[Paul Carlin]

This is what I get. Wide on left, Close-up on the right.

[Paul Carlin]

Let me clarify with an incredibly long explanation…

I am creating an animation that follows a bad guy (let’s call him the target) by tracking his cell phone, using the various signal strengths (SNR) of nearby cell towers (CellID or CID) to triangulate the position. This “T-Hunting” is a somewhat inaccurate process, so I have a bit of wiggle built-in.

Since I am the God of this particular universe, I am determining the path of the target. In my animation, I use the Effect>Generate>Beam effect to draw a line from the cell tower to the target using a solid layer the size of the comp. In addition, I am using equations to determine the distance to the cell towers, changing the thickness and opacity.

Since this is supposedly a very sophisticated Satellite view, I want to be able to zoom in from a wide shot of Barcelona to a close up of the neighborhood. I have learned from past experience that creating a 10K (or more) pixel comp is render intense and crash prone. So I decided to make the comp the final size (Square Pixel PAL Widescreen), make the layers 3D and use a camera to zoom in. This allows for me to layer various scaled images on the same Z plane, yet of different scales, and be able to move closer to the layers without losing resolution. Mission accomplished as far as being able to zoom.

Here

[Paul Carlin]

It generates an analog compostite signal of… well, black. This rock solid steady stream of sync pulses feeds into all of your connected equipment and provide a common heart beat for them to follow.

Keep in mind that a VTR is a dynamic spinning ball of balistic unsteadiness. The built-in TBC (Time Base Corrector) takes care of this unsteady stream of video and tames in into a constant stream of video/data. If you provide a sync reference (Black Burst) then the TBC will force the VTR’s output signal to conform to this incoming “heart beat”.

If you connect this same reference to the Mojo, it too will conform to the common “heart beat”. This will gurantee that the deck doesn’t get to far ahead or behind the Mojo. If the two drift more than a frames worth of time apart from each other, you will drop or duplicate a frame.

You can use any analog composite video signal you have lying around for reference, as long as it is rock solid consistent. For example, the video output of a professional camera.

[Paul Carlin]

>Right so say I have a Sony HDV deck, what would be the most cost effective and accurate display to use? >Something like a 30 inch Apple cinema display perhaps…but i guess an LCD would not be good at >displaying colours accurately…?

The Sony HDV deck only outputs analog component HD. The Cinemadisplay/HDLink combo will not be of use to you. And, you are correct, the colors are inaccurate.

You should investigate the FULL SCREEN second (or even third) display option as mentioned earlier. You could install a cheap second graphics card (for a third monitor) and hook your Cinemadisplay up to it.

The only true solution is to upgrade to Adreneline HD and purchase a Sony D-Series monitor. This will run you around $60K when you are done.

The irony I see now is that a whole new generation of editors who never learned how to read scopes are not blinded by the inability to see the image as well.

[Paul Carlin]

For an application to pretend that it is a professional NLE, it should perform like one. I must agree with the general consensus here that PPRO has not lived up to the demands of professionals. I have been disappointed since the day I made the commitment to use PPRO at home, and I couldn

[Paul Carlin]

Thanks for the info on the FX 540. The Nvidia web page is far from complete with information and I only saw the Composite and y/c outputs. Now that I know there are component outputs, it makes sense how they claimed to have HDTV output.

The question still remains… how do you get Interlaced HD monitor output to a CRT from Premiere Pro while working with the CineForm HDV codec?

As far as CRT monitors, I find this combo to be my preference. I’m willing to pay for it if I can use it.

Sony PVM-14L5/1 14″ Color Multiformat Monitor with 800 Lines, 4:3/16:9, NTSC/PAL and Component Inputs $1630
Sony HD-SDI Decoder Board for PVM-14L5/1 (BKM-142HD) $3200

[Paul Carlin]

HP L2335 or the Apple 23″ CinemaDisplay.

[Paul Carlin]

I managed to do this using no third-party plug-ins. Involves Noise, Fast Blur, Contrast, Mosiac as a precomp to create a mosiac gradient layer that can be used as a Gradient Wipe source.

Download AEP Comp

[Paul Carlin]

Oh… and my tip of the day is…

ALT-SHIFT-CTRL-H

or as I call it… Mash-H. If you drop a SD clip into a HD comp, select the layer and hit this hot key. It will scale the layer to exactly fit into the comp.

[Paul Carlin]

Not to take Jim’s wind away from him… as I’m sure he makes a fine product. But an alternative would be Algoloth’s CAS (Content Adaptive Scaling) plug-in. They also have good noise reduction and anti-aliasing tools.

They have a weekly license for $50.

These plug-ins are render intensive, so make sure you have a decent computer.