[Steve Crook jr]

I reviewed the files, and like Vincent, I agree the AI files are not production ready.

QUICK NOTE: The work I do of this sort is aimed at cut and printed vinyl – perhaps the needs of the (presumably) cardboard vendor are a bit different.

Your vendor most likely only needs the cut lines to be in vector format – the graphic itself can be a raster layer (at 300+ dpi). So, I pulled a couple of steps between PS and AI and put together a sample of what your printer might need (only the card front). Check with them to see if it is what they wanted.

When I pulled your artwork into AI, some of the text got messed up, so I fixed “Shower Bottle Bands” [not perfectly the same, but very close]).

The rest of the document is acceptable (I think), except for one flaw that I can’t “quick fix”. That is a tiny gap is the artwork between the “Card Image” and the “1mm Cut Margin Image” – an artifact from your work.

So, here are the key elements of what I am putting up for you to see:
1) Mostly raster artwork directly from your PSD;
2) AI vector text for “Shower Bottle Bands”;
3) The “cut” path from your PSD, brought into AI in its correct place in the artwork and its own layer “Cut Line”. NOTE: this path has NO stroke or fill and is invisible unless you select it (direct selection tool [white arrow] or from the layers palate.

Hope this helps and is somewhat clear. 🙂

Shared on Google Drive: (File > Download)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8q7SZbZ6sVOTXNPZ3FmbnRZeFk/edit?usp=sharing

Steve Crook, Jr.
http://www.stevecrookjr.me

I am a simple creative professional that can get my Adobe suite and a few other creative tools to do what I want. Barely. 🙂

[Steve Crook jr]

I’ll second Jonathan on not using Illustrator’s trace, and his method for setting a BG to be traced (I use a different method, but whatever works 🙂 ).

Where I will suggest something different, though is with the braid.

Illustrator has a quite powerful feature allowing us to create our own custom brushes to be applied to paths, and your braid is a perfect application for that feature. So, I did a quick Google search: “illustrator braid brush” and found a nice tutorial: https://makeitcg.com/create-braid-brush-adobe-illustrator/681/

Once you have the brush made (and you don’t need the corner tile for this piece of artwork) just use the pen tool, draw a path similar to your braid, then apply the brush to the path.

This will give you a powerful tool if you need to adjust the shape of the curve later, or as Jonathan suggested, making the letters out of a braid.

Finally, for the strands at the end. Just use a few curves from the pen tool with simple lines.

Sorry that none of this is automatic.

Steve Crook, Jr.
http://www.stevecrookjr.me

I am a simple creative professional that can get my Adobe suite and a few other creative tools to do what I want. Barely. 🙂

[Steve Crook jr]

Hi! 🙂

I’ll endorse Alaina’s comment that it is likely the Hero’s native H.264 codec that is giving you trouble – when I got my 3 Black everything I read said I had to convert for NLEs.

Besides Alaina’s suggested software, GoPro has a free suite on it’s website that will do the conversion as well.

https://gopro.com/software-app/gopro-studio-edit-software

Also, there is no need for conversion at all if you go to Premiere CC – they have magically fixed the problem that there is no solution for! 😉 (Alas, since I already had CC all that research and experimentation to convert was mis-used – I’ll not say wasted, since I get to help you!)

Good luck!

Steve Crook, Jr.
http://www.stevecrookjr.me

I am a simple creative professional that can get my Adobe suite and a few other creative tools to do what I want. Barely. 🙂

[Steve Crook jr]

Hm. I wrote a quick step-by-step and in review I realized I might have missed something: Whether your original artwork is vector or raster. I wrote my instructions for the raster (silly me), so I’ve added a section for vector. Use which method you need.

Vector (Illustrator)
1) Copy the path that has the arm and paste it into a new layer.
2) Hide everything but the newly created path.
3) Draw and adjust a box around the arm (very like the one in your sample image) until it is “just perfect”. (Note: stroke and fill are unimportant – I usually use a high contrast stroke and no fill.)
4) Window > Pathfinder
5) In the “Shape Modes” area click “Intersect” (Now for me, most of the modes rarely work right {clearly operator error, but it is what it is} so I usually just click “Divide” in the “Pathfinders” area and delete what I don’t want, but this time “Intersect” worked fine.)

Raster – Photoshop:
1) Zoom into the area to to work. *I* use the mouse wheel and ALT and CTRL, but the magnifying glass or other method is just fine.
2) Select the Magnetic Lasso Tool. {Long click the lasso until the menu appears and choose the icon with the magnet in it, press L until the magnet icon appears in the lasso spot.)
3) Turn CAPS LOCK on (to enable the precision cursor) and enter 5px in the Width box in the tool options area. (The default 10% contrast and 57 frequency are fine for this task.)
4) Start a little to the left of the area on the upper arm that you think you want to use for the “video window” and click and release. The Magnetic Lasso Tool is now “armed” and functioning: start dragging to the right, following the contour of the arm. Let the Magnetic Lasso Tool make its own anchors when it is following the edge properly, but when the selection area starts to diverge from what you want, move the mouse back onto the edge and single click; that will force an anchor. Then continue to trace.
5) Continue around the arm clockwise until you get to the area under where you started, then just leave the path into the upper arm, clicking a couple of times to force an anchor. Close the selection by moving the cursor over the starting point (the cursor will change to notify you that you are there) and clicking. Ta Da, you should have a fairly accurate selection in Photoshop for the video window you want. But it isn’t a path. Yet. (You can turn CAPS LOCK off now.)
6) The easiest way to get to the paths panel is to go to Window > Paths. Wherever your paths panel shows up, click the drop down in the upper right corner and choose “Make Work Path“; put 0.5 in the box and ok. NOW we have a real path.
7) Copy it (Edit > Copy, CTRL-C for us Windows folks but I seem to remember your screenshot was a Mac so CMD?-C).
8) Bring up Illustrator and Edit > Paste In Front For me, the path appeared exactly in the right spot on the arm, so somehow Photoshop told Illustrator where to put it (most likely having to do with the dimensions of the original image).
9) Tweak the path as necessary. Zoom in. Adjust anchors. Drag lines. Have fun! 🙂

Both Methods:
Now you have the video window that you can import into AE; since I don’t have it installed on this computer, I can’t walk through it, so I can’t walk you through it, but there are plenty of tutorials on the Internet.

Let me know if anything doesn’t work and I’ll try to help.

Steve Crook, Jr.
http://www.stevecrookjr.me

I am a simple creative professional that can get my Adobe suite and a few other creative tools to do what I want. Barely. 🙂

[Steve Crook jr]

Hi, Jeremy!

I’m not entirely sure what you are asking, but I THINK you want all of your video captures (I’ll not call them clips here, because that term has specific meaning in PP) from different angles lined up one atop another in a sequence timeline. From there you want to be able to adjust their position in the timeline – ideally, having PP sync them together for you.

Assuming that is what you are after, here is what I do when I need the same thing.

1) I take the video captures and combine them into one sequence for each angle as I describe in my first answer in this thread:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/953347

basically this takes all of the 4Gb + last files of the capture, turns them into PP clips, combines the clips into a sequence, then turns that sequence into a clip for another sequence.

2) When I’m finished with all of the angles (BTW, I usually just use two, but sometimes I get some footage with my cellphone, too), I create a new sequence, drag all the angle sequences in, then sync the AUDIO as I describe in my second answer to the above thread.

3) Once the audio is synced, I realign each audio track’s video to line up and then edit my sequence.

I hope this helped, if I didn’t explain something properly (my brain takes shortcuts sometimes 🙂 ) let me know, and I’ll try to help.

Steve

Steve Crook, Jr.
http://www.stevecrookjr.me

I am a simple creative professional that can get my Adobe suite and a few other creative tools to do what I want. Barely. 🙂

[Steve Crook jr]

Well, it sounds like the instructions I gave will do the trick for you. That is what I do for my multi-cams.

One additional trick I use is to have Premiere sync the audio for me (CC latest update: Select two audio tracks [alt-click audio of an a/v locked track] > right click > synchronize > audio), then I realign the video for the audio track that was moved. 🙂

Tada! Fully synchronized A/V from multiple cameras & audio recordings.

Good luck!

Steve Crook, Jr.
http://www.stevecrookjr.me

I am a simple creative professional that can get my Adobe suite and a few other creative tools to do what I want. Barely. 🙂

[Steve Crook jr]

I do this a lot with Premiere with my video cam and Hero3 footage. The steps I use (some will be redundant for you, but bear with me 🙂 ).

1. Import the files into Premiere, usually 2-3 .mts or .mp4 files (I cannot get the AVCHD files to ingest properly, so I’ve given up – combining the .mts files is good enough for what I do with the church.)

2. Move the ingested files into a bin for organization. (Cam Source or Hero Source, in my case.)

3. Select the media source files and drag them to the create new sequence icon at the bottom of the project panel (next to the trash can).

So, now we have a sequence with all the clips in order, but this still isn’t what either of us need. 🙂

4. In the project panel, drag the SEQUENCE you just made to the create new sequence icon (the same one you used before).

NOW you have a sequence with all your clips “combined” into one. But it is named the same as the other sequence, so rename one – I rename the first (Cam Clips or Hero Clips). further, I clean up from here by moving the “Clips” sequence into the proper “Source” bin.

I use this for aligning my three recordings of an event: Cam, Hero, and audio through a Tascam recorder hooked up to a mixing board.

Hope it helped you!

Steve Crook, Jr.
http://www.stevecrookjr.me

I am a simple creative professional that can get my Adobe suite and a few other creative tools to do what I want. Barely. 🙂

[Steve Crook jr]

Disclaimer: I am not a recording professional, I just do it for fun and as a hobby – and for my church.

Everything I have read says that the slate is best because it gives you good visual indicators to sync the audio and video of a particular shoot. Part of using a slate or any alternative clapper is audibly stating what the shoot information is at the beginning of the recording: “Sunday skit. Take 1.” or such.

In your case, just do a quick audible ID of the shoot.

Yes, you would have to preview each recording of each take, but it would give you definitive identification.

I know of no automated system. Maybe one of the pros has a better solution. Maybe cheap, too! 🙂

Good luck.

Steve Crook, Jr.
http://www.stevecrookjr.me

I am a simple creative professional that can get my Adobe suite and a few other creative tools to do what I want. Barely. 🙂

[Steve Crook jr]

I am no Illustrator expert, but I know enough to get around. Here are the steps I take to get what you asked for, but someone else may a better/faster way.

1) Create your path and set the stroke you want. Make sure that you set the path to have no fill or extra objects will be created in the next step.

2) Make certain that only the stroke(s) you want to work on are selected and go to Object > Expand.

3) In the dialog box that opens, be sure that “Stroke” is selected (it should be by default) and click “OK”. Your path has now been converted into a group with one object – the outline of the path you created. Note: The “Fill” checkbox doesn’t matter if you had set no fill in step 1 – if your path has any fill other than none, Expand will create an object for the fill, also.

4) Swap the fill and stroke of your path (by clicking the double headed arrow in the juncture of the boxes in the tools panel) to make the final steps easier to see.

5) Change to the direct selection tool (the white arrow in the tools panel or keyboard A) and deselect everything (Select > Deselect or keyboard Shirt+Ctrl+A).

6) Click once on one of the closed ends that you want to get rid of and press keyboard Delete. Repeat for the other end that you want to go away.

At this point you will have two paths in a group that you can manipulate in any way you need.

Good luck! Steve

Steve Crook, Jr.
http://www.stevecrookjr.me

I am a simple creative professional that can get my Adobe suite and a few other creative tools to do what I want. Barely. 🙂

[Steve Crook jr]

I cannot definitively answer your questions, but I have had to edit a video for broadcast that might help you out.

https://youtu.be/oWqJOSFQkk4

1) Slate -> I would guess that that is the official name of the text at the beginning and end of the video (I would expect that broadcasters want the same at the beginning and end, but client wanted differently)

2) 2 seconds of black -> Is there, too. Just after the text at the beginning and before the text at the end.

3) Content -> I found that without leading/trailing text/black the content was exactly 1 minute. Just what it should be.

4) Black -> Different specification than the one I worked on, but put a couple of frames after the content.

5) Audio -> For this one, you need to open the audio in an audio mixing/editing program. Not sure what software you use, but if you use Premiere you can right click the audio track and edit it it Audition. Once there, make sure that no part of the audio spectrum “rises” higher than -10dB on the scale. If any does, select all of the audio and “amplify” by a negative number (-1 or some other small number) repeatedly until the audio is in spec. (You could also select just the part(s) of audio that exceed the bounds, but then you might mess up the balance of the entire composition.)

Again, I am not trained in broadcast in any fashion and I have only worked on the one composition. I do hope this helps, though.