Kevin Camp
Forum Replies Created
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that’s a good question… have you tried posting in the adobe’s ae forum?
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
if you can hold off on getting a new system, you might want to. once adobe and apple work out the opengl issue you’ll start to hear how well the video cards perform in cs3 and you could make an informed decision then.
also, since (i think) the quadro fx 4500 is only available as a bto option, you may not be able to get it later (after your system is purchased). however, if ati isn’t going to ship any more cards for mac, i would expect third party vendors (like pny, etc.) to start making mac versions of their nvidia cards (currently, i think apple makes the only two mac nvidia cards and drivers).
i’m curious about your 1500 option… last i saw for mac there wer only 2: the geforce 7300 and the quadro 4500… is there a third party 1500 available for macpro?
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
one note on aharon’s tutorial…
aharon… (don’t take this the wrong way, i love your tutorials) but… i do disagree one part of your bradcast safe tutorial
when you set your levels, don’t clip the shadow and highlight detail by setting the input black and white levels, set only the output levels. otherwise you’ll be unnecessarily losing information in your hightlights and shadows.
if you want to expand (or adjust) the contrast levels, but not lose that detail information, use curves. the best way i found is to use photoshop to create a curves setting that can be saved and then imported into ae, then that can be saved as a preset and accessed easily within ae whenever you need it. you need to use ps curves because ae curves will not allow you to access the numerical values for your curve points, ps will.
sounds complicated, but it’s really quite easy, and once it’s done once, you’ll only have one step to do every time you need it.
first, open ps and create a new rgb document (any size/resolution…). apply curves and select the lower left curve point (black point). bellow the curve you should see some numeric values (input: 0 and output: 0). leave the input alone, and change the output to 16. select the upper right point (white point), change the output to 235.
now click the save… button in the curves window and save the curves setting any where (desktop perhaps?). now, in ae, apply curves to a layer (any layer) and click the folder button in the ae curves settings to load the ps curves settings, navigate to the .acv file and load it. go ahead and save that as a preset named ‘broadcast safe’ or something simple. now you can access that from the curves animation preset whenever you apply curves.
use this curves setting as a base to adjust your contrast, you can add as many points to the curve as you need, just don’t adjust the end points (your black and white points).
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
i don’t know of any plugin that would help you and give you the individual tile control you want… it might be able to be set up using expressions, but i think the easiest way would be to do it by hand and use the align tool.
create a comp and drag all 9 clips into the comp. with your clips selected, hit ‘s’ and scale them to 33.333%.then create a new solid layer, make it comp size and drag it bellow all the clips (this will be used to help align all the clips evenly). now select the 3 that will be the top row and the bottom solid and use the align tool (if you don’t see it, go to window>align & distribute to open it up) and click the ‘vertical top alignment’ button. the 3 clips should now be positioned at the top of the bottom solid. select the clips that will be the bottom row and the solid layer and click the ‘vertical bottom alignment’ button.
now will need to reposition the clips for the left and right columns by selecting the clips that will be the left column and the solid layer and clicking the align left horizontal button. do the same for the clips for the right column.
now you can keyframe in the scale and position changes for each clipas they fly full screena and then back into the grid postion.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
if you are taking all of your rendered clips from ae back into an nle, you can probably make the rgb to yuv (601) color conversion at import into the nle. that way you wouldn’t need to do any additional steps, just modify one setting at import.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
i’m not sure if this would help… but there are two ways to render a tga file. one, with targa sequence chosen as the ‘format’ in the output settings window. the other way is to set quicktime movie as the ‘format,’ but then click format options and set tga as the compression type.
i was just thinking that using qt to render the tga file may produce more similar results to the qt animation file.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
cc cylinder will actually bend you layer into a 3d cylinder, you can set it to render the front, back or both sides of the cylinder and you can set it to use a 3d camera in your comp.
if you wanted just a bending effect that might happen if you were shooting with a wide angle lens, a distortion effect like warp may do the trick. there are several style settings like fisheye and bluge that might get you started.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
you’re asking about setting up ae to output to a broadcast monitor to get a more accurate depiction of color, aspect ratio and field rendering in ntsc (or pal), correct?
there are several ways… most people have a pci card or similar device (like those from aja and blackmagic) that will give the computer various video connections that can be connected to a broadcast monitor and decks. these setups can get pricy.
on the cheaper side, you may be able to get a device that will connect to firewire that will convert it to a video signal that can be connected to a standard tv. you can set ae to use firewire to monitor previews. i haven’t tried this, but i think it should work, note… it won’t be as accurate as a professional broacdast monitor.
you could also directly connect a firewire monitor (or even camera) and set ae to monitor in a similar way as above.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
i think the easiest is to select the footage in the timeline. then choose layer>time>enable time remapping. this will add two keyframes to your footage, you won’t need to adjust those at all, but now you can drag the end (or out) point of the footage (not the keyframe) to the end of the composition. this hold your clip on the last frame of the animation.
if you needed to trim the end of the clip, and hold on an earlier frame, just add a keyframe to the time remap at that point. then delete the end keyframe and extend the end point of the clip to the end of the comp.
another way would be to render a still for the last frame, import it and place it under your clip, so when your clip ends, the still frame will become visible.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
in the comp, select the layer you want to replace. then, hold ‘option’ on mac (alt? maybe on pc) and, from the project window, drag the new footage/image into the comp. that should replace that layer witht he new one and keep all the effects and parameters of the previous one.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW