Matt Davis
Forum Replies Created
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If your layers have their 3D buttons toggled and the camera still takes up the whole comp…
Make sure that:
– your jungle comp is at 100% scale
– The view at the bottom of your comp window is set to Active Camera.A less sophisticated way to make sure that your camera is only showing 1920×1080 (maybe other people have a more elegant way) is bring in a still or video clip that you know to be 1920×1080, make it 3D, make sure it’s at 100% scale and then adjust the camera until it is exactly lined up.
Keep in mind that this test layer should be at the same Z position as the larger jungle piece.
Sorry for the delay in responses I was away on vacation for a bit.
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More than one way to skin a cat as they say.
If you position the footage over the tv screen for a single frame (whatever frame is easy for you to do so), so that at that one frame it is correctly positioned, and THEN parent it to the null it will move with the null from that starting point.
Once it’s parented to the null it matches the motion (scale, position, etc) relative to the frame you were on when you parented it.
Glad you got it fixed anyway, this is another way that should work.
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Isaiah – Have you had any luck? Need any further assistance?
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Is it possible the layers in your comp don’t have the 3D switch toggled?
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Strange. Are you sure you have it selected?
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Have you ever used this camera before? Did you encounter problems?
Is there any difference in how the nanoflash and the camera record the footage? What sort of files do they output?
My blunt instrument solution to this isn’t elegant, but if they work in FinalCut, then I’d say bring them into FinalCut and if you’d rather work in Premiere then export out of Final Cut into something you can work with in Premiere.
One thing: maybe bring one clip from the nanoflash along for the ride to Final Cut. Drag it down to your timeline alone first. If you get the message telling you the settings of the timeline don’t match the clip agree to change the settings of the sequence to match the clip. THEN bring in your camera footage. Render if need be and export.
But that’s my “I don’t understand the problem but I’m tired and want to get on with working” solution. 🙂
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We demoed the PMW-200 and we’re going to go with it.
We did a pretty thorough examination of it, tried matching footage to our PMW-350, actually got a chance to bring it out on a shoot while we had it.
We were very pleased with. Few small things: It always seems to get a slightly different white balance than our larger camera. To be expected I supposed, but if the 350 got a value of 3200K then the 200 got 3400K.
The other thing is that it’s default recording format was 1440×1080 rather than 1920×1080. Which is not a big deal, but it was a tricky trek through the menus to find where to change that setting. Took me about 40 minutes and 6 google searches to finally sort it out.
That said, the footage looks great and we’re quite excited to get our own.
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In general terms there are several techniques that jump to mind that you might use.
For me, I’d likely use a mix of lighting effects in AFX and practical lighting on set. Rather than have a lighting effect created in AFX, why not have a real light? Especially since you plan on having movement from the actors and camera. That way your light source is fixed throughout your scenes. Just be careful that you don’t create shadows with your camera person or turn too far around and see the light on the stand. Unless you have a plan for that.
You’ll also likely want to do some green screen and/or sky replacement to get the shots with the anomaly off in the distance.
For the anomaly itself there any number of techniques that might give you an interesting effect, depending on what you’re looking for and how far off and big this thing is supposed to be.
Sounds like a fun project.
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I agree with the other advice provided already.
And you’re off to a great start! The best way to learn is to do. I also learned a lot of tricks from Video Co-Pilot and from these forums, but where I’ve learned the most is from DOING stuff.
I took an advanced three day course in After Effects and learned next to nothing. I spent one afternoon making one of my friends shoot lightning from his hands at my other friend in AFX and learned a TON.
So take your camera out and goof around with your friends, your siblings, or even your Mom! Even if it’s just a half-baked 10 second effects idea with no story or script.
The first effects shot I ever did was when I was 19 with a point and shoot still consumer still camera that happened to shoot video. I shot my friend pretending to shoot a fireball from his hands, Street Fighter style. I spent hours playing with the footage and in the end it looked pretty sweet.
Shoot something and then see what you can make out of it. Learn from what went wrong. How could you make it easier next time? What solutions did you have to find that you can add to your tool box for next time?
Seek advice when you need it, but stumble around for yourself and see what you can work out.
Have fun!
Matt
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Hi Alex,
For me, it would depend on how fast and erratic your butterfly’s motion is and how closely you want to track it. If the motion isn’t too erratic and the butterfly isn’t too big in the frame you could just create a 1920×1080 composition, add a camera to that layer, then add your larger junglescape to that comp. Then just keyframe the position of your junglescape background to keep the butterfly sufficiently in frame.
If you require something more precise…
You could motion track the butterfly, map it to a null layer then parent a camera to the null layer. The only thing I’m not 100% sure of then is that the camera would be showing you 1920×1080. Maybe if you created the camera in a 1920×1080 comp and copied it over to the larger comp?