[Steve Roberts]

Next time you’re in Toronto, drop me a line!

Alpha tricks:

– In 3d apps (in my experience), when you set a background to a colour, unless that background is actually an object, it will have an alpha of zero. This means that in an alpha-aware app such as AE, you can choose to make that BG disappear by interpreting as straight alpha or premultiplied alpha.

– Technically, it’s straight/premultiplied RGB, but that’s getting deep. Everyone calls it “alpha”.

– If you have a funny-coloured edge (e.g. orange) around the objects (as you did), but you want to kill the BG (make it transparent), interpret alpha as “ignore” to see the BG (e.g. orange). Re-interpret as “premultiplied”, but use the eyedropper in the dialog to choose the colour for premultiplication — choose the BG colour that you can see in the image. You might have to have a footage window open to see that. Hit OK or whatever.

[Steve Roberts]

No, that’s not normal — set it back.

Try reinterpreting the footage to ignore the alpha.

[Steve Roberts]

m2v is for MPEG-2 files. It is not a “native HD codec”. It is used for HDV, which uses temporal or interframe compression meant to fit HD material onto a 25Mbps data rate, like DV25 (mini DV).

P2 files are recorded to the DVCPRO HD codec, which corresponds to 100 Mbps, or DV100. The MXF format on the P2 card is just a wrapper, as is Quicktime. So there’s no loss when ingesting P2 material into FCP as Quicktime.

https://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=63717

[Steve Roberts]

When bringing the footage into FCP, use the P2 import feature — check the FCP Help. This should convert the footage into DVCPRO HD Quicktime files.

Once converted, import them into AE. To make a comp from the footage, drag a footage item onto the new comp button at the bottom of the Project window. This should make a comp that is 960×720 (non-square pixels) or 1280×720 (square pixels), depending on your version of AE, and how it interprets the footage. Either is correct.

Change the length of the comp if necessary in the comp properties.

Let us know if you have any troubles.

[Steve Roberts]

I’d need to see the storyboards.

[Steve Roberts]

Here are the three stages to DVD:

1. high-quality video from AE or an NLE
2. MPEG-2 video compressed from video #1
3. authored, burned DVD, incorporating video #2

#1 may be uncompressed AVI, Quicktime Animation, 8-bit uncompressed, Photo-JPEG, whatever — but not MPEG-2, DV (if you can help it), MPEG-4, and so on.

#2 may be created by recompressing #1 in AE or something like Compressor or Squeeze. I like Compressor nowadays.

#3 may be created with EncoreDVD, DVDStudio Pro and so on. These apps author the DVD, and some also create #2 at the same time, though not as well as the apps mentioned above.

Does that make sense?

[Steve Roberts]

Indeed. Ian, if you meant “watermark” and not “bug”, my apologies.

[Steve Roberts]

[Dave LaRonde] “You’re almost always going to be better off doing such effects using the real thing.”

… with a cloth simulation. Wind dynamics, too. 🙂

[Steve Roberts]

Try using MPEGStreamclip to convert them to Quicktime first.

[Steve Roberts]

… and it’s called a “bug” or “logo bug”, at least in North America. 🙂

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_on-screen_graphic
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/basic_3dlogo.html

A watermark is placed in the center of the clip, large and obnoxious, to prevent unauthorized usage of the clip. Bugs are in the corner, of course.