Matt Silverman
Forum Replies Created
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Make the type really small in AE, precompose it so it is a bitmap, then scale this layer up a few hundred percent. It will anti-alias and blur since it is using bi-linear interpolation. To get it to be aliased, switch the layer’s quality to draft and it will do nearest neighbor sampling and give you what you are looking for. Then render using Current settings so this layer remains aliased.
-Matt
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In the comp’s tab, select “new comp viewer”. Then drag this comp viewer over to the side to tab it next to the other comp viewer.
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You could paint it out frame by frame, but chances are this will not be consistent. Instead you should always try to comp it out first. AE can not track masks without a work-around. Here is how I do this. There might be simpler ways, but this is similar to how I do it in flame and gives you a lot of control.
1 – Add footage to the comp and duplicate it. Shy or hide the bottom layer for later use.
2 – Track the four dots as RAW data on the non-hidden layer. Do not “Apply” the tracker.
3- When it finishes tracking select the layer and hit the U key to expose all keyframes. You only need the “Attach Point” keyframes, so you can click on the stopwatches to trash all keys in the “feature Center” and “Confidence” channels. Then hit the U key to close it, then again to only reveal attach point keys.
4 – Create a new Solid any color and set the opacity to 20%.
5 – Create a circular mask outside of the top right marker.
6 – Go to the position channel on the solid and option-click to set an expression.
7 – Pickwhip to the “Attach Point” on the top right tracker. This will write the expression for you to link the position of this layer to the position of the tracker, causing the layer’s centerpoint to offset.
8 – In the expression generated, add the words “value +” (do not type the quotes) at the beginning of the expression. This allows you to offset or keyframe the offset of the layer while still using the tracking data.
9 – Move the layer back into place so the mask is correct on the top right.
10 – Make three more solids and repeat steps 5 – 9 on each.
11 – After the four solid layers have masks tracking around the dots, bring their opacity back up to 100%
12 – PreComp the four solids and make sure to include the footage layer with the tracking data.
13 – Turn the visibility back on for the bottom layer original clip you hid and duplicate it.
14 – On the second layer add an Alpha Inverted Track Matte (hit F4 to switch to modes). Turn the visibility off on the bottom layer and you will now see holes cut where the four tracking marks were located.
15 – Turn the bottom layer’s visibility back on and slide the position of this bottom layer to an offset patch of skin to fill in the holes.
16 – Go back into the precomp and adjust the mask feathering and expansion so the skin blends together in the main comp.
17 – Color Correct the BG layer if necassary to deal with differences in skintone. Levels and Hue/Sat should take care of this.For this shot, you might need to do a separate comp pass for each dot in order to get the ideal patch of skin for each corner. Get the top right looking perfect, then precomp everything in the main comp and start over with this precomp to tackle the upper left, etc.
-Matt Silverman
Phoenix Designs
San Francisco -
You could paint it out frame by frame, but chances are this will not be consistent. Instead you should always try to comp it out first. AE can not track masks without a work-around. Here is how I do this. There might be simpler ways, but this is similar to how I do it in flame and gives you a lot of control.
1 – Add footage to the comp and duplicate it. Shy or hide the bottom layer for later use.
2 – Track the four dots as RAW data on the non-hidden layer. Do not “Apply” the tracker.
3- When it finishes tracking select the layer and hit the U key to expose all keyframes. You only need the “Attach Point” keyframes, so you can click on the stopwatches to trash all keys in the “feature Center” and “Confidence” channels. Then hit the U key to close it, then again to only reveal attach point keys.
4 – Create a new Solid any color and set the opacity to 20%.
5 – Create a circular mask outside of the top right marker.
6 – Go to the position channel on the solid and option-click to set an expression.
7 – Pickwhip to the “Attach Point” on the top right tracker. This will write the expression for you to link the position of this layer to the position of the tracker, causing the layer’s centerpoint to offset.
8 – In the expression generated, add the words “value +” (do not type the quotes) at the beginning of the expression. This allows you to offset or keyframe the offset of the layer while still using the tracking data.
9 – Move the layer back into place so the mask is correct on the top right.
10 – Make three more solids and repeat steps 5 – 9 on each.
11 – After the four solid layers have masks tracking around the dots, bring their opacity back up to 100%
12 – PreComp the four solids and make sure to include the footage layer with the tracking data.
13 – Turn the visibility back on for the bottom layer original clip you hid and duplicate it.
14 – On the second layer add an Alpha Inverted Track Matte (hit F4 to switch to modes). Turn the visibility off on the bottom layer and you will now see holes cut where the four tracking marks were located.
15 – Turn the bottom layer’s visibility back on and slide the position of this bottom layer to an offset patch of skin to fill in the holes.
16 – Go back into the precomp and adjust the mask feathering and expansion so the skin blends together in the main comp.
17 – Color Correct the BG layer if necassary to deal with differences in skintone. Levels and Hue/Sat should take care of this.For this shot, you might need to do a separate comp pass for each dot in order to get the ideal patch of skin for each corner. Get the top right looking perfect, then precomp everything in the main comp and start over with this precomp to tackle the upper left, etc.
-Matt Silverman
Phoenix Designs
San Francisco -
Golden Rule? Never heard of it. I make 255RGB whites all the time which get laid off to digibeta for broadcast. Never had a problem… Digital white is 255, and we master to a digital format, so this is really a non-issue. Digital cards can not output illegal luma anyway.
The big question asked seems to definitely be a bug with FCP or the codec.
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If you are using Knoll Flare, you can parent a small solid to your light (or six solids to make a cube if you are doing heavy camera moves). Then duplicate this comp and turn everything off but the solids. Precompose, then use Knoll LFP Spectacular to make your flares jump to the alphas of the solids. The latest version has the ability to use the alpha’s grayscale to dictate flare size, so you can use Depth Cue’s Fog to generate this gray value and get some very realistic lighting effects.
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If you are using Knoll Flare, you can parent a small solid to your light (or six solids to make a cube if you are doing heavy camera moves). Then duplicate this comp and turn everything off but the solids. Precompose, then use Knoll LFP Spectacular to make your flares jump to the alphas of the solids. The latest version has the ability to use the alpha’s grayscale to dictate flare size, so you can use Depth Cue’s Fog to generate this gray value and get some very realistic lighting effects.
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To do it right, you need to use a light probe on the NTSC. Sony BVM’s have an optional probe which plugs into the monitor. Lower end models like PVM’s need to use a very expensive light probe. We hire an engineer to do this every few months.
I leave my cinema displays at their factory settings, and only judge color on the NTSC. This allows stuff going out to broadcast to be as close as possible, and stuff ending up on LCDs will be close to what other users will see on their LCD (same for the plasmas in our suites)… if you calibrate your LCD you will never know what someone else will see on their LCD. The only reason to calibrate an LCD is if you are working with print, in which case the spyder is good.
-Matt
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In after Effects, makes sure that you choose “BlackMagic 10bit”, and not BlackMagic10bit (DV10) or RGB.
In FCP make sure that your sequence settings have “Uncompressed 10bit selected.
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The main reason most pro-tools folks are not upgrading to OSX is because they are stealing all of their plug-ins and do not want to have to buy the new OSX versions. I hear this all the time from audio folks, including one person I know who owns a company that does sound design on features and has an academy award. It’s just wrong…
-Matt