[Walter Soyka]

I’d love to hear back if you find something you like — could be very useful!

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]

[Bob Cole] “I’ve been asked for advice on an international project, where the subject experts (who are talented architect/engineers, but not artists) need to provide a storyboard to a real artist overseas.”

If they are storyboarding something that’s purely technical, another alternative might be to have them work in whatever design program they already use, then export images and sequence them in Powerpoint.

I’d guess they’d need guidance with their storytelling and visualization.

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]

Round-tripping ProRes 422 from FCP > AE CS5 > FCP works flawlessly. (If I output Animation from AE, I have to manually set the gamma of the clip to 2.2 in FCP to make it match the ProRes original.)

In AE, just set your working space to whatever your ultimate display’s color space will be. For most of my work, I use Rec. 709. As long as AE is interpreting your footage in the correct color space for each item, everything should work beautifully and without any further effort required on your part.

I’m not seeing any difference in render times between color-managed and non-color managed projects.

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]

Different color spaces use the same RGB numbers to represent different colors.

Try using one color space throughout your apps that represents the final output color space — SDTV PAL, Rec. 709, etc.

[Erik Lindahl] “I had an even odder experience this weekend posting a bunch of 2K footage (ProRes 4444). Comparing the graded footage to the posted footage out of AE they look identical in FCP but in QuickLook or QuickTime player they suffer a HUGE shift in gamma. This isn’t a huge problem but very odd and buggy in my opinion..”

Maddening, isn’t it? How do you have the “Final Cut Studio compatibility” switch set in Quicktime Player > Preferences > General?

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]

Are you using color management in your project? Are you using it consistently across apps? Can you evaluate the images for gamma shifts on an external video monitor? Have you seen Todd’s blog on ProRes and CS5?

I feel your pain — I have very little confidence in QT’s ability to properly preserve gamma across applications. This should be a lot easier than it is.

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]

[Kirk Smith] “Won’t the footage be slowed down still by going from 30 fps to 29.97fps? I know that for short scenes it will be nigh imperceptible, but won’t the audio go out of sync eventually for longer comps?”

Yes. You’ll have to slow down the audio a little bit, but I think this will be far less disruptive to the original feel of the media than trying to convert from 30p to 24p.

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]

[Fabian Caruso] “Basically the footage has an unsatisfactory look inside AE, it changes completly form what I had inside PP.”

Any chance you can post a screeenshot of your entire After Effects user interface (including the 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]

[Kirk Smith] “I have some 3D animations that were rendered at 30p (actually technically 30.03p, for some reason.) They are all in 720p HD and I’m trying to make a BluRay out of them. The video is cutscenes from a game, so I had no control whatsoever over the rendering processes. I’ve got the video exported to a PNG sequence, so I have a few hundred (thousand) PNG images making up all the frames of the video. I need to convert it to 23.976 so I can put it on the BluRay in the proper standard, but I’m having issues.”

Blu-ray also supports 720p at 59.94 frames per second. Unless you specifically need to go to 23.976, I’d import the footage, interpret it at 29.97 fps, and drop it in a 1280×720 at 59.94 fps comp.

This will simply double every frame, and it will look just like the 30p footage you have now when played back. It won’t produce any of the artifacting you’re seeing trying to go from 30p to 24p.

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]

[Heather Crank] “So I created an alpha only channel, an rbg straight alpha channel and tried using a luma matte for the matte wipe..but the transition now has a light white edge to the right of the transition/image edge… because I can’t see the end result, I can’t tell if it’s working until it comes back to me.”

Here’s how you can simulate FCP’s Alpha Transition:

Clip Alpha Matte is a luma matte for Clip, and Wipe Matte is a luma matte for FCP Clip A as it transitions into FCP Clip B. (I split Clip A in the attached AE screenshot at the start of the transition to make it easier to use the luma matte.)

For a smooth transition, the Clip Alpha Matte should start and end in full black. The Wipe Matte should start in full white and end in full black. Grays in between will control the opacity of the clip and the transition from A to B, respectively.

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]

[Fabian Caruso] “The quality is lower and the overall settings also change in some cases (tiff image sequence). I’m trying to figure out what it depends on, for a clean workflow. If you can help in some way I would be glad.”

Could you tell us exactly what you’re doing to get from Premiere to AE? The more specifics you provide, the more we’ll be able to help. A screen shot would be helpful.

Without knowing more, I’d guess that perhaps you are not previewing at full resolution, which would make the footage appear blocky.

As for the “overall settings” changing for your TIFF sequences, you should know that AE defaults to interpreting image sequences at 30 fps. If you are using any other frame rate, you’ll need to change the defaults or change the footage interpretation.

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