Kevin Camp
Forum Replies Created
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it installed automaticly (along with color finesse) when i installed cs3 mac, rather than having to go into the extras folder on the install disk…
did you download the trial or the full version…? i think the beta did not have the cc effects, maybe the trial doesn’t either…
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
you could use the slider method, but then link the slider value to a marker on the null that the slider is applied to. paste as the expresion for the slider:
marker.key(1).time
then you could make adjustments by sliding the maker in the time line, rather than entering fractions of a second in decimal….
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
if your loop was made using loopOut() this seems to work, the slider value is in number of seconds:
loopDuration = key(numKeys).time – key(1).time;
stopTime = effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”);
if (time < stopTime) { loopOut() }else{ valueAtTime(stopTime - Math.round(stopTime / loopDuration - .5)) } if the slider is on a null, the change then add the name of the null before .effect("Slider Control")("Slider") you could also link it to a layer marker, then to stop, you would just hit the * key on the keypad at the point it needed to stop.... loopDuration = key(numKeys).time - key(1).time; stopTime = marker.key(1).time; if (time < stopTime) { loopOut() }else{ valueAtTime(stopTime - Math.round(stopTime / loopDuration - .5)) } Kevin Camp Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
the plan sounds good, build your main comp in a d1 widescreen square pixel preset, take that to a d1 widescreen nonsqr pixel (1.33) comp.
avid won’t have a better quality codec than lossless animation, but if you knew what type of compression they were using for footage in xpress pro (like avid dv, meridien 1:1) you could streamline their process by not forcing them to convert the movs. like lossless, the meridien codec also supports alpha channels, if that matters.
i would still render to lossless, but if you find out what they are using, you should be able to add an output module for that codec when you render. then you’ll only render once and create two different files, one lossless mov and the other avid version. they can then choose which works best, and it will look like you did all this extra work for them. 😉
also, make sure you let them know if the lossless animation files are in rgb color space, or 601… i believe the avid codecs will either convert it or encode it so that avid will know the color space, i know that avid meridien will work this way.
you should be able to find all the latest avid codecs on their site, i know a link has been posted here before.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
need to know a few more specifics…. what aren’t you happy with? edges? banding? movement? contrast/levels?
or was it a difference in viewing on tv versus computer monitor?
a basic workflow to go from ae to dvd would be to render out of ae to lossless animation codec or uncompressed, take it to a compression utility (like compressor or sorenson) for mpeg-2 encoding, then to dvd application.
are you using premiere for mpeg-2 encoding? if so, you maybe compressing your movie twice, once for what your settings are in premiere (like for dv) and then again for mpeg-2. if you need to go to premiere, maybe you can set premiere to work with mpeg-2, so when your render is imported, it will be converted to compressed only once, to mpeg-2.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
if your plan is to match a 3d comp camera to the greens, take a lot of notes on camera position and settings. things like distance to subject, disatnce to chroma wall, height of camera, the exact movement of the dolly (distance, and distance to/from subject or wall, you may actually want to plot each shot on a x,y grid), lens focal length, focal distance and i’m sure some others that i’m missing. that data will be important to get 3d layers, layered in space within ae to match movement and dof of your footage.
it should probably be a pa’s job just to measure and record these notes for every shot.
i think i would also try a test for creating the 3d scene and matching it to footage. it wouldn’t need to be greens, you could shoot on a brick wall, take notes, then try creating a scene and camera movement to match using a quicky garbage matte to mask the footage. it should be enough to test if your process will work, and/or what will need to change.
when you shoot, think about what you’re going to track for the point of interest for your 3d camera (unless you shoot following a tracking dot, or your subject is standing still, you may have problems).
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
we’ve been trouble shooting the aliasing problem… but if your text is moving too fast, when rendered progressively, it will seem to ‘strobe’, and rendered with fields or motion blur, it may get almost unreadable.
if that is the case, then you may need to use a condensed font and/or scale the text down to shorten the length of the text line.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
if you do a lot of color correcting in ae, you might want to learn the color finesse effect that is bundled with ae. it has better color tools (well, compared to what comes free with ae). but it doesn’t resemble any color correcting tools in ps, so it is more of a ‘starting over’ type learning curve.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
in addition to the motion blur, rendering to fields (with correct dominance) may help your horizontal text crawl move smoother, but that depends a bit on the rate. if it’s a slow crawl, it may still get a bit wavy. you’d also need to view it on a broadcast monitor.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
i don’t think you need to be concerned about the error message, something changed in cs3, and i see that error from time to time, but i’ve never noticed any ill effects. everything seems to work (and look) just fine.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW