[Kevin Reiner]

Oh, and don’t forget this:

Each station wants your spot a little different. Some want exactly 30 seconds, some want an extra frame at the top and bottom, many want the file name a certain way. One of mine even wants 8 seconds of slate and 2 seconds of black before the spot (which, to me, is a huge waste of data space on their end.)

Its a bit of work to get it all figured out, but once you get it down, it can be pretty well automated.

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SOFTWARE
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[Kevin Reiner]

To expand upon what Todd has said, you must ask each station what their specs are. They should have a spec sheet with size, codec, audio settings etc. We export to about 25 stations in our region and I see everything from DV to HDV to mpeg to .h264 to DVCproHD. It seems like .h264 is winning the format battle, but each station is still different.

This being an After Effects forum, I must also advise you not to export out of AE to each codec that you need. AE is not a compression application. Export a high quality master file (ProRes HQ 422 is a good one) and then use a compression application to make all your broadcast versions. I use Episode and have a watch folder that automatically creates the correct files for that station and then uploads it to their FTP site.

Good luck,
Reiner

PS If they say, “just send us a quicktime movie” then ask to speak to the person who loads the spots.

Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
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Dell Display (23″ flat panel)
ATI Radeon HD 5770
AJA Kona LSi SD/HD capture card
Rourke 16 TB
Flanders 2460

SOFTWARE
Mac OS X 10.6.5
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After Effects CS5
Boris Continuum
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[Kevin Reiner]

Good to hear Brian,

Makes my upgrade decision earlier. As far as multiprocessing, does AE 6 do all of the guesswork for you in regards to preferences?

I just finished a huge project with AE5 that was helped tremendously by multiprocessing, but at times I felt I was spending more time figuring out the optimal preference settings rather than creating.

Thanks,
Reiner

Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
32GB Memory
Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
Dell Display (23″ flat panel)
ATI Radeon HD 5770
AJA Kona LSi SD/HD capture card
Rourke 16 TB
Flanders 2460

SOFTWARE
Mac OS X 10.6.5
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After Effects CS5
Boris Continuum
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All Trapcode Plugs
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[Kevin Reiner]

Just saved my butt a lot of time as well. Thanks. Never knew about the “add to” feature.

Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
32GB Memory
Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
Dell Display (23″ flat panel)
ATI Radeon HD 5770
AJA Kona LSi SD/HD capture card
Rourke 16 TB
Flanders 2460

SOFTWARE
Mac OS X 10.6.5
FCP 7
After Effects CS5
Boris Continuum
Sapphire Plug Ins
All Trapcode Plugs
Zaxwerks Invig

[Kevin Reiner]

Instead of animating the expand mask setting, I would actually animate the shape of the mask over time. Perhaps more than one mask to make it seem more random.

Make a small mask in the middle of the circle. Instead of just a simple circle mask, adjust the points to encircle the parts of the image. Then go to the end of your animation and actually stretch out the mask until the image is totally revealed. Do a preview and adjust and make more mask path keyframes throughout the animation as you see fit. Then play with amount of feather (which can also be keyframed if needed). You will probably need to fade on the opacity at the very beginning of this animation.

Not a difficult animation to accomplish, but kind of hard to describe.

Good luck,
Reins

Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
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Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
Dell Display (23″ flat panel)
ATI Radeon HD 5770
AJA Kona LSi SD/HD capture card
Rourke 16 TB
Flanders 2460

SOFTWARE
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FCP 7
After Effects CS5
Boris Continuum
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Zaxwerks Invig

[Kevin Reiner]

I suppose my tri-state area would be Nebraska-Iowa-South Dakota. Its a big area, but not many motion graphic tradeshows. 😉

I used to fly to various conventions, but I can find most stuff online. If they are accessible to you though, I see their worth. What are you trying to get out of them?

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Dell Display (23″ flat panel)
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Flanders 2460

SOFTWARE
Mac OS X 10.6.5
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[Kevin Reiner]

Thanks Roland,

I was going down the same path as you suggested. I can control the speed of the clips in their precomps with a slider effect in a separate control comp. The problem then is rendering out each clip at its new length. I still have to manually set that. Not sure if there is a way to automate comp length to match new clip length.

-Kevin

Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
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Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
Dell Display (23″ flat panel)
ATI Radeon HD 5770
AJA Kona LSi SD/HD capture card
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Flanders 2460

SOFTWARE
Mac OS X 10.6.5
FCP 7
After Effects CS5
Boris Continuum
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Zaxwerks Invig

[Kevin Reiner]

In the options panel of the AE tracker I used Luminance, Track fields on, subpixel on, adapt feature on, process before checked with a blur of 2.

I selected the burnt end to track. It seemed to track decently to me, but I also didn’t try to apply anything to the track, so who know. I had to do some manual adjustments when it lost its way.

Good luck and thanks for the odd post.

Kevin

Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
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Dell Display (23″ flat panel)
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Flanders 2460

SOFTWARE
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[Kevin Reiner]

Have you tried the de-spliffing plugin from Red Giant?

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

No matter what – you are looking at a lot of work here to get it done. I got AE’s tracker to track it pretty well, but your problem will be what do you replace it with? Removing it completely means rebuilding the palm of his hand. For a quick fix you may have to fuzz it out. You probably hate the sound of that, but it is the easiest solution.

The only other thing I can think of is to replace it with something else of a similar size. That is a big joint so it couldn’t just be a pencil. Maybe a remote control or a rolled up magazine? It would be hard to make it look realistic.

Wish I had a better answer for you.

Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
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Dell Display (23″ flat panel)
ATI Radeon HD 5770
AJA Kona LSi SD/HD capture card
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Flanders 2460

SOFTWARE
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Boris Continuum
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[Kevin Reiner]

I’ve been using AE for over 10 years and would consider myself very knowledgeable of its abilities. That being said, I know 20, maybe 30 percent of all its capabilities. Not because I can’t understand things, but because they don’t apply to my needs.

Like Dave said, learn the basics – the technical ins-and-outs of dealing with the application. Then, every job that you do, you’ll learn a little more.

To punish myself, I’ll occasionally look at projects from a couple years back and realize how dumb I was for doing things certain ways. On some projects that might have taken me a week, I could probably kick out in a half a day now. The thing is, in 5 years I’ll be saying the same thing about projects I’m doing right now.

Honestly, the COW has been my biggest help. Just make sure you search for the answer before asking it. If one more person says that they render to .h264, I am going to pull my hair out (uh oh, too late)

Best of luck to you,
Reiner

Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
32GB Memory
Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
Dell Display (23″ flat panel)
ATI Radeon HD 5770
AJA Kona LSi SD/HD capture card
Rourke 16 TB
Flanders 2460

SOFTWARE
Mac OS X 10.6.5
FCP 7
After Effects CS5
Boris Continuum
Sapphire Plug Ins
All Trapcode Plugs
Zaxwerks Invig