[Matthew Abourezk]

Thanks Kevin,

As usual, you are a great help.

Matt

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617

[Matthew Abourezk]

Heya BW,

I am having to build the animations (more than 100 of em, roughly 5 to 30 seconds long each) as separate items that will need to be timed to the on-camera spokesperson in FCP.

When editing the narrative (spokesperson) in FCP, we will be piecing together multiple wide, med, and close up video takes. I need the background to appear as wide shots, medium shots, and close-ups…. but I am not sure where when I am creating these animations..

I want the flexibility of being able to zoom in on the animation, not have to go back to the AE, tweak a timing for a second, then wait for three hours to render, every time I feel a creative need to make a small change to the narrative.

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617

[Matthew Abourezk]

Hey Kevin, thanks again for your input.

I have a workflow that sort of does the job. As you mentioned, just duplicating the CC Cylinder’d comp, blurring the duplicate, sliding it down to the floor area, reducing opacity, etc… seems to do the job well.

I just wish that I could pic-whip the rotation of CC Cylinder so any changes I make to keyframes in the main level are “reflected” (pun) in the duplicated level….

This will work for me, but it sure seems like there would be an easier answer… such as “Make a 3d floor and set the reflectivity to high”.

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617

[Matthew Abourezk]

Rats, doesn’t work for me. The problem is, the comp layer that I need to reflect is using the CCCylinder filter. As such, the back wall I am creating is curved, nearly half round. The preset doesn’t know what to do with that. It is only good on squared off items, sitting directly on the 3d floor….

Thanks for the heads up though, great page and site with a lot of helpful stuff.

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617

[Matthew Abourezk]

Excellent, will take a look. THanks a bunch,
Matt

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617

[Matthew Abourezk]

Okay, so I figured out an answer… sure seems like there would be a better method, but here is what I did…

Made a comp 9,000px x 500px.
Created 15 Solids, laid them side by side on the comp (with space between) and applied a mask to each.

Now, in the timeline, when I am ready to place pictures, I have to place a picture layer directly under a mask and define that mask as the TrkMat, using Alpha.

This gives me 15 unique masks in a single comp, allows me to resize and animate each of the 15 pictures (one under each mask), keeps alpha in tact between the masks, and there is no issue where one large image accidentally overlaps an ajoining mask.

Not only that, I have a template with 15 masks, so I can reuse this for the 300+ images that I need to show in the project.

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617

[Matthew Abourezk]

Hiya Bog… sorry if I was being vague.

I have poured through the manual and watched all of the Lynda.com AE tutorials on Masks and I can’t find an answer to this.

I will restate what I need, then further down I will elaborate on the situation.

What I need….
I need a single invisible layer in a huge comp that has 10 720 x 480 masks. Each mask will have about 10 pixels of space around it. Each mask will reveal a product photo from one of 10 layers below it. The problem is, I need to be able to animate the (extremely large) photos behind each mask window, without having the photo accidentally show up inside an adjacent mask. This project has about 300 images total that I need to animate on cue.

To elaborate/reiterate more…
I have a comp that is 5700px x 500px. The comp has a bunch of images on it. Each image “Frame” (Mask) is 720 x 480 and those dimensions cannot change. (The images themselves are much larger than 720 x 480, which is good because I need to animate a zoom in to each image without changing the frame size of 720 x 480)

The comp itself needs to be invisible. I will need to animate those images within their masks… (i.e. slow zoom in on the product, pan across an image, etc)

I know I am being fairly redundant…. any of this help paint the right picture?

Thanks in advance.

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617

[Matthew Abourezk]

Thanks all for the responses…..

One final round of questions then in regard to editing in HD and finishing (DVD) in SD.
This is something I could learn with experimenting but for the sake of my schedule, I will ask….

HD and SD are totally different height and width ratios. What is going to happen when I import my HD ref movie into DVDSP? Black bars at top and bottom? Everyone going to be short and fat?

And finally, if I stay within the safety zones in HD, will I be good to go when I change everything to SD?

Thanks again…

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617

[Matthew Abourezk]

Thanks guys,
I think my message gave you the wrong picture of what the issue is….

I am not done editing the video, I need to continue editing for another week or so, but I want to move the project into a SD timeline.

How would I go about doing that with minimal issues?

Thanks again,
Matt

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617

[Matthew Abourezk]

Help?… anyone?

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617