Steve Roberts
Forum Replies Created
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My guess is that the Win & QT Players can’t recognize non-square pixels. Premiere and AE can recognize the non-square pixels, so they display the movie properly.
If you really want WinMP/QT to play the movie at 16:9 you need to make a movie at 16:9 with square pixels:
160×90
320×180
… and so on up to 864×486 (for NTSC, anyway)Steve
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I render animation codec QT movies out of AE (through the render queue) then drop into Apple’s Compressor for MPEG-2 encoding.
Rendering MPEG-2 out of AE isn’t wrong, but I don’t know how the quality holds up, or if you get enough choices regarding data rate and quality.
Sorry I couldn’t be more help …
Steve -
Eventually, it must be compressed to MPEG-2 if you want DVD playback. You have no choice on the matter.
In your DVD authoring tool, can you set a low enough data rate to fit the files on the disc?
Steve
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It’s called “rotoscoping”.
First you try to key out as much of the subject as you can, then you draw a mask for the rest, and keyframe its shape parameter.
However, you shouldn’t just draw a mask every 10 frames — you should find the places where the mask shape would hit an extreme, and draw it there, letting AE interpolate from extreme to extreme. Say the person being masked stretches out his/her arm, then retracts it. You draw a mask at three points in time: arm in, arm out, and arm in. AE interpolates between the three.
Also, if parts of the person do not change shape, you draw separate masks for those parts and just keyframe their mask shape by dragging their position around, making keyframes at extreme positions.
By extremes, I don’t mean just the ends of motion, but also where motion changes direction: points of inflection.
There are other rotoscoping tips on the COW, no doubt. Search and ye shall find.
Steve
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The ability to print certain windows was added a few versions ago, but updating that ability seems to have been a low priority for the AE team.
Specifically, you can print the flowchart window (select the window, then file>print) or save it as a PDF from the print dialog. However, the image that I was working on was split into three pages. There doesn’t seem to be any resizing or fitting option.
Anyway, give it a go. Maybe it’ll be refined for the next version. 🙂
Steve
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Nope. By “system files” I also mean “application files”. Everything that normally goes in the Adobe folder goes on your system drive, which is the main drive on your computer that also holds the Operating System.
The external drive holds your AEP files and your footage, images, audio, and so on.
At least that’s how I and many others do it.
Steve
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It’s always a good idea to have your source files on a separate drive from your system drive. No big deal … just place them there.
I’m liking Dantz Retrospect for backups on the Mac. Currently, I backup to external HD, but will be getting more drives to rotate backup sets, stored in different places. Details are in the Retrospect manual.
Anybody else?
Steve
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It should be noted Neil, that fine professionals (and excellent spellers!) like Ryan are probably in a position to toss your tape back to you if it doesn’t meet broadcast spec.
Or at best, the editor who receives your stuff might have to mess with your colours so that the tape doesn’t get thrown back at him.
(Not that we have any illusions about NTSC fidelity anyway, but we designers try to do our best.)
Steve 🙂
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Out of AE, either render to Quicktime Animation codec or Photo-JPEG. PJPEG at 89-94% quality gives smaller file sizes with negligible loss in quality.
DV is very lossy. Not good as an intermediate codec.
If you neeeed an AVI, then I suppose you need to use no compression. I’m not aware of any useful intermediate codecs for AVI.
Steve
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I don’t know … if the content is important to the audience, dissolves are fine in my opinion. I don’t think of it as cliche, just unobtrusive. I don’t think you want the audience to focus on the transitions. If the shots are good and cropped well, possibly panned to reveal the focal point well, the audience will focus on the content.
The only other transition that comes to mind is a gradient wipe based on the image brightness, or a more filmic dissolve from one of the plugin manufacturers. Darn. Who was that? Digital Film Tools?
Steve