Steve Roberts
Forum Replies Created
-
Hmmm … did you render with an alpha channel? Avid likes “straight alpha”.
Steve
-
Check the help on “track matte”.
Steve
-
You need something that uses z-depth. If you use the bundled Shatter effect, you might need to check out the COW’s tutorials to make it happen. I’d use Trapcode’s Particular, since it’s just terrific. 🙂 But you have to buy it.
Steve
-
You need something that uses z-depth. If you use the bundled Shatter effect, you might need to check out the COW’s tutorials to make it happen. I’d use Trapcode’s Particular, since it’s just terrific. 🙂 But you have to buy it.
Steve
-
Off a DVD? I’m assuming you mean that the animation will be played using the computer’s DVD-playing utility, as you’d play a commercial DVD movie.
Those DVD movies are compressed to the MPEG-2 codec before the DVD is authored, then burned. The quality of the source for the MPEG-2 encoding should be as high as possible — Quicktime Animation codec or uncompressed AVI — because the MPEG-2 encoding will degrade the video, and you don’t want to degrade DV (ugh) any further.
To compress the Animation/uncompressed movie to MPEG-2 you should use an app such as Compressor, Cleaner or ProCoder. Adobe’s Encore might be able to do it.
(Keep in mind that if your original source is shot DV footage, compressing it to Animation won’t make it look any better, so you can just go from DV to MPEG-2.)
Try posting on the COW DVD forum for more info.
Steve
-
For highest quality, render from AE to the Quicktime Animation codec. Comp in FCP, rendering to that codec again, then use Compressor to compress to MPEG-2 for DVD.
However … you won’t likely get real-time anything in FCP that way, since Anim is a high-data-rate codec. If that’s cool with you, great. If not, you should render out of AE to the best codec that will get you real-time in FCP: for example, the Decklink codec if you have that hardware, or Photo-JPEG, but that’s pushing it, IMO. Definitely not DV, unless you expect to do no rendering in FCP.
You could also do all your editing for timing in FCP in your particular real-time codec, leaving a slug for the graphics sequences. Then you drop in your graphics (rendered to your real-time codec from AE), then compress to MPEG-2 in Compressor. Unless you expected to do more effects in FCP, that would save you a compression (rendering) step in FCP, if I understand your process.
Anybody else?
Steve -
DV is D1 with some pixels lopped off the top and bottom.
“Natural” is not really a useful word. If you’re talking about high quality, those six pixels are not relevant. You should be concerned with the codec that you use if you’re concerned about quality.
If you want high quality graphics to DVD, render out of AE to the Animation codec, then use Compressor or a similar app to compress your video to MPEG-2. DV is not high quality, because the codec is not high quality. It’s a compromise. If you’re on PC, you probably have to feed an uncompressed AVI to the app which creates the MPEG-2.
I think this is a theoretical discussion, so I’ll sign off. If anyone has a specific project in mind with specific hardware issues, I’ll sign back on.
Steve
-
By the way, the Educational version of AE doesn’t include the Cycore (CC) effects.
Steve
-
You can save render settings and output module templates, and make them the defaults if you wish.
Check the AE help under rendering a movie>creating and using output module templates. There’s something similar for render settings.
Steve
-
Since you didn’t mention which effects are giving you trouble I’ll take a stab at it: apply effect>image control>grow bounds above the troublesome effect in the effects stack and adjust its settings until the effect grows.
Other than that, we’d need specifics.
Steve