manchester NH, consists of this:
Intel Motherboard – DP45SG – this has an ESATA connector for a RAID
Quad Core2 Q9550, 2.83GHz, 1333MHz, L2 12M
8GB of PC3-10600 CL9 DDR3 240p DIMM RAM
GEForce GTX 260 – EVGA graphics card
2 – 500GB Seagate SATA2 7200rpm hard disks – one for OS, one for Applications
2 – 750GB 7200rpm 32mb SATA2 hard drives – for media files – this is NOT striped – at some point I will probably add a RAID array for doing HD – I haven’t tried editing true HD on this pup yet
600watt silent fan power supply – this thing is really quiet – I can probably do audio recording in the same room with this running.
Case – X-Cruiser Black system chassis – this is a gamer case with plenty of room for expansion.I went with the GTX 260 for monetary reasons, and thus far the system is really kicking butt. In addition to the test mentioned below, I took an AE render which had taken an hour and a half to render on my old box (WinXP, 4GB RAM, 3.0GHz processor), and it rendered in 7 minutes! From what I understand, the OpenGL card only has bearing on the preview capabilities in AE (though you should ask someone who knows more than me about that!). The Quadro series seems to be optimized to run with the CS4 software, so it sounds as if there’s a lot more realtime stuff going on under the hood – almost as if the Quadro is an accelerator card specifically for CS4, rather than just a video card. I went with the GTX 260 partly because of some reading I had been doing about what’s coming down the pipe in terms of the graphics card being used for general processing speed as well – it seemed to be a good bet, and the price was right.
That’s about it, other than that it’s running Vista Business 64-bit. I was originally going to go with XP Pro 64-bit, but I think the upgrade path to Win7 will be smoother, plus Adobe recommends Vista 64 for the CS4 production bundle, and so far, I can see why. This thing screams! I just loaded 40 minutes of cloud footage I shot yesterday in 1080i; it loaded fine in .mts (Canon native format) format into AE, and I was able to speed it up 2000 times, giving me a really nice, smooth time-lapse effect, without the usual light stutter you get when you use the intervalometer setting on a camera. It will render about one minute of preview (depending on content of course) or better to RAM with the current 8MB of RAM. Good luck with your choice. As long as the card you choose is on Adobe’s list, you should have at least some improvement in the OpenGL world, although there’s much debate about OpenGL among users. I think it all boils down to what works best for you.
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com