Spencer Tweed
Forum Replies Created
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8 bits is the lowest you can really go in film or broadcast, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is bad. In most cases it is fine, but when you are doing feature film work you might want to go up to 16 – it basically just means that you have more possible colors.
As for DVD – that is going to be 8 bit no matter what you do… So you might as well stay 8 the whole time.
Realize that in VFX 32bpc is a whole different ballgame due to the fact that it is HDR (High Dynamic Range). I wouldn’t get into that just yet if I were you, but it is touched upon by Andrew Kramer (videocopilot.net) if you are interested.
– Spencer
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No problem 😉
– Spencer
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control+shift+h
— Spencer
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Hey Vic, Short answer is no. After Effects only references your files, so when you are working on them nothing will be lost. That said there are a few things that can effect your final output… Natively the only thing that will effect your quality is the bit depth – After Effects is by default set to 8 bits per channel, but it is VERY easy to change this in your project (though a few effects will cap your footage at 8bpc). From there you could compress your file in your render settings, but by default this shouldn’t happen.
– Spncer
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Hey Chris,
It looks much better! I didn’t realize at first just how blown out that sky is… You are missing a lot of data in those trees due to clipping.
At this point I only see one last solution – layer in some of your own trees. Luckily your lighting is really easy to work with, so you can probably find some good trees on Flickr that are in the public domain. Cut those out using this technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh6QSb0qMtc, match the color and just drop them over the right side of your frame. It’ll take a lot of work, but that’s the only way I see of fixing your composition at this point.
– Spencer
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I think this should honestly be a pretty simple shot to do! (good job locking off your camera btw…)
Here’s how I’d tackle it:
1. Duplicate your footage, so you now have 2 layers.
2. On the top layer apply the “Extract” plug-in.
3. Solo the layer and pull the Black Point up until you only have the sky. (push it until you lose your leaves – your alpha channel will be VERY crunchy, but that’ll be fixed soon.)
4. Adjust the Black Softness until your edges are less crunchy, add a Channel Blur and blur the alpha channel a few pixels or so if needed. It is okay to get a little bit of trees and stuff in the layer at this point, that’ll still look OK in the final comp.
5. You may need to use the pen tool and add a mask to the layer to get rid of a few specific troublesome spots (like his shoes).
6. Un-solo the layer and sandwich your sky between the two layers in your composition.
7. Set the track-matte of your sky to “Alpha Matte” so that it only appears where your first layer is.
8. Play with the blending mode of your sky until it looks good! Start with “Multiply” and tweak the opacity to see if that helps. Sometimes I also like to duplicate the top two layers and combine multiple blending modes.– Spencer
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Hey Stefan,
Don’t make it too complicated – I wouldn’t get into layer styles or anything like that. I would start with the base, rounded, aperture-looking shapes and then start building up the gradients on top of that. For example you make the big, round, red thingy; then you duplicate it; apply a gradient from white to black; do some masking and finally set it to the “Add” or “Screen” blending mode.
Now repeat this a million times! (there is a reason it’s a template…)
Hope that’s clear enough!
– Spencer -
Thanks or the tip – I love Kuler, but have hardly used it lately.
What suggestions would you have for changing the existing color on Define Better?
– Spencer
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Thanks Jim – that was definitely one point that I was going for. It being such a “punchy” song I definitely repeated a few things so that they would really drive home.
– Spencer
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Hey Ted,
Thanks for the feedback. I was pretty locked into the song – it had to be 4 and a half minutes (I would have liked it to be a bit shorter as well).
I tried to mix it up a bit with the backgrounds and whatnot, but see what you mean. I have another, similar, video that I am going to be starting on soon. I think it is closer to 5 minutes, so I’ll definitely keep that in mind!
– Spencer