Steve Renard
Forum Replies Created
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There is a job listings board on the cow, but plenty of freelance graphics folks frequent this forum. If you’re interested, see my work at http://www.steverenard.com and if I’m not the right person for your project, post on the Cow job board.
You can also post at various other sites like 2-pop and (if you’re in Canada, or don’t mind working with folks in Canada) mediajobsearchcanada.com.
Cheers,
Steve -
Export the clip from FCP in whatever format you are using to edit with – DV, Uncompressed 10-bit/8-bit, whatever. Use those same settings in AE and render out to that codec. Staying in the same codec should keep your quality high, and will probably solve the brightness issue, though if you’re colour correcting the clips in AE you should make sure you’re using a broadcast reference monitor for both AE and FCP so that you know you’re comparing apples and apples.
Hope this helps!
Steve -
[Dave LaRonde]The first thing to do is to find out if this company has an Illustrator version of the logo, converted to RGB and not CMYK (or do the conversion yourself in Illustrator). AE keeps the edges of such logos razor sharp. Very cool.
If you can’t get an vector logo, you can get around this by blurring out the logo as it gets closer to the “camera.” It’s a bit of a cheap trick, and it will make your mask a little bit more difficult to animate because you have to stay clear of the burred edge as you reveal the video underneath, but it will give you something to do if you can’t get a vector logo.
Steve
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I quite agree with Dave regarding the editing application. I have not run into the HDV issue myself as most of the HD work I do is with DVCPRO HD (which has it’s own issues).
Steve
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The transition probably placed some keyframes in the timeline for that image. Adjust the keyframes to change the speed of the animation.
If you’re new to AE, try some of the tutorials that are online both on Creative Cow and at other excellent sites like videocopilot.net. Also look for the Creative Cow AE Podcast, which covers basic and more advanced topics really well. Even if you don’t understand everything at first, those tutorials will give you a sense of how the program works, and can get you going really quickly.
Finally, sometimes the best way to learn something, for me, is to just play with it a bit – start clicking stuff and see what happens. The worst case is you have to hit Undo a couple times!
Steve
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This is not really an After Effects question, to me, and not really a yes/no question either. It depends on what you want to do.
You should ask yourself some questions, like: Are you capturing 60-80% or more of your own stuff using the setup that’s working for you right now? Is that setup working well? Do you expect it to continue to work well for the foreseeable future, for the work you expect to do? Do you expect you might need to come in from, or go out to, a non-firewire format like BetaSP? Do you expect to be working in any HD formats where the quality difference between SDI and Firewire is notable, and you need the higher quality?
If you’re using your firewire setup for most or all of the capturing you’re doing, and it’s working for you, I’d say spend some of the money you would have spent on a capture card on some extra RAM for your new system, and save the rest in case you do come across the odd project where you need to transfer from another format to something that you can use with your setup. If, however, you expect to be doing a lot of work with BetaSP or with HD material that requires SDI (which is not all HD material by any means), go with the capture card.
It’s really all dependent on what you expect to be doing.
Vague enough answer for you? 🙂
Cheers,
Steve -
If you have Trapcode’s Shine plugin, you could duplicate your video layer, apply Shine with no transfer mode (so your original, unaffected layer shows through), and then blur it out before adding the Glow effect – creates a more organic/variable sort of feel.
FCP also has a bloom glow effect that’s a little more interesting than what comes with AE, IMHO.
Steve
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Two options:
1. Make a new comp that’s wide enough to fit all of them, line them up in that comp properly, then drop that comp into your main comp to move it around.
2. Us parenting to move them all together. ie, if you’re spelling “Steve” you would put S in and line it up where you want, then T, E, V, and E lined up in relation to S, and then use the parent pickwhip to connect T, E, V, and E to S, so that wherever you move the S, the rest will follow.Good luck!
Steve -
I’ve never tried it, but I would think that you probably would have to build the planes of the building in your particle comp, and then turn on Collapse Transformations so that it would be a 3D element in your main comp. Even then Particular might do something that would flatten your particle image, since it, like many things in AE, is not truly operating in a 3D space – more like 2.5D
Make sure to post the result if you work it out!
Cheers,
Steve -
Check your render settings and output module and make sure you’re not telling it to change something without you realizing it. Then check that when the video comes in to your editing program that the settings are right on that end (FCP has a switch for “Anamorphic” on each piece of footage – not sure what Premiere does).
Also check to make sure that whatever timeline you’re bringing the elements together in (AE or Premiere) is set to the proper settings as well.
If none of that turns out to be the problem – you talk about rendering out different sections. Are you bringing all those sections together as comps nested into a longer comp to render out, or are you rendering out pieces of one big comp, and the problem occurs when you render the big comp?
If you continue to experience problems, write back with more details!
Good luck,
Steve