Matt Shadis
Forum Replies Created
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For me it’s the flexibility that After Effects offers. I can output to a wider array of formats in AE than either Apple app. While I use all three regularly, I find that AE is better for finish work. It always seems I need to output for TV, web, phones, etc, in a variety of formats that Compressor doesn’t support natively.
Also, Compressor can’t join two different files together, AE can (so can QT Pro and FCP, of course), Compressor can’t add letterboxing or pillar boxing (at least Compressor 2 can’t, haven’t used FCS2). But really they all three have their strengths and it depends on what you need. I wouldn’t run something through AE just for the sake of it, at the end of the day it’s just another tool in the tool box.
-Matt
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Hey Lauren – Unfortunately, no, I haven’t been able to totally solve this issue. The only way I’ve been able to get around it is to use a different computer. With my dual 2ghz G5 I get the audio issue when I capture (the same machine that allows me to capture uncompressed 10-bit through my AJA IoLA with no problems) and get that audio problem. I tried it in a different workstation (a Mac Pro four core 2.6ghz) and it worked fine. Since then we’ve just been using that station as our capture station.
The issue must be something with my machine and not with the camera, but what that issue is I don’t know 🙁 If anyone has any ideas I’d love to hear them. Take care.
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ahh, fantastic, that is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks 🙂
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also start using layer styles to get the ‘shine’ of blood or ink, as well as the illusion that your splats are in 3D. Make your splats as detailed above and then use Bevel and Emboss (in Layer Styles) to give them some depth. Add a touch of drop shadow and you are set. The nice thing about this is that you can continue to draw on the layer and everything new you draw will also be beveled and shadowed.
-Matt
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ok, I know you gave up but there is a way easier way to do all of this, it’s a feature of Photoshop that many people don’t seem to know about and is made just for your case.
Take the line art layer and place it above the gradient layer.
Double click to the right of the line art layers name in the layers palette, just that blank white space that is there. This will open Layer Styles.
In the layer styles dialog you should be on the section labeled ‘Blending Options:Default’. If not, just click there in the left column.
In that portion of the dialog at the bottom there is a section labeled ‘Blend If: Gray’ below this are two sliders.
In the first slider (labeled ‘This Layer’) grab the white triangle and move it to the left.
Poof! All the white is now transparent. You may have some gray around the edges of your line art so hold down the Option key (Alt on a PC) and grab that same white triangle again, now it will break into two parts. Adjust these as needed until your lines look smooth and contain only the parts you want.
Some levels may help here as well if you can’t get any of the fringing off, just eliminate the white in levels and you should be cool.
Hope this helps.
-Matt
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…”Once you label me, you negate me…”
heh, too true 🙂 Some good suggestions, I like ‘Senior Cinematic Sorcerer’, which might have worked prior to our more ‘corporate’ work environment that is being cultivated (still pretty loose though, really. So long as no one takes away my dark cave-like work environment I don’t care what happens on the other side of the door, lol)
I’m thinking something along the lines of ‘Lead Media Producer’ might work well. It does a pretty good job of describing what I do, but is still fairly vague. Also goes well with my boss two levels up who is ‘Director of Media & Technology’.
Still open to any other suggestions, but thanks to the folks above who replied 🙂
-Matt
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Wow – beautiful work man. Can’t wait to give some of these tools a shoot. I’ve got some experimentation time coming up and I’ll be checking out all your tools. Thanks again.
-Matt
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hmm, don’t think I tried the select all method, but I ended up just importing the second project into the first, then re-editing the .psd file into multiple files, one for each layer, then manually assigning them to each track as needed. A PITA to be sure, but it worked.
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If I were able to recieve the tracks as AIFF files, how would I go about maintaining sync with the video? I don’t believe that AIFF would have any sync built-in, correct? I could sync it up by hand, but it seems that it would be more reliable to have some kind of hard wired sync, perhaps a seventh audio track as the sync track, or is there some other way?
Also on the MPEG encoding side of things – I’m pretty certain we are going to go with the Optibase card, my only question here is the encoding (technically transcoded) of assets outside of the film itself. Things like motion menus and so forth, would these need to be transcoded in a different app? Likely I would use Compressor for this task, although I am a bit wary as I’ve heard the MPEG-2 encoding in Compressor is a bit spotty. Truthfully though, I’ve used the MPEG encoding on some smaller projects without issue, however I’d like to maintain the same level of quality throughout the disc. One thing that irritates me a bit about some discs is the film itself may be encoded just fine, but then the extras or stills or what not have cleary been encoded poorly. Thanks again for all your help.
-Matt
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Excellent – thanks for the advice, you’ve really cleared some things up for me.
How is the audio normally dealt with in regards to 5.1 encoding? That is if I recieve the digibeta and a DA-88 tape I would need what kind of audio hardware? Obviously I would need a DA-88/98/HR/etc for playback, and then I would like to go out TDIF in order to maintain the digital flow and then into what? Is there an audio interface for the mac that has TDIF straight in? Or would I need to go through a digital mixer (say an 02R) and then out multichannel AES/EBU into an audio interface that is capable of receiving multichannel AES/EBU. Which I can do, but it seems a rather elaborate (and relatively expensive) purchase to buy an expensive mixer just to leave it zeroed all the time and used solely as a TDIF to AES/EBU converter, which I suppose is what I would need. I’ve looked at a number of sites and have yet to see an interface that supports TDIF directly, outside of the one of the cinewave cards, which I think would put me outside my budget (as if purchasing a multchannel digital audio setup wouldn’t, but I digress… :).
What is the likelyhood that I would be able to get the 5/6 audio tracks as aiff/wave/PCM files, rather than on tape? This would be ideal and would greatly simplfy things, is this something most restoration houses are willing to do?
Also – if I am not going to be using an external hardware dolby encoder, then it would make no sense for me to get the DE model of the optibase card (the DE has the 5.1 pass-through) and just stick with the SDI, which is $500 less.
Many thanks again!
-Matt