Steve Roberts
Forum Replies Created
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… with no changes to your particular hardware?
You can’t improve the speed of render without changing your hardware. Since your hardware is base level (1 proc, 2 GB is barely capable), you can’t use multiprocessing.
So you have to adjust your workflow to speed up RAM previews: only preview at low res, low magnification (e.g. 1/4 and 25%), with motion blur off, draft 3D, proxies, all that sort of thing, which should be covered in one section in the help. It means you have to preview a not-quite “full” movie, but that’s the way we did it before multiprocessing and 20GB RAM.
But if you want to speed up the render of a high-quality full-res movie, with your particular machine (iMac G5), I’d have to say it can’t be done. You need to buy a new computer.
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In order to play a high-quality video at a high-data-rate codec (such as Animation) smoothly without skipping, you probably need to have a RAID array hooked up to your computer. This is because each frame of the file is just too big for the computer to read at your desired frame rate. This is expected behaviour by the pros, because nobody expects to play back high-data rate-files without a RAID. Those files are supposed to be high-quality renders used for further processing by another app — compressing by that other app into a form that can be played back: lower-quality, lower data rate.
For example: you work in AE, render “lossless” to the Animation codec, then use Compressor to process that high-quality movie to MPEG-2, then use DVD Studio Pro to make a DVD containing those MPEG-2 movies. If, in the middle of that process, you’d want to see your movie play back, you’d use Quicktime Pro to compress it to H.264 codec, to reduce its data rate so it can play. But sorry, on current hardware, you cannot play back a high-data-rate movie smoothly.
The display is only relevant in that it is a TV, 16×9. 1920×1080 is irrelevant — what is more important is the use of DVD. The DVD spec is 720×480. No questions, no arguments. However, it can handle widescreen 16×9 or standard 4:3.
Yes, setting up your composition (not “file”) at 1920×1080, 29.97 is fine for future-proofing. Work in that. When it’s time to render, drag that comp into an NTSC DV widescreen preset comp. This is the comp you will render to a high-quality movie using the “lossless’ preset, probably adding audio to the output module. Next, take that movie into something like compressor to make an MPEG-2 (m2v) video file and ac3 (probably) audio file. Next, import those into your DVD authoring app.
As for stringing them together, you have two choices: a) render one long movie by stringing comps together in AE, or b) render each one separately then compress each to MPEG-2/ac3 (as described), then import each of those into your DVD authoring app, make each a track, then link them together there. I’d prefer b), because if you had to change one animation or change the order, you wouldn’t have to render the entire thing again. Keep in mind that in AE, you can queue up the render of all your comps, and in something like Compressor, you can queue up the compression tasks. Queue up, hit go, and go for a coffee.
Does that make sense?
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Well, normally, pans like that are choppy. It’s an optical phenomenon sometimes called “judder”. The only way to avoid it is to change the motion from a simple pan to something more complex, to introduce distracting elements, or to use a faster frame rate or interlacing … and sometimes none of those are possible. But hey … feature films have the same problem, and it’s accepted.
HOWEVER … yours is worse than normal judder, and at low quality I don’t think normal judder is the issue in the case of your video. At low quality, you get what looks like pulldown jerk (stop it!) or something like that. This high/low quality issue may be a clue — it may be the player?
1) under what circumstances has it ever played properly? RAM preview in AE? QT export of AE-rendered Animation codec movie?
(I’d render a movie out of AE to the Animation or PNG codec, then use QT Player to export to H.264 Quicktime movie. Basically, change your workflow to try to isolate the cause.)2) your judder is uneven. Something tells me that one of your compressing apps is making a 29.97 movie out of your material and messing it up. Or maybe it’s making a 15 fps movie, come to think of it. What is the frame rate of all the compressed movies, and what are the frame rate settings in your pipeline?
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Got screengrabs?
– good masks, bad masks in the final result
– render queue settings
– file>export settings -
Yes, the movie can be any size. But your computer’s hard drive should be able to play it back smoothly. If your video is 1800×4000, it might not play back well, depending on the codec you use. This can only be determined (for sure) by testing on the playback device.
Yes, the projector projects a wide rectangle of light, either 4:3 or 16:9, unless there’s a new one I don’t know about. If your video is tall and narrow, and you set the player (Quicktime or Windows Media Player) to play full screen, it would probably play a tall image with black bars on the sides.
I hope you’re not thinking that purely black bars would be projected on anything … that’s like projecting darkness in a lit room. 😉 They would only be a minor problem if they weren’t quite black — if they were just bright enough to be brighter than the area around them … kind of like the difference between the letterbox bars on a video and the black frame of the TV set. Y’know? However, I don’t think that you’d see those not-quite-black bars, but if they’re a problem, mask off the lens with black camera tape, cardboard or whatever.
Hey. Get a hold of the AV company doing the job and talk to them. They should have a solution.
… and you must do your own testing, by the way. Asking questions on the internet is only the beginning.
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The issue is not the size of the banner, it is the distance from the viewer … in other words, the apparent size, not the actual size. You could get by with a lower res if the banner is farther away. I hope that makes sense.
But. The limiting factor is the playback device and projector. What size, data rate of file can it play back?
Maybe you could go for H.264, high-def. And yes, square pixels, since you’re playing back on a computer with a projector designed to play back from computers. And I think you’d have to make a video that fits the normal aspect ratio of the display device (4:3, 16:9, whatever) that has black bars on the sides. Or maybe mask the lens with some kind of matte box.
You might also want to post this in the live & stage events forum, since they know a lot about this sort of thing, in general.
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1) make the clean video in AE. The codec should be high-quality, like PNG, animation, ProRes, etc. This doesn’t have to play back well, since it’s probably rather big.
2) use something like Compressor to compress. You should compress to MPEG-2, though if you use a preset, it may have “DVD” in the preset name. This should create an m2v file for the video, and probably an ac3 file for the audio. Those are file types, while MPEG-2 is the codec.
3) You import the m2v/ac3 files into a DVD authoring app such as DVD Studio Pro or Encore. Through the normal DVD Authoring process, this app creates the VOB files which go on the DVD.Any questions?
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Drag it into a DV comp (regular or widescreen preset) and render that to Animation or PNG (Quicktime). Then use Compressor or something to encode that for DVD, then use DVD Studio Pro or something to author the DVD.
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1. AE can’t make slide shows. It can make Quicktime movies, SWFs and FLVs. Basically.
You should make a movie (choose from the above) for each slide, then import each into Powerpoint and use Powerpoint’s interactivity.
2. No. Not in AE. You’d have to do that in Powerpoint (?) or Flash. I recommend making your movies then finding someone who knows Flash.
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Finally I can stop telling people “After Effects doesn’t bend in 3D. Buy Forge Freeform or get a real 3D app.” 🙂