Joseph W. bourke
Forum Replies Created
-
Neil –
I was in just your position about a year ago. Our promotions manager tasked me with finding a “professional quality” digital camera for 200 to 400 dollars. I went through dozens of reviews, discovering that there’s no such thing. Sure, the megapixel quality will give you the level of final output for television, but the toolset at that price doesn’t even allow you to focus through the lens, or even really tell whether that perfect shot is in focus until you get it to the computer.
I went back to our promotions manager, told him that for less than 1000 dollars it would be a waste of money, and, as if by magic, the budget went up to 1000 to 1500 dollars. We bought a Nikon D70, with a lens kit (slow lens, we will be upgrading within the year), tripod, case, two 1GB flash memory cards, and a memory dock (USB) for about 1500 bucks.
I now use it to shoot promotional photography of our News anchors and reporters for everything from web use to on-air use, to 36 x 36″ lighboxes. It’s working out just fine, except for the slow lens. According to a photographer friend of mine (an actual professional photog) the Nikon and Fuji cameras have superior software that allows you to get really high rez shots, and then up rez them (using Genuine Fractals software) to the size of a billboard if need be.
I suggest you not throw away the 200 dollars, but wait until the budget allows a real tool for the job.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Thanks to both of you for the straight alphas tip. It was just dumb luck that I didn’t send premultiplied alphas to our AVID editor. I generally DO send straight alphas though, unless there’s a problem with the result, in which case I’d premultiply.
Joe Bourke
-
Tom –
If you really like to do things from scratch, you might want to try creating waveforms in Illustrator, white on a black background, in various shapes and sizes (vary the height of the wave and the period), then send them over to After Effects. I would make them larger than your working video size (if you work at 720 by 480, maybe try 1440 by 480, or 1440 by 960) to give you room to stretch or compress the waves.
Bring them into After Effects and layer them over each other in Additive mode, then add various glows, maybe the Trapcode Shine effect, and colorization, animate them, and you’ve got your own toolkit to recreate Harmonizer’s effects pallette. Maybe not as elegant as the Digieffects interface, but it will sure render more quickly.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Erik –
Nice work so far! It’s very possible that the HP shoot used a motion control camera rig, in which the camera move is programmed and repeatable, plus the camera position information can be exported to systems such as Discreet Flame or Inferno (even Combustion these days).
One thing you might want to try is to put day-glo dots on the four corners of your frame. Buy ones (Staples has them) large enough to be trackable, but small enough so that painting them out won’t be a huge chore. Then do a four-corner track on the project, then track a cloned portion of each corner of the frame to cover the dots. I’m not much on doing tracking jobs in After Effects; I use Combustion for those, but bear in mind that getting a track that’s on the money can sometimes take several passes, and much frustration. Good luck!
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
OK –
It did the trick until I started a new project I’m working on, and did about 3 or 4 drags and drops. Problem is now back. Sorry for getting your hopes up with the cache idea. Adobe has GOT to do something about this!
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
I’ve had the same problem as you, and Adobe tech support made some suggestions, but didn’t have anything specific to do, other than to add RAM, and to make sure to get a video card that is on the Adobe supported list.
We brought our RAM up to the 2GB level, and added an NVIDEA graphics card, neither of which seemed to do the trick. One thing that has seemed to work is to change my preference settings for Memory and Cache. I set the Maximum Memory Usage to 80%, and my Maximum RAM Cache size to 80% as well. This has seemed to do the trick for now.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Go to findsounds.com, then filter out the format you’re looking for. It’s a goldmine!
Joe Bourke
-
My first response would be to make sure that you use whichever key fonts are part of the station design package, or “look”, as we call it here at WMUR-TV. We use Bell Gothic Black as the main typeface for such things as the position line statement and titling on main opens, then we use Alternate Gothic #3 as a secondary typeface for all of our CGs, sub-headlines, full screens, etc..
That said, if you’ve got some freedom, go with any sans-serif typeface that looks good with what you’re working with: examples might be Frutiger, Optima, Gill Sans, Avant Garde, Arial, Futura, Univers, or Helvetica variations. I know that when we do our top of the hour IDs, we always use the typefaces that are part of the package; we tend to stick to the “corporate” look so that we’re immediately recognizable on air. When you stray from the main family of fonts used in your station look, you immediately start to water it down.
Bear in mind that I’m the Art Director here, so it’s my job to be the “Graphics Police”, and ride herd on our look. I tend to stick to what we’ve got, as much as I’d often prefer to loosen up the look. Hope this helps.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Go straight to your local bookstore (or online) and buy the Chris and Trish Meyer book, Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects, Volume 1: The Essentials.
I had been working with Discreet Logic’s Combustion for a few years, when it became obvious that our parent company was going to standardize on AE. I bought the book, and within a month (granted I already knew a compositing app) I was fluent with After Effects, and able to create the same level of project I had been doing with Combustion. The book comes with a CD that has projects of all sorts; there are tips and tricks, gotchas, and all sorts of valuable information for those in the motion graphics field. It’s the bible for AE.
By the way, I’m not in any way affiliated with the Meyers. I just feel that if you find a tool that helps you out, you should tell people about it. Good luck.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Actually, because of your suggestions, I’ve dragged our IT guy in by his ear, and made him sit and watch the bad news in Task Manager. His immediate reply was “You need another GIG of RAM!”. Now all I have to do is convince the head of our department to spring for it, which I’m 90% sure he will; he is willing to listen to reason, especially when my PC is being unresponsive. Thanks for the help. I’ll let you know if/when the problem goes away.
Joe Bourke