Steve Roberts
Forum Replies Created
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As for the caps, you can just minimize the window, for the same effect.
So what’s different, if you’ve never had this problem before? Have you tried it with other clips, other projects, new timelines, new renders … ? Have you found any kind of pattern?
Steve
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You’ve been using AE for 10 years and you don’t have Chris and Trish Meyer’s Creating Motion Graphics books? They have a whole chapter (twelve pages) in their Volume 1 dedicated to that switch.
… so I don’t think I can improve upon their description, especially since they consider it one of AE’s more advanced concepts. 🙂
Steve
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IT’S BAD ETIQUETTE TO WRITE IN ALL CAPS. IT LOOKS AS IF YOU’RE SHOUTING AT US. There. That’s better.
In FCP, are you set to view at “high quality”?
Steve
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Have you tried using AE 6.5’s “remove grain” effect on the clip?
If you place the lens cap shot at the head of the clip, you might get the constant-denoising results you want, but the effect should clean up the clip without doing that.
I used to do demos for Grain Surgery, but they might have tweaked the effect since then.
Steve -
Who is receiving your movies? Ask them what they want from you in terms of frame size and codec.
They might want Quicktime movies in the Animation codec with straight alpha. To render with alpha, use the render queue’s output module to make a quicktime movie, animation codec, RGB+alpha, millions+ colors. Check the manual under “transparency” or “alpha channel”.
Some Avid codecs can be found at https://www.automaticduck.com/support/ .
When rendering without an alpha channel (deliberately), I’ve ignored that “24 bit straight” error.
You’re not a lost cause, but I do think you may have jumped in without reading the manual. AE is not a program for jumping in, as it is very complex, allowing many options, but as a consequence, it also allows many ways to screw up. 🙂 If you have the time, please study the manual and access the help when you need to. If you don’t have the time, I recommend you sit down with your editor or motion graphics designer and pay for a little info session relating to your specific needs and questions.
Steve
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To stabilize this shot automatically, you would track the car on which you are riding. If you can’t see the car, you can’t stabilize the shot by tracking. I think you’re SOL, unless you want to try a new tracking point every five frames or so. Ugh.
This is one of those things that could have been solved on location by clamping a rig to the car, keeping part of the car in shot to provide a stable element. Now that could have been stabilized.
Anybody else?
Steve -
AE’s motion tracker has a stabilizing function, but I believe it’s in the Pro version only.
Steve
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Hmm … here are a few tidbits for you to chew on:
1. Screen resolution is only relevant when you consider the size of the screen and the viewer’s distance from the screen. You can get away with lower res when the viewer is farther away from the screen. How big is the screen in their field of view? That is relevant. In other words, DVD res or similar should be fine if it’s a screen in a boardroom and people are not leaning closely into it.
2. Yes, quicktime full screen does get resized, so 640×480 (for example) gets blown up to 1024×768 (for example). The only way to avoid it would be to make a 1024×768 Quicktime movie, which would have to be compressed for playback, of course. Haven’t tried it.
The resizing also happens with DVD, since DVD is currently locked at 720×480.
3. You can get nice MPEG-2 compression with off-the shelf software, but you should post at the DVD or compression forum to find out which will do it for you. If you outsource, you’ll save time (by not experimenting), but it’s not the only way to get nice compression. Look for the keywords “two-pass” and “VBR”, or “variable-bitrate” encoding.
4. I’d design at 720×540, then render at that size to the Photo-JPEG codec, and see how it plays back full screen. If that’s too much, you can try 640×480 in the same codec, or drag it into a 720×480 DV comp for DVD.
5. If you go for hard drive playback (not DVD), you should render in a square-pixel format with an image size that is a multiple of 4:3 or 16:9. Non-square pixel formats such as 720×480 will look stretched on a computer … unless it’s being played through the DVD Player.
6. Windows Media (WMV) files have surprising quality for the file size, which means it’s a format to consider. I believe you do need a Windows version of AE to render WMV files.
7. Consider a backup laptop with the piece loaded on the day.
8. If you can, test your complete setup (computer, movie, audio and screen) in the presentation room in advance. Consider light levels, volume levels, chat levels, getting people’s attention at the start. And when you finally show it, don’t keep your eyes glued to the video: check out the audience’s reactions, for what they’re worth.
my 2 cents,
Steve -
Ah, I see … many ways to go astray in this app. 🙂
Steve
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One way is to rename the files from .vob to .mpg, but that might only work on Windows.
I use MPEG Streamclip (free) to convert MPEG-2 to another more useable format. Keep in mind though, the quality will not be better than the MPEG-2.
Steve