Joseph W. bourke
Forum Replies Created
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You owe it to yourself to look at the Matrox Axio card running the Adobe Video Suite (After Effects, Premiere Pro 2.0, Photoshop CS2, Illustrator, etc.) See review:
https://videosystems.com/mag/video_matrox_axio/
https://matrox.com/video/products/axio/home.cfm
We’ve recently replaced our aging Discreet Logic Edit boxes with AVID Adrenaline Newscutters to do daily Promotions editing. Now one would think that the alarm would go off in someone’s when looking at a product with “cutter” in the name, and asking it to do a multi-layer, quick turnaround, daily job that was taxing our Edit boxes, which were 2 layers of realtime video with a graphics overlay. But no.
The Newscutter will not do ANYTHING without a render, so our poor editor is relegated to using a 40 thousand dollar box to be a capture station, then sending build clips to After Effects to do the job, and finishing on the AVID. Why I’m giving you all this info is to warn you that price or name brand is not the most important part of upgrading a system. We’ve ended up with a system that is a huge step backwards, and it cost three times our initial investment with the Discreet systems, and has less realtime capability that our six year old NLE.
The Axio with Premiere Pro 2.0 will do at least 4 streams of video in realtime, with realtime FX, up to six layers of graphics, and you can get into an HD capable system for way under 35 thousand (including storage), an SD system for well under 20 thousand. While I do not have experience with Premiere Pro, the person who sold us the Discreet Logic systems is a professional editor, and he says that the Premiere Pro software will do 98% of what the Edit software did, and in many aspects is better than Edit was. It’s integration with Photoshop, Illustrator, etc., is exceptional (since they’re all Adobe products, and industry standards). Read the review, kick the tires at NAB, and don’t take anyone’s word for anything until you get a demo version in for a week that you can fly yourself. Good luck!
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
My results with the Quicktime Motion jpeg-A setting have been most successful. I send opens and motion graphics elements from AE to our AVIDs all the time, and they are compact, look great, and work in both the older AVID Meridien machines, AND the Adrenaline Newscutter, of which we have three.
This codec is the one that is used by Artbeats for delivery on their high-quality DVD stock video collections. The setting they use is:
Motion jpeg-A, quality setting 94 (which is one step down from Best).
I’ve compared this codec setting to the Animation/Uncompressed, (which, from what I understand, is only for use as an interim file for moving between systems without experiencing loss, not for final delivery) and comparing the two side by side, can see virtually no difference in quality. Our chief engineer swears that he can see the difference, but that’s what they always say. Job security!
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
That’s mighty strange stuff, indeed. While I’ve worked on both Macs and PCs over the years, I’ve been using PCs for about the past 10 years. I remember well, in my last job, which was at PCTV (we produced a weekly TV show on computers and software), we reviewed a product called “Soft PC” (if I remember correctly), which ran on the Mac SE. It took so doggone long to boot into the Windows interface that we couldn’t imagine why anyone would possibly want to run it – maybe to get Tetris to work? I don’t know.
Anyway, it looks as if things haven’t changed much. If you want to run something for the PC on a Mac, buy a PC…and vice-versa.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Glad to be of help. Those maps have saved my bacon many a time over the years. Did you notice that there’s a place to download some test maps on their site? It will be a good way to make sure they’re going to do the job for you.
Joe Bourke
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Nathan –
Look no further than MapArt (formerly Cartesia MapArt, now MapResources). I’ve used their USA maps collection for a number of years. They offer the whole US in layered, vector graphics that open into Illustrator, so you can choose which layers you want to show (rivers, counties, roads, lakes, towns of a certain size, you get the idea).
I went to their site and they have a beautiful selection of European maps in different styles. It looks as if you can get what you need for a bit over a hundred dollars. Here’s the site:
https://www.mapresources.com/results.asp?txtkeys=europe+continent&name=Europe%20Continent
Good luck.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Here’s a link to a tutorial by Roland Kahlenburg that shows you how to do it without a third-party plugin, just in case you don’t own Particular.
I’ve experimented with getting this to work on a basic level in Particle Playground, and as long as you have the layer you want emitted in your timeline, it works just fine. Good luck.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Hey Ron!
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your stuff. It’s very possible that with the tight jobs situation (at least here in the US – I can’t speak for Canada) that so many people with very strong capabilities are all applying for the same job that the employers have the luxury of cherry-picking. There’s no excuse for not acknowledging your application, though. That’s common courtesy. There are a lot of managers out there that don’t know their ass from their elbow when it comes to business acumen.
I’m an art director at an ABC affiliate in the Manchester, New Hampshire market (which overlaps the Boston ADI), and we’ve had openings in the past couple of years for entry level graphics positions. We’ve been swamped with requests for interviews, many from people with fine arts backgrounds and killer portfolios, but we always take the time for the courtesy of a reply. Some businesses don’t care, and you’re lucky, in a way, to NOT receive a reply from them, because that callous attitude probably applies to their employees as well.
I’d say keep sending the reel out, and the right position will come along. You’re in the luxurious position of actually having a job right now. Many of the people who have applied here have been laid off from formerly great positions, and now are in the unenviable position of having to put bread on the table, with nothing in sight. It breaks my heart that we can only hire one person when we do, because many have to be told “no”, at a time when they desperately need to hear the opposite.
How are your skills at resume writing and cover-letter writing? That could be what’s keeping you from getting the interview. Sometimes a strong cover letter will open the door for you.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
It’s very cool, but you CAN do it, in After Effects, with Trapcode Particular and some carefully written expressions that would offset the output points to approximate where the fingers might go. The expression writing part is beyond me at this point (I’m just learning), but there are some presets in Particular that have that organic, glowing look, AND they work in 3D space when you use an AE camera.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Melissa –
If you look down a few lines at my suggestion to “Studio Graphics Recall Application”, we use a DekoCast, formerly a Pinnacle product, now owned by AVID. It does all our tickers, linking to templates created for our ENPS News software. Once the template is created, it’s all automatic as far as playback is concerned. We can do sports tickers, school closings, etc.. It’s a nice, easy to use system.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Dave –
The most important part of using a transparent reflective element in your composite (such as glass)is lighting that element, if indeed you plan to use a real piece of glass. You could also create it in a 3D package, but the real thing always looks more convincing.
It’s obvious that glass is transparent; if you use a piece of glass that doesn’t have any reflections in it you don’t see the glass. So the idea is to get reflective highlights that you can control in the glass. I always shoot on a black background, then place white reflective pieces (foam core works great) in front of the glass (behind, or next to the camera), and throw my light onto the reflective pieces. That way the transparent part of the glass is black (or transparent) and the reflections become the opaque part of the image. When you composite, you put your image in Additive mode (in After Effects) and the black disappears.
If you’re using a 3D package (I use 3DStudio Max), you want to use the same lighting process as outlined above, and make your texture map a reflection map, so that the light boxes or planes that you place next to your virtual camera reflect in the shot.
In a way, it’s easier to do this in the real world than in 3D, but you have more control over your alpha settings in 3D. Good luck.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV