Joseph W. bourke
Forum Replies Created
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There’s a possibility that the error you’re getting is related to the pixel size of the comp you’re using (720×480, etc.). Some pixel aspects don’t work when you render (for example, if I have a 720×486 comp, and I try to output it to DV25, I get an error, because DV25 is 720×480). Ask your AVID editor what he/she needs first, then setup your output (and create a template for it, so you don’t forget next time).
I’ve had very good luck sending stuff for our AVID Newscutter Adrenaline (it wants DV25 – 720×480, lower field first). I usually use the Quicktime Motion JPEG A that comes with After Effects – I don’t bother to use the AVID installable codec (although I have installed it) because the file size tends to be huge, and the render long. The Quicktime Motion JPEG A is a fast render, small file size, and it imports quickly into our AVID and looks very good. Good luck.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Paul –
This is wondrously easy, and it looks great to boot! Put your water layer on the bottom, put your logo over the top of it, and apply a Displacement Map effect to the logo layer, telling it to use the water layer below it for displacment. Then simply adjust the parameters to your liking.If your water layer is at an angle to the camera, rather than straight on, it helps the realism to add either a corner pin, or to make the logo layer 3D and angle it so as to match the angle of the water. Good luck! For additional realism, you may want to drop the transparency of your logo slightly (90 – 95% usually looks good), or even play around with modes until you get what you like.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Try this site:
There are thousands of sounds. Try the searches listed above, plus some that might be related to specific sounds. I’ve used “ice” or “hockey” and gotten some cool swoosh type sounds, because the sound of a skater stopping quickly on ice has a crunchy type of swoosh sound. Be creative in your searching, and you’ll find loads of sounds. Good luck.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
I’ve got two guesses on it, and let me preface it by saying that we’re using plasmas more and more here, and they don’t look great either.
1. For accurate color (which is not always obtainable with the crummy, old cameras we have here) do some testing in After Effects, using various color corrections and overlays to get the color temperature of your graphics correct. You can then save your AE setup and use it on all your plasma graphics. Also kick up the saturation in your plasma graphics, and see if that helps, bearing in mind NTSC legal issues.
2. Studio lighting is a big issue. Light leakage and reflections will kill the saturation of your plasma image pretty quickly. Some carefully placed scrims and light blocking materials will help your image out. You want a plasma monitor to be as much in the dark as you can get it, or at least in a darker spot on the set.
Remember that MSNBC has probably got fifty thousand dollar cameras, and enough specialized lighting fixtures to light a city. It all boils down to resources and, with fewer resources, experimentation. Try putting some light blocking materials around the front area of one of your plasmas, maybe on C stands, and do a test shot. This should tell you whether it’s a light blocking issue, or maybe a camera issue, or both. Good luck.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Frederic –
The Foundry makes a plugin called Furnace which has both a stabilizer called Steadiness, and a retimer called Kronos, which is part of the package. I don’t know how Steadiness works, but it is able to stabilize a piece of footage without any tracking points (I think it calculates the motion in the scene and then creates an inverse motion). Anyway…it works like a charm. It’s a little over 300 dollars (US), but worth its weight in gold in the time you save over tracking it the old way. Here’s a link:
https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/pkg_overview.aspx?ui=B9D69803-AA9A-4772-B784-38A280234576
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
As ghobii above said, dingbat fonts are the way to go. There are dingbat font sets that have boxes, stars, bullets, just about anything you could imagine. Here’s one place to get some of them:
https://www.dingbatdepot.com/fonts_category.asp?ID=Various
By the way, you can also use the advanced character set of some of the more common typefaces to get at various symbols and shapes. Just use the Character Map utility in Windows (if you use Windows); it will show you the advanced characters that are available in a font, beyond the ABCs.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Brant –
I think that if you contacted the museum with the usage request, and they said yes, you’d be fine. I work at a broadcast TV station in which our News department regularly requests and uses footage and stills from a huge variety of sources. Most of the time we have to put a CG’d source on our footage, but sometimes the material falls under the fair usage doctrine, and we can use the material without sourcing it.All in all, I think it depends on what your final usage is, whether you are making money from it, or copying and distributing it (with or without money changing hands), and whether or not you ask the perceived copyright holder for a one-time usage. It’s a tricky business, and I’m not a lawyer, but I think the best bet is always CYA.
I worked at a cable TV station several years ago, where we were given verbal permission by a composer to use his music in a show open. Imagine our surprise when, a year later, we were sued to the tune (no pun intended) of 100,000 dollars for violating his copyright. He ended up losing the suit, but it cost us a lot of money in legal fees. CYA.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Personally, it’s due to my coming from AE by way of Combustion. You didn’t have to make a mask (yes, I know how easy it is)in Combustion, and it just made more sense to the workflow. When you’re looking at an image on a timeline and you need to make it smaller you think “crop”, not “mask”; at least I do. Otherwise, there’s probably no difference, although there may be a difference in the order crop gets put into the AE workflow.
Joe Bourke
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Personally, it’s due to my coming from AE by way of Combustion. You didn’t have to make a mask (yes, I know how easy it is)in Combustion, and it just made more sense to the workflow. When you’re looking at an image on a timeline and you need to make it smaller you think “crop”, not “mask”; at least I do. Otherwise, there’s probably no difference, although there may be a difference in the order crop gets put into the AE workflow.
Joe Bourke
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There is now, at least for AE 6.5. I don’t know whether it works with Ver. 7.0. Profound Effects gives it away, and I’ve found it extremely useful:
https://profoundeffects.com/products/index.php?view=charity
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV