[Karim Daire]

Depending on how natural you want the look you can either work with beam or stroke taper the stroke and apply a lensflare or glow on the tip. Then apply filters for displacement, glow etc to get a more natural look. Maybe you can apply some fractal noise to displace and alpha the tail.
For more natural look I guess particles with trails or Trapcodes 3D Stroke should help without too much tedious handwork. I think the sampleclip you posted is done using particles.

Karim

[Karim Daire]

In case the footage is shot still from a tripod you could mask out the left/right where the character comes in and goes out. Generate a still of the background without the character and put in the garbagedmaked character with a soft feather on the mask edges. Add a dissolve on the beginning an end of the layer or where the character comes in/goes off. If nothing shakes and light doesn’t change this could work well without tedious rotoscoping.

Karim

[Karim Daire]

I had the same problem some time ago. Import the folders into your AE project, then choose the first, select all stills and pull them to the new compostion symbol on the bottom of the project window (I think you need to keep STRG pressed while doing)… then you are asked for the length and and blending of the layers to be sequenced. Do that with all folders in new compositions (it takes some time for AE to import and sequence the stuff and I had crashes when using to many pics in 1comp, I guess there is a limit) and then sequence the single compostions into a new one to build your whole “clip” where you can crop, recolour etc.

Karim

[Karim Daire]

I had the same problem some time ago. Import the folders into your AE project, then choose the first, select all stills and pull them to the new compostion symbol on the bottom of the project window (I think you need to keep STRG pressed while doing)… then you are asked for the length and and blending of the layers to be sequenced. Do that with all folders in new compositions (it takes some time for AE to import and sequence the stuff and I had crashes when using to many pics in 1comp, I guess there is a limit) and then sequence the single compostions into a new one to build your whole “clip” where you can crop, recolour etc.

Karim

[Karim Daire]

Thanks a lot for your comments. It looks like this is way too much for us. We had a version proposed where I worked with still pictures to include the details.
The thing is that our client keeps telling about a planning-bureau where they showed the aerials and marked objects which were tracked realtime. Is there any special software or must that have been kind of pre-tracked?

Anyway, I will cut down on this before my head explodes! 🙂
Thanks again,

Karim

[Karim Daire]

Thanks for the quick reply. Well I thought that this is a little to much for an AE-Intermediate.
Anyway, which 3D tracker did you work with and if I timelapse the clips (Material is already filmed with a stabilized camera-system on Betacam-SP) to 5 Minutes, would rendering then be in the range of possible?

And what to you mean by:

” use it as front projections on simplified stand-in geometry in a 3D program”

how is “front projection” meant? Just like running the clip in background and fitting your 3D perspectives into it by hand?

Karim

[Karim Daire]

Thanks, Steve… didn’t see the article-link. That should clear all questions.

Karim

[Karim Daire]

Hi,

reading this thread I wonder if I can also squeeze in a question. I work in PAL and you wrote resolution is equal and should be 720×576 for 4:3 and 16:9?? So 16:9 is anamorphic and if I want a 4:3 Sequence mixed in with 16:9 Material the 16:9 Material has to be stretched in width and lose information on the left and right. Is that right and does AE automatically interpret the footage like this when I drop 16:9 Material in a 4:3 comp? Never worked with this, but might have to soon and the whole aspect ratio thing is a little confusing for me.
Thanks in advance,

Karim

[Karim Daire]

Hi,

just had the same problem since I get DVDs all the time with the comment “use this, its digital!”. I tried some rippers/transcoders and MPEG-Streamclip for MAC is great and exports about anything you wish for from a VOB (best of all it features quicktime and you can easily set ins/outs and even cut sequences).
Anyway, workflow is best for me digitizing directly from the YUV-Signals of a good DVD-Player to AVID, can’t see much of a difference and have less transcoding-Artifacts.

Karim