[Scott Mcdonnell]

Thanks Kevin and Walter for your responses, chroma-subsampling does make sense but I am not sure how we can work around it.

I have run a few more tests and indeed the issue is not there going to DNxHD 444 or Animation codec.

Using Cineform 422 codec instead gives a blurring of the edge which looks way more acceptable than the jagged results.
Interestingly Media Encoder conversion to DNxHD mxf gives better results than DNxHD quicktime.

Ultimately the project will be delivered as 422 (probably as prores) so we can explore keeping it at 444 until final delivery but its not ideal as we use ffmpeg and ffmbc conversions which do not support DNxHD 444.

To color correct the issue is there any automatic levels that can be applied or must it be done by hand scene by scene?

[Scott Mcdonnell]

You could write a spreadsheet formula to do the calculation automatically for you. It would be a lot quicker than writing a script.

I can’t think of any existing script that does what you are looking for so you could roll your own custom script. You will need a javascript UI for entering in the total time and overlap – see the AlertBoxBuilder1.jsx for an example of collecting data from user input. This may or may not be your idea of time well spent!

[Scott Mcdonnell]

Undoubtedly a high spec z820 is a beast of an AFX machine and will both offer performance and reliability.
Just to say that if you are on a budget I can also recommend the custom PC build option. We did a lot of testing of different builds (for our type of projects and renders – no ray tracing) and came up with this spec from UK builder as a good bang for buck option.

Intel Core i7 3930K 6-cored Processor 3.2GHz (Overclocked to up to 4.7GHz)
Corsair Hydro Series H100 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
ASUS P9X79 Pro X79 Motherboard
32GB PC3-12800 1600MHz DDR3 Memory (4 x 8GB sticks)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2048MB Graphics Card
Samsung 840 120GB Solid State Drive (OS & Apps)
2 x 1000GB 7200RPM Hard Disk – 6Gbps RAID 0 Configuration
Samsung 840 120GB Solid State Drive (Global Performance Cache)
Corsair CX 750W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified PSU

We found what made a difference is not running out of RAM, clock speed, and software version! CS6 way outperformed CS5 on the above system.

[Scott Mcdonnell]

With scripts I always start out working out how I do it manually. Then working out how much time it would save to do it by script (and balance that against the time to write the script!).

So if I get you right you want a length of 2:55 and I am guessing a framerate of 25fps? Then you have (2×60+55)*25=4375 frames divided by your 25 layers = 175 frames each if they are to be evenly spread across time + 10 frames for your dissolve and you get 185.

To set up manually you could:
1. Go to frame 0, select all layers and hit “[” to make sure they start at frame 0.
2. Go to frame 185, select all layers and hit “ALT + ]” to cut all layers at 185.
3. Choose Animation -> Keyframe Assistant -> Sequence Layers…
4. Check overlap and duration of 10 frames and OK.

Would that give you what you are looking for?

[Scott Mcdonnell]

Hi, sorry to not posted earlier but we worked around in the end rather than solved it.

The problem seemed to be in footage supplied by the post house and not in any we rendered in-house. To work around we dropped the AFX down to 8bpc essentially rendering 8-bit. I would recommend looking at the source and trying different outputs or taking the hit on 8-bit.

[Scott Mcdonnell]

Hi,
Thanks for the help and good suggestion.

Just checking the info and the black pixels show up as a color:

Here is a black pixel in 32bit mode:

And this is 16bit:

Arrgh – it looks fine in QuickTime and Premiere.

[Scott Mcdonnell]

Yep Windows PCs, the storage is available to the clients as a network drive.
We use Adobe CS5 – Most clients are working in After Effects/Flash at 1080p for content creation and we have 2 edit stations using Premiere CS5 for edits. All clients then serve as a render farm at night for After Effects rendering.

[Scott Mcdonnell]

Hi Bob,

As I said the client PCs are connected via 1GbE to the switch and are getting approx 80-100MBps read speed from the shared storage. So any files at a suitable bitrate are playing real-time with no issue.

[Scott Mcdonnell]

br>Hi Filip,

Thanks for the code, that seems to still change the scale slightly as the z goes up. I found a formula for focal length which seems to work:


focalLength = 2666.67; //could be "thisComp.activeCamera.zoom;"
z =transform.anchorPoint[2];
scaleFactor = focalLength/( focalLength+ z);
[scaleFactor*100,scaleFactor*100, scaleFactor*100]


This holds the scale exactly right but the x and y of the anchor point moves as the z value changes depending on the distance from the centre. I have played around with adjusting the anchorPoint x and y too:


z = transform.anchorPoint[0];
diffX = 0; diffY = 0;
focalLength = 2666.67;
scaleFactor = ( focalLength+ z)/focalLength;
cx = 1920/2; cy = 1080/2;
px = transform.position[0];
py = transform.position[1];
dx =(px -cx)*scaleFactor; dy =(py -cy)*scaleFactor;
diffX = cx+dx-px; diffY = cy+dy-py;
[transform.anchorPoint[0] + diffX, transform.anchorPoint[1] + diffY, z]


Now it just moves when you parent it to another layer. oh well – I will keep at it!