Scot Sheely
Forum Replies Created
-
I meant to add the following:
The RT.X2 comes with a 10-12′ dongle cable, at the end of which are your firewire, S-Video, RCA composite video and RCA audio jacks, and the Axio systems come with a full B.O.B. (break out box), which is a rack-mount proposition.
Other than that, you really aren’t going to find any other viable solutions for what you are asking at this time.
Of course, you could just build a monster server with dual quad-core Xeon CPU’s and a whopping 8 GB’s of RAM, and a display card that has a full GB of VRAM (video RAM).
That would certainly chew through render times, but you will still be a slave to rendering previews, especially with lots of filters (effects) applied and multiple layers of video on your timeline.
-
The best solutions you are going to find that are dedicated towards the Adobe video editing family, especially PPRO, After Effects and Encore, are made by Matrox.
Current solutions are the RT.X2, the Axio LE and the Axio, each of which are progressively more expernsive, although the prices have come down by a small amount in the last couple of months.
The RT.X2 sells for around $1200 without the Adobe CS3 bundle, and around $1695 with it.
The Axio LE retails for $3995.00, where it was $4495.00 until just recently (big OUCH factor!).
The full Axio has two flavors, SD and HD, and will allow true HD and HDV editing in a 4:4:4 colorspace, and the same acceleration of the Axio LE (real time almost everything: color correction, multiple HD and SD video layers in the same timeline, HD downscaling to SD, a whole suite of transitions and FX, etc., all real-time).
It sells for around $12,000.00-$13,000.00 or so for a turnkey system, which is the only way that Matrox allows those full Axio cards to be sold. When it first came out around 2 years ago, only IBM and HP systems were certified for the Axio card (ick!). If you know a computer retailer locally, they might possibly be able to obtain that card from a wholesaler, but you will need to check with a PC shop on the specifics if that.
For most of us, these are all expensive solutions, but as a computer technician who has built and repaired many, many, MANY Matrox solution PC’s (and also own two Matrox card systems I built for myself as well), I have to say that it is well worth the price of admission.
Imagine never having to render a preview, ever, even with lots of graphics, effects and video layers. Your entire workflow will change.
It is also noteworthy to mention that you will still need to buy a display card in conjunction with any of these video accelerators. IMHO and experience, both Matrox and nVidia make the best solutions that work the very best along side of the RT.X2 or Axio LE. I recommend the Parhelia, so you can have 3 monitors and spread your desktop out over those displays. It is a blessing to have monitor 1 with the video preview, monitor 2 with just the timeline, and monitor 3 with just the Project bin, Effects and Effects controls windows docked together (you will never need more than one of those 3 in the forefront view at any time).
All of these may or may not be a valid solution for you, and you will still need to have an Intel Duo or Quad (preferably TWO Intel Quads for the Axio series) with at least 2 to 4 GB of RAM MINIMUM, but at least you can have something to chew on for a while.
Here is a link to Videoguys’ website with very good descriptions of all the various features of the RT.X2 card:
https://www.videoguys.com/rtx2.htmlIf you navigate around their site, you will also find the Axio LE listed there as well.
Hope that gives you a bit of food for thought.
Good luck!
Scot Sheely
-
scot “at” imgvideos.com
(Of course, replace the “at” with the @ symbol)Scot Sheely
-
Tim and Stephen, I appreciate your well thought-out and astute answers, and I have to chime in on those sentiments.
Howard, AE7 or AECS3 (especially since the latter version has that ultra-cool “Puppet Tool”!) is exactly what you are looking for.
While it is NOT an NLE, you can pre-comp multiple layers of video, still images and text and achieve the exact efffects you claim to be looking to achieve.
Of course, there are many stock animation companies like Digital Juice et al who also have sports editions (ETK 8 in the case of DJ, good stuff, but lacking in variety I need, but I do own it). This makes building a composition much easier, especially for lower thirds, titles and transitional wipes. They also have a lot of matted alpha graphic content, both static images and animated that work well in a variety of projects.
Personally, I still find I am creating a combination of hand-crafted animations in AE7 (haven’t upgraded to CS3 yet, probably will after the first of the year) using digital photos of items like basketballs, footballs, beachballs (all of those in recent projects). I have far more flexibility in the motion path that way, but I still pop in a transitional object wipe from DJ or using another company’s stock animations.
Check out some of the many After Effects tutorials found here on the Cows site, most of them are par excellent! A great way to learn is by using practical examples, and you can find a ton of them here.
Thank you, Creative Cow contributers!
Scot Sheely
-
Mike,
We have always created a final version of the DVD, then used Roxio Easy CD Creator to create the .ISO image by going to the DISC menu, choosing the drive letter on the left-hand side of the pop-up window and clicking on the READ TRACK button at the bottom.
This opens up another submenu, which allows you to name the image file and select the archive’s directory (the loaction where you want to save the .ISO image to).
Once created, any standard burning ROM will easily burn the .ISO image, such as Nero, Prassi or RecordNow, amongst others.
Of course, in version 2.0 and CS3 of Encore, the “Create Disc Image” feature is built in, eliminating the need for a third-party app.
Scot
-
Vin,
You WILL be able to achieve this with some of the new faetures that the Blu-ray authoring spec provides for, though.
As the guys stated previously, each time a user navigates to a new menu, it’s a whole new ball game. Each menu’s audio track is its own until itself.
-
Actually, I was going to suggest that you review your button routing on that particular menu. In Encore, on that menu at the bottom is an icon that shows all of that menu’s button routing when you click on it.
Each corresponding button will then display a number in the middle of it. I was thinking that perhaps you accidentally created a blank, or unused button, which would account for your problem.
If that is actually the case, then simply delete the unused button, or you could just set the button you wish to use as a default as button #1 instead. This could happen if you had, let’s say, only 1 menu item to select from on that menu, but a “Home” button (or in your case, a “Back” button) at the bottom to help the end-user navigate back to the main menu.
Regardless, the button routing review will help you identify, isolate and resolve the issue.
Let me know if you need further assistance with this problem, as I know Encore very, very well and would like to see you conquer this minor dilemma.
Scot
-
To do this, you need to use a bit of DVD trickery (until you start using Blu-ray and the additional support is added within that specification, that is!).
With standard DVD’s, you cannot specify a sound per button, but you can specify a new sound for each menu. Therein lies our solution to your problem.
To make it appear as if each button on a single menu has its own sound, create a duplicate of the menu as many times as you have buttons on that particular menu.
Then, set the first menu to reflect the sound you want on the first button as it is highlighted, but not yet selected. Set the second menu to relect the second sound, and so on until you have linked a sound to each of the successive menus and have their respective buttons highlighted.
Here is where the DVD magic comes in. From the very first menu, make button number 2, 3, 4 etc. set to auto-activate to each button’s respective menu. In other words, button #2 auto-activates when the down arrow or number pad is used and takes you to menu #2, which reveals button #2 as highlighted. This menu is then playing your button #2 sound (or music).
Repeat this process for the remaining buttons. The effect is that as the end-user selects button #2, it appears as if the pointer and / or highlight jumps down to the #2 button, and you can then link each successive menu to its own sound, or music if you wish to do so. One very cool side benefit to this is, if you do a bit of planning, you can actually use high-quality graphics instead of the horrible subpicture highlights for a pointer icon.
Not only can you use, say, an actual picture of a ball and not have it distorted or changed by the subpicture highlights (as long as you don’t set it that way!), but you can also have an animated icon by creating a short, looping video linked to a blank menu that plays in the background.
The net effect is that you have a high-quality image, which appears to the end-user as a normal menu, when in fact it is actually a still graphic or video instead.
Here is an example of the static image trick first. I used an actual picture of a real basketball for this semi-pro basketball player’s highlights reel.
In this web version, I condensed the menu to show the action, and not as much of the menu, but you can see where I am going with this. In the full version of this menu, the ball moves up and down the menu seemlessly when each menu item is selected, with no distortions of the basketball graphic.
I also have surprised a lot of people and have kept quite a few guessing as to how I made the basketbal jump into the hoop on this guy’s shirt:
https://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=3394193
In this second example, I intentionally left the music out of this web version, but it does include music as well for the main menu. What is radically different, and what you have probably never seen before in a DVD menu, is the animated icon I mentioned previously. The heart pointer icon beats on each menu selection, and again, there are no distortions of the animated heart when the user selects the next menu item.
Here is the link:
https://www.digitaljuice.com/dj_showcase/detail.asp?page=1&portfolioid={789958A7-FF87-4A8C-8638-522B81765890}&sortby=&cid=0&tagid=0&display=&workid=2064
If this is not clear to you as to what is going on, let me know and I will capture the actual movement of the icons on these menus and post them on my own website.
The important thing to note is not the cool animated icons, etc., but the fact that you can personally modify each new menu to reflect the music or audio of your choice. In my case, I elected to not have that effect present, but it is super easy to apply if you want it. Just go to the MOTION tab off of each menu’s properties and select AUDIO, then use the pick whip or the drop-down menu to select which audio you want in your imported assets bin.
If all of this is still not clear, send me an e-mail to scot “at” imgvideos.com and I will send you my phone number so we can discuss this effect real-time (I am on the East Coast – USA, so that’s EST/EDT).
Scot Sheely
Interactive Media Gurus -
Just curious Howard, but is PPRO’s titling tool too hard to use, or are you looking for something that will give you more of a 2D/3D look?
I have used Boris Grafitti and Red over the last few years and found it extremly easy to use the built-in presets (just type in your text, choose the color(s), any additional bevel and shadow effects you want and then render it out, or click the apply button in the bottom corner if you are using it as a plug-in for PPRO or AE).
The nice thing about PPRO’s titler is that it also has a lot of presets, some of which are nice, others look horrible (of course, taste and discretion are both very subjective things), but you CAN build up a library of your own customized presets, which is not all that difficult to do.
I agree with Mike and Blast1, Bluff Titler is very easy to use, and inexpensive (around $63.07 US currency). As Jeron stated ProAnimator is not a bad choice, and once you watch a few tutorials, AE7 or AECS3 is a great, flexible app that grows with you and will do simply amazing things. There are a ton of great tutorials here on the Cows for After Effects, and if you already own it in the creative suite / video collection, it is definitely worth taking another look at later on when you have time to dig into it a bit. Titles are very easy to do without having your brain exploding learning the more advanced features that AE supports.
FYI, there are also PPRO titling tool tutorials to be found out on the web, let me know if you are interested and I will provide a link for you. You can literally create a reasonable title in less than a minute (usually just a few seconds), depending on what you are trying to achieve.
As with anything, the more you use it, the more adept and confident you will become using that particualr tool.
Good luck!
Scot Sheely
-
Premiere Elements has “Movie Themes”, which allow you to create projects such as photo montages very quickly, similar to iMovie on the Mac or Windows Movie Maker for Windows users. It is a template-driven interface not found in any version of PPRO at this time. Pan and zoom “Ken Burns” style effects are quick and easy in Premiere Elements.
It also features a simplified version of PPRO’s audio mixer, albeit with less flexibilty and fewer adjustments available. Elements can also automatically detect the tempo of your musical soundtrack and will sync the beginning and end of each scene directly to the beats of the soundtrack you are using (a very cool feature, IMHO!).
Elements uses “Sceneline” instead of PPRO’s “Timeline”, which is a simpler thumbnail tile style timline that reminds me of (the now-defunct company) MGI’s “Videowave” program from the mid 1990’s. It also includes 10 new effects, including “Old Film”, “Airbrush” and “Earthquake”, as well as over 20 new transitions like 3D Explosions, 3D Transformations, Art Blends, and Motion Blends.
P.E. will allow for up to 100 track layers, key framed motion, color correction, chroma key effects and more. One thing missing is the batch capture feature from the full version of PPRO, but the trade-off is that P.E. includes a new feature called “Stop Motion Animation”, which is missing from PPRO.
P.E. also has pop-up tips to help assist novice users, and version 4 actually includes reasonably robust DVD and even Blu-ray authoring support, directly from the main Timeline. previous versions lacked this type of support. You can even specify DVD menus from pre-fab templates.
Absent is the tight integration between AE, Audition (Sound Booth is the de facto audio editor for elements, if you buy that app as well), Encore and Photoshop (Photoshop Elements DOES integrate with Premiere Elements, though, as you would expect).
One thing I am unsure of is how P.E. handles plug-ins from third party developers (like Boris FX’s RED, Grafitti and Continuum Complete, Red Giant’s magic Bullet Editors, etc.) if at all. I suspect that may possibly be a limited feature set for that type of additional support, but I am only guessing here on this item.
Here is the shortlist summary of missing / different features between PPRo and P.E.:
Capturing: The Premiere Elements capture window is much simpler than the Premiere Pro interface. Although it doesn’t support batch capturing, Premiere Elements does split scenes as it captures and places the clips directly on the timeline.
Timeline and Editing controls: Premiere Pro has more editing tools in the timeline, and more options for working with tracks and keyframes.
Titler: The titler in Premiere Pro has more tools and controls.
DVD Menus: Premiere Elements features an integrated, easy-to-use interface for adding DVD menus to a project before burning it.
Exporting: EDL, AAF, and RealMedia export options are not available in Premiere Elements.
Advanced editing features: Premiere Elements does not have many of Premiere Pro’s advanced editing features such as 24P support, surround sound mixing, project management tools, multiple timeline sequences, the audio mixer window, vectorscopes, and the trim window.
Sorry for the LONG post, but I wanted to be as thorough as I possibly could, and culled this info from many different sources, including my own experiences using both applications.
Scot Sheely
Interactive Media Gurus