[Walter Soyka]

[alan pover] “”Sometimes the moiré only occurs in the color-channels (green/purple moirés)
Check if that’s the case using the channelcombiner rgb->yuv and check the first (R) channel.
Sometimes you need very aggressive medians or blurs to get rid of those, but you can recombine the original Luminance back in using a layer-mode of luminosity.”

I don’t really understand what he meant. I tried applying the channel combiner filter. I did check the first R channel and I can see the moire there, and I applied fast blur it. But I can’t recombine them together using luminosity mode. Thats where I got lost. Does anyone understand what he meant?”

In loose terms, the advice in that post is to process in YUV (essentially one channel of brightness and two of color) instead of RGB (three channels of color values, with brightness of the image distributed throughout).

The basic idea is to reduce moiré without reducing sharpness by blurring the chrominance channels, but not the luminance channel. This only works when the moiré is not present in the luminance channel. From what I can tell from that thread, the curiousturtle preset uses this method.

If you saw no moiré in the R channel (which is really the Y or luminance channel, thanks to Channel Combiner), then you could use a Channel Blur on the UV or chrominance channels (GB to AE, after Channel Combiner) to reduce the moiré.

However, since you DID see moiré in the luminance, you are out of luck.

As usual, Dave’s advice is best: reshoot. Your other alternative is to rotoscope and blur/median, but I doubt this would look quite right.

I have reduced shimmering before in very simple shots with a freeze frame, masking, and tracking — but that’d be completely impractical with clothing in interview footage.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

I’ve reconsidered the 1280×720 production comp. Work in 1920×1080 instead so you’ll have more pixels available for smoother distortion later. Your warped output comp should match projection.

Check out the Watchout manual for some examples of what your Bezier warp will look like. You could also use a combination of Bezier warp and Bulge or Optics Compensation. I’d get the top straight, then get the bottom straight, then deal with any irregularity in the middle. Use as few handles as possible.

If you are simultaneously warping for curvature and keystone correction, this will be considerably harder. You might consider double-precomping and roughing in perspective with Corner Pin before handling the curvature. Better still — move the projector!

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

Scale Comp is a great script. As long as you’ve manually adjusted any misplaced elements, you should be ok. That said, be careful about going from square pixels to non-square. Double check all your PARs.

For future reference, the COW can embed images right in your post for you if you don’t zip them before uploading.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Joshua Steadman] “We aren’t able to use a program like Watchout; am needing to do all this within AfterEffects.”

Ok, so Watchout is out, but what about renting a separate hardware warp engine? That’s really the best way to do this…

[Joshua Steadman] “I tried outputting a test jpeg with an AE-generated grid and projecting that image onto a curved surface here in the studio, to test workflow. With my still camera I then took a picture of the distorted projection, brought that into AE, and am attempting to use the bezier warp tool to match the distort (or really, to do an inverse of the distort), but am having trouble getting it to look just right.”

Barring a real warp engine, I’d suggest a couple changes to your workflow.

First, I’d work in your regular 1280×720 comp for production. As the last step, I’d precomp that into a separate 1280×720 comp for warping and output.

Working with a digital camera as you are may be introducing additional optical distortion from the camera’s lens. Get in the space with an AE machine, drop a grid in your production comp, then switch to the warped output comp. Apply your Bezier warp, send that full-screen on a second output to the projector, and tweak live.

An alpha channel won’t be necessary (or useful). Just keep a black background in your warped output comp.

Finally, cross your fingers that nothing moves from when you test to when you render final output!

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Shane Ross] “Ignore what QT says…no one understands why it does that. Know that what you have in FCP is right.”

Quicktime is reporting the clean aperture specified for the video file. I think this can be safely ignored with most digital HD.

FCP uses the production aperture (full raster), and Quicktime displays the production aperture on movies from FCP by default. If you see gunk on the edges, you can set the movie to display using the clean aperture in Quicktime, cropping the edges off.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Jeremy Kemp] “Obviously the simplest solution would be to drop it onto a 4:3 timeline and scale it up to fit full frame, but then we will have title safe issues. Since they are only shape layers, it may not be a problem to just resize my shape layers, but there are several comps and want to spend as little time on it as possible.”

Unless you designed for a 4:3 title safe area, I don’t think an automated solution is feasible. I’d duplicate your original 16:9 comp, use the 4:3 overlay, redesign and reposition elements as necessary, and then drop it in your 4:3 comp for render.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

I agree with the others — let your graphic build. I’d also add that there are two distinct moments in your soundtrack, and you could time your animation with those beats.

Also, I understand that you’re using this as an intro. How do you intend to get from the intro to the piece that follows? Hard cut, dissolve, or perhaps a custom transition? Unless you’re building a custom transition into the animation, don’t forget to leave some extra head and tail to make this easier to use in post production.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

Try rendering to an image sequence. You can create a movie from the image sequence with AE, Quicktime Pro, or Compressor.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Roberto De Jesus] “YES! they are anything BUT free — ugh! — re-budget”

If you are going to re-budget anyway… send the footage to a post house with an Alchemist or a Teranex to do the standards conversion the right way.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

You could just turn frame blending on. Traditional frame blending will err on the soft side; pixel motion will err on the globby side. As Dave mentions, there are third-party tools which offer more control.

Andrew Kramer released a frame rate converter a couple years ago, but I’ve never used it myself.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events