[Piernicola Arena]

Ok thanks Rork for being so patient, accurate and really helpful!
Cheers

[Piernicola Arena]

Ok I got what you say.

But what if i want to insert something that is bigger than the screen, for example a pop-up graphics that comes out from the screen, or an hologram that projects out of the screen?

And what if i want to track the screen and insert something that takes only a small part of the screen?

What if i don’t know the screen size or aspect ratio (because I’m tracking a card or a clip shot by someone else?

Sorry for bothering you with many questions! 🙂

[Piernicola Arena]

What are your (A1)composition and (A2) insert layer dimensions?
composition is 1080p square pixels 24fps. Insert layer is a 500×386 jpg

(B1) Have you precomped or nested the insert layer prior to applying the Corner Pin tracking data?
yes

(C1) If you’ve answered yes to either part of (B1), then what are the dimensions that the pre comp?
dimensions of pre comp are 1080p square pixels 24fps

What if I send you a simplified version of the project? maybe you could have a look and find out what’s wrong.
If it’s not too much work for you.

[Piernicola Arena]

Thanks Conrad.

I know I need corner pin to screen replacement, but that’s ok if i want to insert something that is the same size of the screen.
but what if i track the screen and I want to replace it with a bigger one?
I mean, by precomping i can adjust position, scale and rotation as needed, but in the final comp I’m always just modifying the area of the tracked screen, I cannot go beyond that scale.

I also tried VideoCopilot corner pin_to_null preset, but didn’t work for this job.

Any idea?

[Piernicola Arena]

I also tried to insert my jpg directly in mocha preview in the layer properties-insert clip and THERE everything is ok. Perfect track.

but in AE the first part of the clip drifts. second part, where there’s less perspective change, it gets better.

[Piernicola Arena]

I’m replacing the whole screen.

I’m basically inserting a hand made drawing into an iPad.
Th ipad is hand-held by a girl that shows it to the camera.

[Piernicola Arena]

Thanks RorK!

I checked everything you suggested but everything was ok.

I know that drifting is usually caused by those kind of issues so I had the double checked in the first place.
In fact, if i export Mocha Shapes or corner pin data they look just fine in AE.

But corner pin data makes it harder to transform scale rotation and position of the insert, requiring precomping.
Is there any quicker way to do that?

For example, when i used transform data instead, I could paste them into a null and parent my insert to the null, so that insert’s features (pos, rot, scale) were free for me to be changed as needed.

thanks again for your help!

[Piernicola Arena]

Hi Mark,
thanks for replying.

i’m agree that copyright discussion is pretty interesting…however, i was not “legally” justifying myself…It was just an explanation for forum’s users to understand why I was doing all this.

Believe me, if i really wanted to break some kind of copyright law I would not bother copying a VHS…DVDs are better quality and more easily “rippable”…don’t you think?
but that’s not what i’m doing.
I’m just doing a party “parody film”. I’m not asking ANY money for ANYTHING.
Don’t know if it will be put on the web, but being so, again,it would just be something to laugh at few minutes and nothing more.
No money ASKING, no money EARNING from anybody…

Moving to my original question…i don’t understand why i have to buy a videocamera with video-input, since I already have one. My HVX200 is pretty good even if it doesn’t work as a solution for this problem because has no TBC.
Are you suggesting to buy a camera with TBC? Wouldn’t that cost too much for a single work to do?

[Piernicola Arena]

Rafael and Andrew, thanks for replying.

I know that working with digital source such as DVD would be much easier, but in this case I have no other option than VHS.

What I have is a more than decent camera (Panasonic ag-hvx200) that has video input. Don’t know if it has TBC though…anyay i’ll give it a shot.
If it doesn’t work, I was thinking that i could try this way:

Use 2 VCR and my Mac.
First VCR would play the movie and will be connected to the second VCR wich will do nothing other than pass through the signal to my Mac.
My mac would record the signal that comes indirectly from the second VCR and not directly from the first VCR that’s playing the VHS. Maybe this way my video adquisition card would not receive any macrovision signal since it’s basically recording from a “stand by” VCR.

What do you think?

[Piernicola Arena]

yes, i could, but the quality is already “crappy” so i’d like not to lose more quality…

Anyway i’ll keep this as the last extreme solution.

thanks