[Mike]

Do you mean you’re streaming your ioHD output through Skype?? Very sweet!!

[Mike]

Yup. Makes perfect sense. Thanks very much.

[Mike]

Thanks Jeremy-

A followup question: The scope of the project has actually changed and the shooting will now only be done at 59.94. On my Kona 2 settings in Final Cut, I don’t see a “Varicam” setup for 59.94 – I only see it for 23.98. Am I okay to use the Kona 2 – 720P Uncompressed 10 Bit 59.94 easy setup? Or is there a setup that I’m missing? Also, I’m assuming that I will now just be capturing everything at 59.94 and keeping it in a 59.94 timeline? Is this correct?

[Mike]

There’s no way to use Quicktime as your QC monitor. The way that video can appear in a Quicktime window can vary depending on many things and if you are in fact interlacing, Quicktime will never be able to properly display your scroll. You definitely are going to need to look at the scroll on an HD monitor to see if there’s any problem at all. You might find that everything is perfect when output properly so get this movie loaded into Final Cut ASAP and check it out! Good luck!

[Mike]

I find that for compositions like you’re describing it is very difficult to create the type of speed ramps that you’re talking about by simply keyframing AE’s camera on it’s own. What I’d recommend doing is creating a smooth camera move that covers all of the action that you need and then pre-comp your entire composition and use time remapping to take care of all the speed-ups and slow-downs. Treat it as if you were editing a real world shoot with an overcranked camera instead of trying to manually keyframe every change in velocity for the 3D camera because it will likely never give you perfectly smooth results. I find for large 3D scenes, time remapping creates very smooth ramps and gives me a much better feel overall. Good luck!

[Mike]

Thanks guys – I appreciate both of your replies. Just out of curiousity, in what scenario would you ever want to use a 24-bit pre-multiplied RGB image? It seems that you would always want to be rendering straight RGB with a corresponding alpha if you want the correct results.

[Mike]

Very interesting Gary…..great food for thought. To continue the discussion – is 720P a truly progressive format? When I output a sequence from my Kona 2 that was shot on a Varicam at 23.98 is it being sent out 24P or 48i? What about for Varicam footage shot at 59.94? Just curious……

[Mike]

The quickest way I know of to achieve this effect is with either Tinderbox or Sapphire. These plug-ins have lens blurs that will bloom the highlights as you defocus which will simulate a true camera lens. There are also more specific settings for diaphragm shape and chromatic aberration that can help you fine tune this effect.

[Mike]

So as long as the footage is shot properly at 29.97psf, what capture setting should I be using with the Kona 2 when the only options for 29.97 appear to be 1080i? I’m trying to keep everything in the progressive world if possible. Why is there no 1080psf option on the Kona 2 with a frame rate of 29.97?? I’m not just talking about easy setup because I can obviously make my own, but 29.97psf does not even seem to be a frequency that can be set for playback through the K2. What would be the reason for this?

[Mike]

This is what I’ve done to achieve this effect before:

1. Create a layer with your type.
2. Create a grey solid and make a thin rectangular mask in the shape you want for the cursor.
3. Create a white solid and make a rectangular mask that starts just to the left of your cursor and has enough width and height to cover up all of your text (you are going to use this as a track matte to reveal your text)
4. Parent the white solid to the cursor.
5. Move the cursor layer (which now has the white solid parented to it) to the beginning of your text line.
6. Create position keyframes for the cursor just after each letter of text and space the keyframes to whatever length of time feels good to you to have the line typed.
7. Turn each keyframe into a hold keyframe so that After Effects won’t interpolate any of the inbetween movement, but will just snap the cursor layer to each keyframe position.
8. Lastly – place your white solid layer above your text layer and turn on alpha matte for the text layer.

Since the text will be revealed by the white track matte layer and each of your keyframes are set to hold keyframes for your cursor layer, this gives the illusion that each layer is popping up just to the left of the cursor – as would happen in the “real world”. You can also keyframe the opacity of your cursor layer if you’d like to create any blinking effects. I have used this numberous times for type and it works out great. Good luck!