[Terry Coolidge]

I appreciate understanding the use of the planar surface to define what area I want to use for exporting tracking data as that may be different from the area used to actually create the tracking data. Thanks for the tip. However, this did not seem to help. When I copy and paste the tracking data to my text layer or null layer in AE, the layer does not appear “stuck” to the underlying footage at all. It’s appears “in sync,” in that it speeds up and slows down and does appear driven by the tracking data, but it definitely is not “locked down.” Not only is the AE layer sliding, but it also scales at a different rate even if the start and end points of the scale seem to be the same.

I’m not seeing how Corner Pin data would be helpful. Unless there’s a script that converts positional data for the four corner points into scalar and rotational data.

I apologize if I’m doing something obviously goofy. I’m sure it shouldn’t be this difficult. Should I upload my footage and an AE project with the pasted data for someone to take a look at?

[Terry Coolidge]

I do appreciate you taking the time to follow up, Todd. Thank you very much.

[Terry Coolidge]

Thank you for replying.

I’m surprised that this information was not more easily found by searching the web. I started drafting an email to a client where I was going to suggest using Clip Notes. It wasn’t until I tried rendering out a small sample that I discovered that Clip Notes might no longer be available. I wasted a half-hour or more looking for a definitive answer using Google searches. I’m extremely grateful to eventually get a helpful response here on the Creative COW forum, but shouldn’t Adobe have some info out there somewhere on the web that simply says, “Clip Notes is no longer an option for export?” Seems like the nice thing to do.

[Terry Coolidge]

PhotoJPEG didn’t appear any better.

Here are some screen shots for comparison.

https://webpages.charter.net/terrycoolidge/banding/

I’m thinking I just can’t do anything about it, which seems frustrating to me.

[Terry Coolidge]

I’m not seeing any difference between the output that came out of QuickTime Pro vs. the output that Compressor was able to generate. They seem to be producing identical results (as far as I can tell).

Any other suggestions? Are there other settings I should be tweaking?

The Animation compressed QuickTime movie created with my image sequence looks smooth enough, but is there something I could have done back when I originally rendered the frames in After Effects that would be helping me out now? The color depth of my AE project was set to 8-bit. I’ve never messed with anything other than 8-bit. Would changing the bit depth in AE have any impact on what I’m able to achieve when doing the H.264 compression?

[Terry Coolidge]

I have Compressor. Should I just stick with H.264 for my output format and simply use Compressor instead of QuickTime Pro, or is there more to it than that?

Can I open an image sequence in Compressor, or do I need to save the image sequence in a movie format first and then pass it through Compressor? In which case would I save it as an uncompressed movie (8 bit? 10 bit?), or would it be okay to use the Animation compressed QT movie that I already have?

Thanks for the response. I appreciate being clued in to give Compressor a try.

[Terry Coolidge]

Here’s the short answer:

AE CS3 is actually AE version 8. You’re one version behind if you’re using AE 7.

Here’s the longer answer:

AE didn’t join the CS “family” until this most recent version. AE had previously been on its own track that was outside of the Creative Suite grouping. Adobe started including After Effects as part of a “suite” when they relaunched Premiere and established the Adobe Production Suite even though none of those were really considered Creative Suite applications. With CS3, all of the video production apps have been folded in under the CS moniker.

[Terry Coolidge]

You have described exactly what I observed. Sounds like this second attempt went just as it is supposed to.

I appreciate having your explanation to help solidify my confidence in the process. Thank you.

Thank goodness for computers that can handle all these processes and calculations for us. It’s challenging enough sometimes with all of these fantastic tools. Hard to imagine how the eggheads figured out television and video tape way back when. Mind boggling, really.

[Terry Coolidge]

Update…

So they managed to re-export the clips for me. Came in completely differently this time. Now the clips are 720 x 486, and defaulted to .9 pixel aspect ratio (they’re supposed to be D1 WS). I simply opened the interpret footage dialog box for each clip, set the PAR to 1.2, and then clicked on “Guess 3:2 Pulldown.” AE very quickly came up with a “guess” for each, and the clips look infinitely better now in my 23.976 comp.

I think I’m on my way. Some wasted time, I suppose, but the silver lining is that I now understand this concept even better than before. Nothing like running into bad assets to help get a better grip on what is required to have good assets. I’ll now know what to ask for and look for when getting footage from these folks.

My only lingering question would be about the “conform framerate” option in the interpret footage dialog. Previously the bad clips were conforming to 23.976 after AE had guessed. The good clips are now conforming to 29.97. However, when scrolling through the clips in the Project pane, the info at the top for each clip shows a framerate of 23.976. I’m not saying this is wrong, I just don’t completely grasp what’s going on here. Based on Dave’s and Kevin’s recommendations, I will work in a 23.976 comp and then output with interlacing turned on to create a 29.97 final piece. I don’t really need to hear back from anyone, I don’t think, but if this is a loose end that can be tied up, I’m happy to have a more rock-solid understanding of these various framerate issues when working with 24fps and NTSC.

Thanks again for all the patience and help.

[Terry Coolidge]

Much gratitude for helpful responses from both Dave and Kevin. I really appreciate your continued support as I work through this challenge. Thank you very much!

In response to Kevin’s most recent post, there were only 3 out of 20 clips that were causing problems when trying to guess how to remove pulldown. However, all 20 clips are at an odd size in terms of image dimensions. All 20 clips are 800 x 450. Your most recent post leads me to believe that the clips were scaled to this size when exported, and that this has made it impossible for me to properly remove pulldown. I actually mentioned something about odd image dimensions back at the beginning of my very first post, but I didn’t realize that l this could be affecting everything else.

I’ve sent an email to my client asking them if they can provide me with the original footage before it got scaled since it sure seems like this is what must have happened. I’ve explained that I don’t think there is anything I can do to properly deinterlace the footage (remove pulldown) with what I currently have. We’ll see what they say. Stay tuned…