Joseph W. bourke
Forum Replies Created
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Yes indeed!
The .wmv can be viewed on just about any Windows system. We use the format for internal approvals (it renders quickly, is a small file size, and looks good) as well as external client approvals. The quality is good enough that lower third CGs are readable, and the audio quality can be set to a good quality level, without breaking the bank with bandwidth. There is a pretty large set of choices in the AE templates, from streaming formats to downloadable ones.Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Eric –
Several of the Dreamlight backgrounds appear to have been created with a freebie plugin by Philipp Spoethe, a freelance programmer who develops stuff for Frischluft (see Frischluft.com for their commercial plugins). A few years ago he came up with a great plugin for AE called Sinedots, and it’s still available for free at:
https://www.philipp-spoeth.de/aftereffects/sinedots2.php
You’ll probably want to grab sinedots 1 as well as 2, plus his Retrodots plugin (he has programmed them both for AE and Photoshop) on the same site. You can create some really cool stuff by just changing rotation parameters, looping them, etc.. It looks as if the half of the Dreamlight stuff is just Sinedots2 with a glow on it, and a couple of repetitions in different colors/parameters in additive mode.
Have fun. I have spent hours playing with these plugins and using them for backgrounds in various projects.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Make sure your composition is 720 x 480 pixels. The DV encoder will not work with anything else. I do this by mistake all the time (I’m used to working with the Matrox Codec for Discreet Edit, which is 720 x 486) and get the dreaded “sheep” sound that errors in AE on my machine trigger. It’s a great wakeup call, but I usually make the mistake when I’m in a rush and don’t have the time to go back in and change my comp, which, of course, I have to do to get it to work.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Not having any direct experience with this, but living in a market where the people I work with freelance for a minor league hockey franchise, I would say that here (Manchester, NH) it pays barely better than our Production Assistant position; barely enough to get by, and requiring a second job with the prices of rent and gas these days.
I won’t discourage you from it, because it could well be the reel-builder you’re looking for, and could get your career moving. If you’re single and like the sport, go for it. It will probably involve a small enough crew (in addition to your position) that you will end up learning everything, which is a valuable asset in these days of specialization. Good luck!
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
My feeling is that DV footage is never going to give you a great key. We have the option, which apparently you don’t, of shooting on BetaSP whenever we need to pull a key. We have older BetaSP cameras, and DV25 is our “newer” (but in my opinion, barely broadcast) acquisition format for news.
The 4:2:2 that Beta gives you just gives way more information to the keyer, whereas the 4:1:1 of DV25 gives you artifacts in the key cutout, pretty much no matter what you do.
Here’s an article in DV Magazine (I think you have to sign up as a user – for free – to access it):
https://dv.com/news/news_item.jhtml?LookupId=/xml/feature/2003/jackman0603
This will give you the skinny on why DV is an inferior format for keying. Good luck!
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
It appears that the OGG format is a Linux audio format. Check out this link:
Do a search on OGG and “format” and there will show some sites with converters that seem to be shareware. Good luck.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
I hate to say it (but I will), but this sounds as if you should shoot a real nut with stop motion photography. That way you know it will look real, plus you can position it anywhere you could a 3D created nut (short of flying it through space (which you could do green screen)). I’ve had really good luck shooting stop motion stuff (especially time-lapse clouds) with my Nikon D70, then bringing the shots into AE and converting to a Quicktime movie. Just make a mini cyc wall out of background paper and shoot away – frame by frame.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
I’m not aware of any AE filter that will do the job, but if you know Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop at all, and are willing to spend a half day, you can create all of the overlay styles that are in the Machine Wash sets. As a matter of fact, you can probably find quite a few of them as textures, on the web, copyright free. A good place to start might be a 3D site that offers free textures. Once you download a texture, convert it to a greyscale and kick up the contrast so that you can get usable luminance values to make an alpha channel.
To create them yourself, just download some of the grunge brushes that are free on the Adobe website (you do have to create a login and username) at:
https://share.studio.adobe.com/axBrowseSubmit.asp?t=11
and then start scribbling! Just paint with black on a white background, and when you get the file into AE, use the luminance of the image to punch out an alpha, and adjust the level, maybe adding a color layer in between to add some of the color as in the Machine Wash filters. You’ll get much better results if you have a Wacom pen tablet that lets you set brush sensitivity and size as you draw.
I must say that they are are really cool idea, but it’s not something you can’t do yourself with a bit of work and some creativity. Have fun!
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Zander –
Your prof is right. I did one of these projects a couple of years ago, using Combustion, but with a long, sweeping shot done with a motion control camera rig, which meant that we could reproduce the shot perfectly over and over. I would suggest you use a motion control rig if you can afford it; this will allow you to use the coordinates directly in your software (no tracking necessary). If you can’t, use the tracking dots (I think we used 9 on each TV set (make sure there’s one in the center of the screen, plus ones at top center and the very edges of the corners). We used bright orange dots that they sell at office supply stores.What I did to track each TV (the people who did the motion control rig on my project neglected to save the tracking data, or were too lazy to save it – I’ll never know) was to first go to the middle of the tracking shot, where the screen was as close to full as possible, and do a frame grab. I then brought the grab into Photoshop and cut a master mask, to track to the TV. That way, I could replace the footage very easily in my compositing app (which happened to be Combustion, but AE should be able to do the job).
Be prepared for time-consuming project. I had to track much of the project by hand, frame-by-frame, with multiple tweaks of the mask to get it to look perfect). It definitely helps to stabilize your footage first, just to get any bumps and dips out of it – this will make your track smoother and more believable.
When you’re shooting the footage, since you’ll only get one final master shot, make sure you pull focus on the dots, or you’ll really have a nightmare on your hands. With a motion control rig, you can do two identical passes – one with pulled focus for tracking and with lighting on the tracking dots to make the tracking easier (it’s real tough to track an out of focus dot), and one with the final lighting and depth of field for the final pass with effects, gleams, and anything you need to add in post. Without the motion control rig, you have to compensate for any low-key lighting you might want to have by making sure the dots are sharp, lit, and in focus. It’s a compromise, but you have no other choice, unless your shot is very simple and you can get extremely close to reproducing it. This might give you the chance to pull a track, then drop it into the final shot with a few tweaks.
The main reason you don’t want to do a green screen is that with the reflectiveness of most sets, you’re bound to get some green reflections or hightlights, which will add a whole other color correction project to your already complex project.
Anyway, good luck with the project. It will really hone your skills!
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Steve –
There are a couple of ways to do this, both requiring lots of time and money (just remember “Good, fast, or cheap…pick any two”).
The first one, and the one I would suggest, is to shoot the shot without a straw, using a motion control rig, then import the tracking information to use to place a 3D straw in the scene (created in Max, Maya, etc.), and animate the “erection” of the straw using some refraction effects to realistically bend the straw in the liquid (you didn’t say what type of liquid this is) and some colorization to make the straw look as if it’s really in the liquid. This method would give you complete control over the move, with perfect repeatability, and the tracking points you need to make the straw match without doing it frame by frame. You probably want to end up with at least two passes, one in which focus is pulled, so that the glass stays in focus throughout, and one in which the final lighting and depth of field is in place, which you’ll want to match in your compositing software (AE I assume).
The second one, and the cheaper one, would be, as you suggest, to use a practical straw with fishing line, or maybe some sort of mandrel inside the straw which would straighten it out? This one could take seventy five takes to get it right, with no guarantee that it would work.
I can’t imagine that there’s any effect within AE that could warp just the straw within a scene without having it look fake. I suppose you could shoot the shot with the straw against a green screen table cloth and try to pull a key. That might give you the straw clean, and you’d have a better chance of doing the warp believably. Good luck! It’s a challenge.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV