[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

HDCam is Sony’s professional level HD tape format. In the regular HDCam format, the video is stored in the 4:2:2 color space. It can be any number of frame rates; 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30 etc. The aspect ratio is 16×9 (1920×1080) although what is actually stored on tape is 1440×1080.

Basically you will need to get your animation on tape. You will need to check with a local post production house to see if they can put your spot on tape and if so, what codec do they need it in. If you are not in a major city with post production services, you may need to ship a firewire drive to a post house in L.A. or NY.

If they are using an Avid Nitris you will need the DNxHD codec

Here’s a link for it…

https://avidtechnology.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/avidtechnology.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=75079

If they will be using Final Cut, you will probably be best off rendering it out in the Uncompressed 422 codec. If they have a Kona system, here is a link for those codecs…

https://www.aja.com/html/support_kona3_swd.html

If you get it onto a firewire drive and over to the post house, they can put it on to tape. But be forewarned, HD tape is really expensive and there are a huge number of variables so make sure the post house is familiar with this sort of work before committing to using their services.

You should talk to a technician at the post house about all these variables to make sure that you are providing them with what they need so they can do the transfer properly.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

Right click on the pale gray field identifier row that contains the text “Source Name” etc. Make sure “Parent” is checked on under “Columns”. You may also have to hit the “Toggle Switches / Modes” button at the bottom of the time line.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

I don’t know about Maya (my version 6.5 won’t run on Leopard) but I haven’t had a problem with CS3 on either a laptop that was upgraded from 10.4 or on a MacPro with a clean install. I waited until 10.2, Adobe’s Leopard specific upgrades and the whole quicktime fiasco were over before upgrading, but in my experience, at this point, it’s okay to upgrade.

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

I assume your problem comes from the fact that NTSC monitors (excluding those in Japan) treat a pixel value of 16 as black baseline. This translates to 7.5 IRE on a waveform monitor. Full white is a pixel value of 235. You lose any details in any levels below 16 or above 235. An RGB monitor will display detail for the full range from 0 to 255.

The way this is normally dealt with is to work with the full 0 to 255 values in the computer, but then add an adjustment layer on top of everything as your last step before rendering with a “levels” effect where the output levels have been set to 16 and 235 for blacks and whites.

This will make your image look flat and muddy on a computer monitor, but will look right when displayed in NTSC. The good news for you is all you have to do is add the levels adjust and re-render specifically for NTSC output and you should be good to go.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

Topher’s description sounds like a likely way to do that effect.

One of the nice things about the CS3 Extended version of Photoshop is that you can open a quicktime file and work with it directly.

In older versions, exporting a tiff sequence and then working on that may be the best option.

When I have done line animations using footage as a reference, I have used ToonBoom which allows you to load in background footage to work over in a virtual light table. I don’t know if you can do as sophisticated a style of painting in ToonBoom so Photoshop would probably serve you better.

With this particular type of job a Wacom Cintiq monitor helps a lot.

Lars Jagatai Bunch
lars@larsbunch.com
http://www.larsbunch.com

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

Hold down the Option key (on a mac) (I assume it’s the ALT key on windows) while you drag the new footage from the project window to the layer you want to replace on the time line.

To replace the referenced file, highlight the image in the project window and use Command-H to replace footage.

I’m not sure if there is a way to do this with multple images at one time.

i hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

This isn’t exactly a similar comparison, but I have a G5 dual 2 GigHz tower at work and a MacBook (non-pro). I recently ran the same render on both the notebook and the tower and found the notebook rendered it about twice as fast. Obviously a MacPro tower can run faster with more memory, but if you don’t need a lot of memory for high powered rendering, the MacBook Pro offers a lot of great features such as FW800, full DVI output plus you can get an e-sata expansion card for the MB-Pros.

I guess my point is, the MacBook non-pro is pretty good for a lot things so I’m guessing the Pro version is even better. If portability is important, then the notebook is an ideal system. And if you run software that only allows installs on one system, (such as Maya) then you aren’t limited to only working on it at one location.

My one dislike about working on a notebook is the limited screen size. I use two monitors on both my systems, but I still want more space.

I guess the real question is do you need a huge load of memory and will you want to use expansion cards (such as a Kona or a Fibre channel card?) or is portability more valuable to you. At any rate, the MacBook Pro can do a lot of pretty robust AE work.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

1. Drop Frame TC keeps accurate time, but is inaccurate in absolute count of frames. Non-Drop Frame TC does not keep accurate time (it drifts a little over time) but it’s absolute frame count is accurate. So if you are cutting for broadcast, where knowing exactly how long your project really is is critical, then you use DF. But if you are cutting for eventual conform to film or exactly accurate time isn’t critical, then NDF is better. I prefer NDF because I’ve never been too keen on being on time.

2. The frame rate should be 29.976. This is the most accurate representation, but all these fractional numbers are referring to the same frame rate so you shouldn’t run into any problems no matter which you set it to. But as I’ve said, time isn’t a big deal for me so take that with a grain of salt.

3. If I remember right, the PD-150 doesn’t shoot 24fps so there will be no pull down to remove. The only time you would remove a pull down is on material that has been shot at 24fps but then interpolated up to 30fps.

4. I wouldn’t change any frame rates. If your final project is to be finished in PAL, but you are shooting in NTSC, you would be better off doing all your work in NTSC and only when you have a finished version, convert to PAL. That said, PAL is a better format than NTSC and if you could work in PAL, you’d probably be happier with the final results. Unfortunately NTSC means more frames per second to work with, but if you change frame rates back and forth, you’ll end up with weird, stuttery motion artifacts.

5. I can’t advise on ProRes422, but that won’t stop me anyway. If you are shooting with a PD-150, anything you do with the image afterwards can’t be much worse. Obviously working uncompressed preserves as much of your image quality as possible so you should use that codec for intermediate work. But once you have a final color corrected project that doesn’t need further adjustment, you’d probably be fine with a compressed codec. For example, shooting in DVCam isn’t a problem so long as you nail your exposures and don’t need to do much color or levels adjustments. But if you do need to modify the image, DVCam falls apart very quickly. I hear ProRess422 is pretty good so my guess is you’d be fine with it as a final delivery format, but it could be harder to work with in intermediate stages.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

A real simple approach is a combination of roughen edges (to get a more random edge quality) combined with using a “simple choker” effect. Set the matte choker border to a high number so that the material to be bled in is gone and then animate its value to a lower number so it seems to bleed on. Use a blending mode such as darken or overlay to have it pick up background texture.

I suppose this could be pre-comped with further masks to more specifically control where and when the “ink” bleeds on.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

Ideally you should create the HD comp first, render that and then drop it into an NTSC comp afterward.

But if you’ve already created the NTSC comp and need to resize to HD, you may have a lot of work ahead of you. It is possible you could get away with dropping your NTSC comp into an HD comp and hit the “continuously rasterize” switch, but this only works for pretty simple situations and it can defeat certain effects.

I get the impression you’ve already finished the NTSC version, but if you are just getting started, the following might help…

The simple answer is assuming you just need an NTSC version of the HD, all you really have to do is create and render the animation in HD and then bring it back into AE and drop it into an NTSC comp and render that.

But…

If your frame rate is 24fps, this is not a bit deal if you don’t mind the 3/2 pull down that gets added when converting to 30fps interlaced. Generally this isn’t objectionable since people are used to that look.

There is the problem of 16×9 vs. 4×3. If you need a 4×3 version, the simplest solution is to protect the sides of the frame in HD so that when you crop them off, you don’t lose anything critical. For example don’t extend and text or important image elements beyond that 4×3 space. The problem here is that it scarifies optimum composition for flexibility. If the company doesn’t need 4×3, then there’s no problem.

Of course the alternative is to create a version with framing for 4×3. You can keep it in HD so as to not have to deal with resizing everything, but then drop that comp into a 4×3 NTSC comp. Of course being HD, your render will be longer, but probably not as long as resizing everything.

There is also the issue of proper levels for broadcast NTSC vs. HD. Again, it is better to start in the broader color space of HD and downconvert to NTSC setting black to 16 and white to 235 for output to video.

But if you’ve already finished the NTSC version, I don’t know that there’s much else to do but go through the tedious task of rebuilding it in HD.

If anyone else has any suggestions I’d like to hear them too.

Hope this helps,

Lars