[Nel Johnson]

Just a quick addition to this post from me – I’ve been working with a similar C4D project in which I have planes of video content with alpha channel mattes.

I’ve tried the RPA and RLA outputs, neither of these routes is able to circumvent the fact that alpha channels kill any depth data. Basically, the RLA and RPF files still contain a ‘hole’ in the Z-depth.

[Nel Johnson]

Hi. I must admit to not being experienced in the import of RAW images but unless I’m misteaken this looks suspiciously like an issue I had with TIFF sequences rendered on different machines.

I can’t swear this will help but you should try adjusting the colour settings for the projects in File/ProjectsSettings. My guess is that RAW import would need something better than 8bit.

[Nel Johnson]

Hi Aman,

I’d say it’s not the case that the file is degrading in any way when you play it back but rather that the system is doing its best to deliver vision from a file with high data rate.

Personally I’d keep on making the ‘animation codec’ version for your archive but then also make a h264 version for computer playback and a DVD encode for disc.

FCP’s ‘Compressor’ has all the settings required and you can batch them in one hit.

[Nel Johnson]

Hi Prad,

I’ve just finished a spot with a really similar setup – basically 2 rappers performing in front of a green screen, and yes.. lots of blurred movement.

I wrestled with this for a long time, trying to sharpen shots etc, nothing worked. Then I figured that I’d go with the blur rather than trying to get rid of it. Keylight is your friend here in lots of ways. With judicious tweaking of the shots (checking the matte in Keylight’s status viewer) and adjusting black and white values I ended up with a lovely key. Keylight intelligently colour corrected the unwanted green in the blur. Finally I added a bit of lightwrap to sit the subject into the background better. I used KeyCorrect lighwrap but you can get a version in many plugin sets, Walker etc.

My advice, and it may be against common experience, rather than sharpen the shots, go with the blur and rely on colour correction to get rid of leftover spill.

[Nel Johnson]

Hey Frank, I had the same problem very recently. Might be worth checking the thread.

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/927308

Basically it turned out that I was rendering JPG sequences with unmanaged colour spaces, meaning that each rendering station was imposing it’s own colour profile into each file it was rendering. Hence the flicker you are probably witnessing when you pull the sequences back in.

The solution is to make sure that the initiating machine has set a colour space for the project. I quote Darby “The working space is defined in the Project Settings of the project.”

[Nel Johnson]

Hey Darby, thanks for this – I’ve found the settings you mentioned, of course they’ve been there all along but I’ve never given them a second look.

This sounds like the key to fixing this, especially given that the machine that gives the dark output is also used for print-work. My guess is that there’s a funny JPG profile in effect somewhere.

Thanks again Darby, ‘you learn something everyday’

nel.

[Nel Johnson]

Hi Hamid,

You’ll have to forgive my ignorance of Flash and whether certain types of video will import. Can you give me some more info as to what you are hoping to achieve in Flash. What background are you aiming to view through the transparency?

The reason I ask is that I’m trying to work out why you are using Flash to do what After Effects is actually built to do, ie. compositing.

nel.

[Nel Johnson]

Hey Hamid – Topher is correct on this.

I’d also add that it’s unclear from your post how you are importing and using the video in Flash.

Creating video with transparency requires a certain type of render out of AE, typically a codec which allows for RGB plus Alpha or ‘Millions+’. A lossless codec such as ‘Animation’ would give you this (although I’m not sure how Flash would handle a file like this). High compression codecs such generally throw away the alpha channel to save on filesize.

You could also render out to an image sequence of a type that supports transparency, maybe PNG or Photoshop.

Hope this helps.

[Nel Johnson]

Hey Lars, I’m not sure what exactly the problem is. Sure, JPG seems to be the issue. Images from one particular machine in the multi-machine setup are darker across the board. TIF sequences seem just fine – we’ll probably go with TIF and batch convert back to JPG I guess.

[Nel Johnson]

Hi Darby, I figured it was prolly something to do with working spaces or colour profiles. I’m a little confused as to where I adjust the colour spaces though, the project is being read from a watch folder, hence I’m not able to adjust the colour settings of a project on an individual machine. Do I embed a colour profile on the machine that initiates the multi-machine render? If so how.

Many thanks, nel.