[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Harold,

At this time, the only workflow that we are aware of to position the pixel fixer target is that of manually positioning this by eye. To do this you first apply the filter to the clip in question, then twirl down the Point 1 position control in the Video Event FX window, then drag the point into position. True, you do not have cross hairs to aid in precise positioning in the viewer window but if you zoom the window you should be able to lock in on the bad pixel without to much trouble.

If there was a mechanism within the host to allow us to draw crosshairs on screen then we would do this – and should that become available to us as a plug-in, we will include the function in the product with an update.

I hope this helps,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Peter,

I was able to generate what looks to my eyes like a better result using the BCC Optical Stabilizer as compared to the built-in SmoothCam tool in FCP. Here’s how I did it:

• I applied the BCC Optical Stabilizer filter to the aerial shot that you supplied
• I set the analyze region of the Optical Stabilizer filter to the top of the mountains, just the ridge line
• I made sure that the viewer was set to 100 percent
• I pressed Analyze
• I set the Mode pop-up to Smooth
• I set the Smooth Range to 100
• I set the Stabilize pop-up to Translation + Rotation
• I rendered the result

I also stabilized using the FCP SmoothCam and compared the result and have to say that the BCC result looks smoother to my eye.

I have saved this as an FCP project and would be happy to provide you with this project if you think that would help – just let me know.

I hope this helps you with using the BCC Optical Stabilizer filter. And by the way, that’s a really nice shot that you are working on. 🙂

Cheers,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi,

That’s a preference that you have to set while importing the clips into the Avid bin. After you click “import” you will be presented with a file browser. In the file browser is a button labelled “options”. Click this button and you will see the Avid Import Settings window. In this window there is a group of controls labelled Image Size Adjustment”. Enable the “Do Not Resize Smaller Images” option. Then press okay to close the window and select the file to import.

I hope this helps,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Peter,

I’m downloading the clips that you posted and hopefully offer a solution for you this morning so that you can use BCC to stabilize the clip in question. BCC Optical Stabilizer is a very strong filter and is capable of stabilizing highly difficult live action shots to the point where the camera appears to be locked down. Maybe it’s something simple, just one of those things that can sometimes be overlooked – I’ll know once I give it a shot myself with your clips.

Cheers,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Jim,

You can do that quite easily with Boris RED. Do you have Boris RED on your system? You can download the trial version from our web site at borisfx.com/downloads

Cheers,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi,

For the perspective distortion, aka that wedge look that you describe, you can use the BCC Corner Pin filter in RED or any other host. Ultimately you will be better off doing this with the BCS filter but if you want to do this with RED then you should stick with the method that you describe.

I hope this helps,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi,

It’s unclear to me what the solution to the problem that you are having is so I’m going to have to suggest that you get in touch with one of our techs who would be happy to assist you in sleuthing the issue.

You can reach them via email at support@borisfx.com.

Cheers,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi,

You need to go to Window>Keyframe Palette to open the panel where the default interpolation is set.

Cheers,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi,

The effect that you are trying to achieve is best done with a motion tracker. It’s possible to match move the text manually and in Graffiti this is your only option as Graffiti does not include a Motion Tracker. However, having said that, you can download RED 4 from our web site 9borisfx.com/downloads) and use the motion tracker in RED to achieve the effect in short order. Because you are already familiar with the user interface in Graffiti you will already know how to use RED as Graffiti is simply a subset of the RED product. If you want to do that, you can follow these instructions to motion tracker the text to follow the movement of thee live action:

To Track:

• import into the timeline the clip that you want to track
• click in the background of the timeline to deselect all tracks
• select Filters>Motion>Motion Tracker – this action adds a motion tracker filter to the timeline
• twirl down the motion tracker filter so that you see the Source sub-track
• drag the clip that you want to track onto the Source sub-track
• click on the main track of the motion tracker filter to bring the motion tracker controls into the controls window
• click on the TV monitor icon on the motion tracker filter – this action opens a new viewer window that displays the video to be tracked and with a red rectangle within a rectangle, which is the tracker search and target region.
• position the tracker over a group of pixels that you want to follow in the scene
• in the control window there is a small green button with a crosshair – this is the tracker analyze start button. click on this button to start tracking the pixel array that you selected with the tracker search / target rectangles.
• once tracking is complete you can close out the new tracker viewer
• all of the tracking information is now contained within the filter – simply drag the filter onto any track and click on the motion tracker filter to see the controls in the control window. Then go to the Apply tab and select the target for the tracking data (x/y position, pivot, camera etc.)

To offset the tracking data, you must follow these steps:

• go back to the viewer of the motion tracker filter. To do that, click on the TV monitor icon on the main tracker of the motion tracker filter
• observe that there are small red squares that follow the motion of the pixels that you tracked. With the arrow tool selected, drag over these red squares in the viewer window to select them.
• hold down the shift key and drag the selected red boxes to reposition them, thereby offsetting the motion tracker path.

I hope this helps,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi,

The effect that you have in mind is indeed totally possible with the BCC Extruded Text filter. You simply need to take manual control of the shatter effect. Here’s how:

• Twirl down the Shatter Deformer group in the BCC Extruded Text filter control panel
• Set the Crackability parameter to a value of 10
• Set the Time Mode pop-up to Manual
• At the start of the effect, enable the stopwatch parameter to generate keyframes for this parameter
• Set the start value for manual time to 0
• Go to where you want the cracks to be fully formed and set the value of this parameter to a very small amount, such as 0.05 – you can tweak this value to get the amount of cracks that you need.

That’s about it!

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

Peter.