[Philip Knight]

An old posting, but I figure
I’d leave a response anyway…

————————–

Not knowing if you use a PC or Mac, or the format, codec or compression level you original BK footage was, hard to give you an instant answer.

But here may is perhaps the best way to do it as others do also:

— I use a PC and my NLE is Sony Vegas Pro — I very rarely export both BK and emitter work together because I want the BK original footage to be in its best original form (as it is in my NLE). So I hide the BK and export only the emitters layer/s as a PNG image sequence with alpha. This preserves the quality of the emitters since PNG format is lossless.

— Then I put the emitters on a track above the original footage in my NLE. This gives me additional tweaking and improvement parameters due to all the fx, color, etc. effects in the NLE. I usually always find a way to improve the appearance of emitters. Once in a while, I’ll even double emitter tracks at different transparency levels which gives even more control over appearance.

Win-win: Original footage preserved, emitters appearance can be fine-tuned a bit more.

[Philip Knight]

“Can I create a emitter from my .psd or an Ai layer and is there somewhere to learn how to make emitters from scratch?”

Yes, you can. Just save the .psd as a .png with alpha, of course. Then:

— Go to an emitter’s Emitter Property in Library > Particle > Change Shape section where you see the list and thumbnails of particles and a view of the current particle.

— Click on the third “+” Add New Shape to Library icon. It will then be added to the list — and be the active particle in whatever emitter you are working on.

Now, one thing I’m not totally sure of is if PI essentially re-samples the image and creates its own “in-house” version or if it needs the location of your original to be there indefinitely. Meaning:

Let’s say you have your great new .png on your Desktop, you import/add it to your Library and go back to editing, etc. Then later that day, you move it from the Desktop to archive it.

If PI made its own copy, no problem. If not, then that particle won’t work since the .png was moved. My guess is that PI does make its own “in-house” version for it has worked that way for me in a project file (I deleted the new .png at its import location after I had added that as a library shape – and the project still worked).

But I should let Alan address this “in-house version” assumption to be absolutely sure I’m not misleading you.

[Philip Knight]

Jenna,

Good suggestions above. I use Vegas Pro 8c and have been using PNGs since v.6. Making sure your output and/or project resolution is large helps too. Case in point:

— Since my usual style involves subtle effects such as mist, clouds and sparkles, I tend to render extra large so as to have the best resolution in Vegas.

— This includes temporarily changing my system/desktop resolution to the highest it can go in right proportion. Then I clear the PI window of everything except the work or image area (move all particle tweaking and frame windows out of the way**) and render the PNGs.

(** This system resolution change and PI “clearing” may or may not be necessary. What matters most is what one’s 100% size is.)

— In my case, I only render the particles with alpha then put them on a track above the best BK footage in Vegas. One can do far more fine tuning of the appearance of particles that way.

It is very rare that I use a PI PNG sequence without some adjustments in Vegas, i.e sharpen, color, etc. (Hard for me to resist considering the slew of tools Vegas has – lol.)

On an other note: There are several members at the Sony Vegas Pro forum who use PI — Grazie for one. Never hurts to frisbee in a question there too. My own username there is Soniclight, BTW.

___________

Last, on PNG vs. AVI:

There is really not much difference between a folder full of PNG files or an AVI movie.Both are just containers for single frames.

Aside from codecs/compression options, the only difference is that one can’t drag a folder of PNGs into Vegas as one can with an AVI. At least not in 8c 🙂

So, sure, it is a bit more of a hassle and PNG sequences are essentially uncompressed files which take up some space. But I’m more interested in getting the best results even though it also means going through the whole Import thing in Vegas.

[Philip Knight]

I didn’t think of looking in backups, will keep that in mind for the future. That said, I just cleared out that folder last night since I’ve re-created the new library.

While it’s hard to know what really happened, I think there may be a clue in your stating to save and close the manager often:

— Yes, I saved often and made my usual manual backup.
— No, I didn’t close the manager after saves. Just kept editing.

I say the latter may be a clue because I perhaps instinctively applied it during my library re-do–mainly to make sure PI would load it in after a save.

Once PI accepted the library-in-creation enough times, I didn’t load after every save.
But I did close the manager down often.

[Philip Knight]

OK, thanks for info.

I’m pretty certain I can’t render PNGs in VP8 for I checked before I posted this question. I’ll try the non-AVI option suggestion for WMV.

I use WMV mainly because of I figured that the smaller the BK vid file, the better. Which brings me back to that you have mentioned in the past to not to use uncompressed BK files. My guess is that one reason is simply read/write: huge files = slow read/play.

As far as using Huffy or Sony lossless codecs, I find the files are still large. Smaller than uncompressed but not tiny. Maybe I need to do some real “draft” super-compressed ones or something.

Segments or scenes sizes causing slow-down?
Yup and/but:

My PI outputs are usually at least 1000-2000 PNGs. Which comes back to “work on short” segments. However my work is more in the slow-motion, mellow, not MTV editing style, so segments are going to be longer. But may still have to find a work around if shorter = faster BKs.

Is it a system processor muscle problem?
I don’t think so:

I built my Pentium D 2.8 Ghz. system a few short months before Duo came out (funny how that happens, eh? 🙁 But it’s still a respectable system, just runs hotter than newer dual cores. I have the side open during high CPU usage with a 7 inch fan blowing in.

Bottom Line

PI is how I have been able to translate my former still “signature” visual style into video, so I’d better solve or at least improve this slow-go BK vid thing one way or another.

I’ll just have to keep plugging away at it.

[Philip Knight]

Update:

I gave up trying to resurrect that library file or to bother you with it. I’ve created a new one as stated in my PS. above and so far, so good: each time I save it, exit Manage and load it anew in PI, no errors.

One guess on what may have occurred–maybe:

— I had exited Manage Libraries using the red “X” close button instead of clicking on the “OK” at the bottom. That may have freaked something out corrupting said library somehow even though I had saved the library prior to exit.

Feel free to delete this question/topic if deemed of no use to others.

[Philip Knight]

Could someone please have the courtesy to reply to this?
Thank you 🙂

[Philip Knight]

Bump.

[Philip Knight]

I can’t think of one that is ready-made off-hand (other here may). What I do when I have a certain idea of what I’d like to pull off is to go view all the emitters that have some element similar to what I’ll wanting to create.

In this case, I’d look at all the sparkles and star-type ones keeping in mind that I can tweak these down to a single particle, then add the the tail/streak effect from some other emitter or just changing other aspects or properties of the emitter, etc.

PI is very versatile, IMO. I’ve never used a PI emitter as-is–I’m always doing rather extensive DIY tweaking* in how I want it to look before I get into laying out its path of action, so to speak. (* Since my past pro background includes design, it’s kind of an “artiste’s compulsion” too 🙂

[Philip Knight]

On your background layer, do you have the far right “bg” with a red cross on it or not? If yes, toggle it off and you should see it.

Also, depending on how your background clip was rendered, the very first frame may not show when you are the very beginning of the time-line(common occurrence when viewing clips in editing programs). Hit play and it should start showing up.

P.S.:

I know how it’s irresistible to just jump into a new program without looking at the manual. But this type of question is something you can figure out on your own by checking the PI manual. That’s what it’s for 🙂