[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

I could be wrong here, but I vaguely remember there being a bug in one version of some of the plugins where this would happen. It may be that you just need to make sure you have the latest version. (Hopefully this will not require a paid upgrade.)

Of course the Key code could be the issue, but that wouldn’t explain why it happens 10% of the time and only very faintly.

If you figure it out, please let us know so as to add to the general pool of knowledge.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

It sound like you need to use the image processing feature in Syntheyes to do your stabilization. Once you have tracked your shot, and have made sure you don’t have any trackers that have gone haywire, hit the “p” key and that will open the image processing window.

Select the Stabilize tab and you will probably want to set Translation and Rotation to filter. Cut Freq. affects how much smoothing is done.

Then select the output tab and save it as a quicktime or a file sequence. I believe you then have to hit the Apply to Trackers button to make sure the trackers in your camera data reflect the newly stabilized footage rather than the original footage. You will then need to export a new .ma file for importing into AE.

The stabilized footage and the .ma file should match and you can then use those trackers to lock object to your ground plane.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

It sound like you need to use the image processing feature in Syntheyes to do your stabilization. Once you have tracked your shot, and have made sure you don’t have any trackers that have gone haywire, hit the “p” key and that will open the image processing window.

Select the Stabilize tab and you will probably want to set Translation and Rotation to filter. Cut Freq. affects how much smoothing is done.

Then select the output tab and save it as a quicktime or a file sequence. I believe you then have to hit the Apply to Trackers button to make sure the trackers in your camera data reflect the newly stabilized footage rather than the original footage. You will then need to export a new .ma file for importing into AE.

The stabilized footage and the .ma file should match and you can then use those trackers to lock object to your ground plane.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

I have to agree with Joey, that’s a lot for one post.

Anyway, from what I saw of the video, most of the obvious effects work is done using a 3D program for generating the landscape plus perhaps motion control or fairly intensive match moving software to track the musicians into the 3D world.

The sand storm was probably done in a 3D program although you could get a similar effect from Trapcode’s Particular.

Obviously everything ends up in a compositor program like AE down the line. Generally you don’t composite in the 3D software (despite Blender’s insistence that you can). It is better to use programs that are optimized for a particular task and 3D is good for creating 3D stuff, but a compositor is better at merging images and blending them to appear to be a single shot.

It’s a good goal to work toward, but a video like that certainly involves many people with a lot of experience, so I wouldn’t worry too much if you can’t pull off something that looks like it on your first try.

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

Yeah, it’s pretty annoying. You can get a free upgrade for some of the plug-ins where there haven’t been any significant changes from the pre-leopard versions. But you will have to pay for upgrades on a few of them.

I was a bit taken by surprise by this and frankly was pretty annoyed at how Reg Giant/Trapcode seems to be handling it, but I guess that’s the way of the world.

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

Synthetic Aperture’s “Test Gear” would be ideal, having a slice tool as part of the set, although I don’t know that it has been released for CS3 yet. I used it briefly under AE7 but once I upgraded to CS3 it no longer worked. I’m still waiting for the new version to become available.

https://www.synthetic-ap.com/products/tg/index.html

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

I have done variations on this technique. Basically you export a file sequence of your reference movie and then use that to draw over in a program like ToonBoom.

You can do much the same thing in Photohsop CS3 Extended. Open the quicktime file in PS and draw over it. Obviously you might want to export a reference movie that runs at 4 frames per second if you are going for the choppy feeling of the Juno titles. This sort of thing works best if you work with a tablet or Cintiq monitor.

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

For Nucleo Pro to render using all processors, you need to shut off multi-processing in AE’s preferences.

I have a system with pretty much the same specs as yours and using Nucleo, I am able to use all 8 cores. Apparently you can reduce the number of cores Nucleo uses in its preferences so you may want to check to see that this is set to use all cores. (although when I have tried to do this, I have not seen any change in cpu usage – it still uses all 8 cores) You may want to check on Gridiron’s site for further information.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

This is very weird and I’m not sure what is going on.

One way to deal with the issue might be to render out a Tiff file sequence. This avoids the whole codec thing and there should be no problem reading the tiff files on either system. Once you get the sequence to the final computer, you can render it out as a Quicktime with whatever codec you need. I’ll admit this isn’t a great way to work, but it might help you deliver what you need.

I would suggest doing a short test of a perhaps a second worth of video just to make sure it’s working. If it doesn’t, there may be bigger problems between your systems.

Are both your windows and mac versions of Quicktime at the same version number? I don’t see how this could create the problem, but it’s possible. Another approach might be to render an AVI file for going to Windows, but since AVI is a lot like quicktime, you still might run into codec issues.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

If you are using CS3 (AE 8) you should be able to set it to use multiple processors in preferences. I could be wrong here, but my understanding is that earlier versions only use a single core. Also the amount of memory you have available per core is a critical factor when using more than one processor. I would shoot for at least 2 gigs per core.

I prefer using Gridiron’s Nucleo Pro since that allows me to use multiple cores for rendering in the background and leaves AE free to continue working in the foreground. But here, you have to deactivate multicore rendering in AE’s preferences.

If you like to do things the difficult way, you could set up your output to render to an image sequence and then, working in the command line, manually fire up the command line renderer four times, with each instance set to render every forth frame and starting on frame 1, 2, 3, and 4. I don’t know that there is a way to force them to use a specific core here… my guess is the OS would handle distributing the processes. In any case, this is how I did things until I got Nucleo.

Hope this helps,

Lars