[Walter Soyka]

In general terms, you usually go through some editorial before you go to effects so that you can minimize unnecessary effects work.

I’m currently using FCP, but if you’re looking to avoid dynamic link problems, perhaps my workflow will be helpful to you.

I rough in my edit and mark shots for effects. I export those shots with handles, work on individual shots in AE, render, then re-connect to the new media in FCP.

I use each tool for its strength — FCP for editorial, AE for effects — and I keep each shot separate so that a simple change down the road only affects its shot, not the entire scene.

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]

[Michael Szalapski] “I would prefer to playback off of a laptop but have a DVD version on hand in case the laptop farts up. The laptop would be a higher res file and would look much better on that screen.”

Or better still, an HD media player or Blu-ray player (if the monitor has the appropriate connectivity). Western Digital makes a media player that comes up in every thread on this topic.

Laptops scare me for live playback unless they’re specifically set up for live playback (appropriate players and codecs installed, power management features off, networking off, virus scanners off, all non-essential services off, etc.).

I have seen many corporate laptops where the users didn’t have — and couldn’t get — administrator access to properly configure the systems. I worked on a webcast where the client provided laptops to save rental fees. Instead, they paid someone to wiggle the mouse every 5 minutes to prevent the screen from locking and shutting down the webcast feed.

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 think Dave’s advice is sound, but I’d consider producing the animation in HD and scaling down in compression.

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]

[Jan Gallasch] “Since there’s nothing out there that does what i want it to do (at least not for my current budget), and i don’t want to go for a half assed solution, i’m gonna wait two to three months, save my money and probably buy a Flanders LM-1760W. Any thougths?”

Flanders makes nice monitors, and they are all great values.

I didn’t see a capture card (AJA, Blackmagic Design, or Matrox) in your system specs above. You’ll need one to feed your FSI.

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]

[Nicholas Montgomery] “I’ve been challenged to key out the face and replace it with “something cool and spooky”. Could be as simple as ethereal smoke…but the real challenge is removing buddy’s face properly as he runs, jumps and flips around the screen attacking people.”

Another challenge will be tracking and matching your face replacement back into the shot.

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]

[Craig Seeman] “Some compression company has got to realize there’s money to be made with a Mac media graph analysis tool. I’ve mentioned this to Telestream.”

Agreed — I would buy this on the spot.

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]

[christian kim] “basically, if i have few layers where i want to have same effects applied to. can i [instance] an effect? so when i change that effect, the change gets applied to other [instanced] effects?”

When I need to do something like this, I just pick whip the dependent parameters to a single master set.

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]

[mathew lisett] “is there a specific plugin to do this.”

Not that I know of. You’ll have to use a number of different techniques to match the footage by hand. Different pieces of footage will present different problems, and require different solutions.

[mathew lisett] “otherwise its like saying its posisble but havent a clue how”

I mentioned stabilizing the shots and compensating for optical distortion.

I suppose I should also add masking, rotoscoping, and color correction to the list.

You’ve asked a simple question with a complicated answer.

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]

[mathew lisett] “say if somebody was speaking and one footage has only partial the face and you have another footage source which has the right side and the remaining right side footage, if its posisble to jon the two to complete the visual”

That won’t be easy. You’d have to stabilize both pieces of footage and compensate for any optical distortion differences between the two shots before merging them.

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]

[Filip Martin] “I’m currently working on a 3840×720 project in fcp,”

For projects like this, I usually do my offline edit in FCP, but I online in After Effects. FCP has poor support for non-standard resolutions.

You might have better luck changing your sequence compressor to an intraframe codec like ProRes, Uncompressed, or PhotoJPEG.

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