[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Is your footage 32bit or 16bit color and the AE comp the same?
Are you selecting linearize working space?

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

What format are you working in (HD, SD), what kind of source footage, and most importantly what format are you exporting in and how are you viewing the final result? Without that information it’s hard to narrow down the problem.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Not having the moving shot in front of me I can not say that this will work for sure, but here’s a crazy thought:
Try to see if you can create a animated clean plate- clean a still of the back wall from the first frame (including the train with the shadow and lights), and animate new shadow and lights coming from the train as it pulls in using the clip as reference. Match the grain and you should be able to get a clean plate that will allow you to pull a difference key.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

It could be a combination of several things.
You need to create a transition animation between the characters (Cyrillic to Latin). A fast succession of various letters and symbols, one frame each for 15-20 frames maybe. Distort some of the characters using blur and glow.
You can also animate each letter from the word (you will need to build the text using individual layers for each character) as it starts transforming. Animate rotation in 3d and fade opacity.
So one transition should be something like:
Cyrillic letter starts rotating and fades to 0 > transition animation > Latin letter fades from 0 and rotates into place.
You will need to play with the way you change the letters- start transition at different times and not one after the other but random.
Hope this gives you some ideas.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

I know you can archive (.rar) a large file in smaller chunks and then put it together when you extract the file back.
Here’s a useful link for that.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

There will be a lot of roto work. I doubt that you will be able to make it look like the text was not there at all- you may want to consider re-sizing the shots (with the quality loss that comes with that – maybe you can use Instant HD – Magic Bullet)or just blurring the text area

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Are the 40 sec one long shot that does not change (camera does not move) or with a moving camera? It makes a world of difference to know that. Can you post a still or a few as an example?

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

There’s a free version of Colorista:
https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/downloads/free-products/
Also, since you have CS5, you have Color Finesse, a powerful tool for color correction and grading.
It’s a bit hard to give advice if I do not see a still. Post a still of the footage you need to grade and also, if you have a shot you need to match, post a still of that as well.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

DV is a delivery/playback codec. When working in AE try to keep stuff uncompressed. Render out using an Animation (QuickTime)codec or PNG or still sequence like TGA or TIFF.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

It all depends on what you want to do – design, art and typography will help you with motion graphics. Color theory, art and animation with compositing fx and grading and so on… There’s really no way of determining what to choose unless you decide what you want to dive in deeper.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist