[Simon Roughan]

Hi Ted,
thanks for taking the time.
The server is down, therefore no more active link. And I have tried “Intermediate”, but as I wrote upstairs, nothing helps.
I ended up doing the basic keying in premiere with Ultrakey, then through dynamic link tweaking in AE.
I now have something that is acceptable. But I wish for once that it worked like it does in tutorials, where they click and its perfect.
mfg
Simon

You know I’m born to lose, and gambling is for fools, but that’s the way I like it, baby. I don’t want to live forever!

[Simon Roughan]

Hi Dave,
and thanks as usual for your time and input.
I have been using AE for many years, and have never ever ever been able to get good results from keylight, without a monumental amount of pissing about.
Even though that footage is shot with a good camera and a very good lens, in a TV studio, the noise in the (original) pic is for me totally unnacceptable. I have done every keylight tutorial, read every discussion thread, tried every technique, and it still looks noisy and crappy.
Heres the steps that I took with this piece of footage.
bottom layer: crunched it with curves, used remove noise with minimal settings to smooth out the jacket a bit.
Duplicate the layer. Apply keylight. set to screen matte. fiddle around a bit and get a good black/white matte. Use this layer as a Luma matte for the bottom layer.
Duplicate bottom layer again, put it on top, and then mask around the problem area of his glasses arms.
On top, an adjustment layer with channel mixer used as a spill suppressor, and with a “darken” blend mode.
It doesnt matter wether I use this method (layer as luma matte), or with keylight set to intermediate results, or final results, or anything at all. All grey or darker areas have noise and grain. Lots of the edge as well.
Its driving me crazy.
mfg
Simon

You know I’m born to lose, and gambling is for fools, but that’s the way I like it, baby. I don’t want to live forever!

[Simon Roughan]

No, the drive is NDFS. The size is not the problem, its the codec. Somehow, Animation doesnt want to play the game. I tried with the Black magic 10 bit codec, and with the YUV 4:2:2 and they both worked. But when I try with Animation, it always breaks down. Well at least now I know.
Thanks again for the time you take to answer.
mfg
Simon.

You know I’m born to lose, and gambling is for fools, but that’s the way I like it, baby. I don’t want to live forever!

[Simon Roughan]

Hi Dave,
I left this thing overnight to render, got in this morning to find this message:

This is the main reason I have trouble with rendering HD in AE, and end up having to export sequence to AME.
AE always has these strange crashes halfway through. It had already rendered for 46 mins and had made a 3.5 gig file before it broke down with this strange “output module failed” message. Oh well….
I will re-render now with a tiff sequence, then import it into AE and then try to render a Quicktime.

On Edit:
I can render SD Quicktimes without a problem.

You know I’m born to lose, and gambling is for fools, but that’s the way I like it, baby. I don’t want to live forever!

[Simon Roughan]

HI Guys, I hope you see this Post!
Just one more quick question.
Are you saying the best workflow that you know to get HD out of After Effects is first to render the film as Upper Field First, and a Lossless Quicktime, say Animation Codec? Then taking that Quicktime into AME and making deliverables that way?
Thanks for your time
mfg
Simon

You know I’m born to lose, and gambling is for fools, but that’s the way I like it, baby. I don’t want to live forever!

[Simon Roughan]

Thanks heaps for the tips guys, I will play around a bit now with the comps..
mfg
Simon

You know I’m born to lose, and gambling is for fools, but that’s the way I like it, baby. I don’t want to live forever!

[Simon Roughan]

Personally, I have no idea. I just wanted to say congratulations.
You seem to have come a long ways since you started posting here.
mfg
Simon

You know I’m born to lose, and gambling is for fools, but that’s the way I like it, baby. I don’t want to live forever!

[Simon Roughan]

Spot on, Mark. Cheers!

You know I’m born to lose, and gambling is for fools, but that’s the way I like it, baby. I don’t want to live forever!

[Simon Roughan]

Exactly, Mr Suszko.
You will never be able to track SALES from a spot, because a spot cannot sell. You could track contacts perhaps.
The very best you can hope for with a TV commercial, is exactly what Mark describes. Perhaps sometime in the future, when someone needs the product or service in the ad, your ad was good enough to stick in the mind so they will then be motivated to contact the firm. I never promise anything else to a client.
Selling is done properly only by real people. Leave the phone number out, include a relevant and easy-to-remember web address.
My 2 cents, as a commercial producer with a few years behind me, although not as much as Todd…

mfg
Simon

[Simon Roughan]

Thanks Adam, Ill check on these plug-ins.

You know I’m born to lose, and gambling is for fools, but that’s the way I like it, baby. I don’t want to live forever!