Robert Morris
Forum Replies Created
-
You also said you have the AE Total Training disks. I found them to give a VERY helpful explanation of Color Finesse, although not very in-depth. But still a very good guide for getting started. Perhaps you should watch them again now that you have played with it a bit. I hate to state the obvious, but instead of asking what this does or what that does… simply play with it. As for the meanings of specific elements, that’s a whole other question. I don’t have Color Finesse open in front of me, but from what I remember the grid is a histogram. The bezier curves help split the luma levels and set their boundaries. If anyone else can define the specific areas of the grid, please speak up. As I said, I would love to find a GOOD book about color correction and what the various vector scopes mean. I’ve picked things up as I go along, and I’m sure there’s a lot of the technical aspects I’m unclear about.
-
Yes, I understand this. But for some reason, AE changes a point from smooth to corner without me holding down CTRL or anything. I’ll be in the middle of animating a mask via dragging points and adjusting handles, then all of a sudden one of them is broken. So I “undo”, hold down CTRL, and redrag the handle. It’s fine. Then I will come back to it, drag the handle, and it’s broken again. It’s a glitch in AE, as far as I know.
-
The luma ranges don’t actually have a direct effect on the image. What they do is define what is highlight, what is midtone, and what is shadow. You want to adjust the bezier curves until you have a good separation between those three areas of contrast. This will let you use the other controls to adjust these areas more efficiently.
-
You should be able to get a fairly cheap Firewire OHCI compliant PCI card for your computer if you have an open PCI slot. Look on NewEgg.com, as they tend to have great descriptions and reviews of their products (not to mention great prices). I’m not affiliated with them. Just a loyal customer 🙂
But seriously, look for a cheap PCI card, but it must be OHCI-compliant. That’s what I use with my Panasonic DVX100 camera, as my computer’s motherboard didn’t come with Firewire. Then I go S-video out from the camera to a Sony PVM monitor. Works great with AE. Good luck!
-
Yes, the layer disappears but you should still see the mask outline if you have the layer selected. This definitely speeds up workflow if all you need to see is the mask outline and the BG layer.
I have a question about bezier mask handles in AE and I don’t know if I should start a new thread on this or not. Rotoscoping is tedious enough, but is anyone else annoyed at AE’s bug where the tangency of the bezier handles break apart for absolutely no reason. I then have to undo the move, hold down CTRL and move the handle again. Now they are tangent. But it happens over and over and over. And randomly. Anyone have a better workaround for this? I’m using AE 6.5 Professional and I would have though Adobe would have fixed this glitch by now. Thanks.
-
I now swear by Color Finesse for color correction in AE. But to answer the original question (low-light footage) I usually precomp the footage with a duplicated layer of itself. The top layer has “Screen” blending mode. This punches up the brightness, and seems to increase the detail so nothing is lost. Of course, this is my personal method. It’s worked for some REALLY dark miniDV shots. I then usually degrain the precom, and add Color Finesse to the mix to do my final color correction. I’m still learning techniques in Color Finesse, but my general workflow is to set the Luma Range so it’s balanced, slightly adjust the Levels so you are working with the full range, then use the HSL controls to adjust color, gamma, contrast, and saturation. I hope that helps. I would love to know if there is a solid book out there on color correcting using Color Finesse or similar tools.
-Robert
-
Just out of curiosity, can a regular video DVD be set up to have a hyperlink to a web site from one of the menu buttons? To my knowledge, this isn’t possible, but I thought I might ask the question in case someone knows differently. Thanks.
-
A noble suggestion, but I pondered using a matte as some sort of blur map. The pieces would move too much and cross over one another. There’s no real way to separate them in Z space, unfortunately. Looks like I may just have to fake it with an overall blur.
-
A noble suggestion, but I pondered using a matte as some sort of blur map. The pieces would move too much and cross over one another. There’s no real way to separate them in Z space, unfortunately. Looks like I may just have to fake it with an overall blur.
-
Thanks guys! I’ve been looking at Ayato’s stuff for a while, but I guess I missed this tutorial. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. Well, maybe I can just add some fake motion blur and be done with it. Thanks for the heads up!
I might even try the Particular approach that Steve suggested. Overlapping particles don’t bother me. But since that’s the case, I guess I could even go with Ball Action, as my particles would just be simple ball shapes anyway. That way, I wouldn’t need to use time remap either. Just adjust the scatter keyframes and add a blend with original filter.
Hmm… now that my brain is crunching on this, I wonder if my DOF particles might be achieved through expressions? Not the shatter part, but some just moving past the camera. It’s off-topic, so I’ll post a new thread. Thanks again!