[Walter Soyka]

[Dave LaRonde] “Blu-Rays don’t play at 24fps. They play at 23.976 fps.”

This is changing, though. Blu-Ray supports both 23.976 fps and 24.0 fps playback. There is no analog standard that will support it, but you can pass a 24.0 fps stream over HDMI. With a new 120 Hz monitor, you should be able to play back 24.0 fps media without pulldown.

This is still a corner case, though, and if the monitor is not capable of true 120 Hz, you’re at the mercy of the monitor’s video processor for how your 24.0 fps would be displayed at 59.94 / 60 Hz.

Pedantry aside, none of this changes the bottom line — 23.976 fps is still by far the more flexible choice for video distribution.

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]

[Marc Thomas] “how to make the shadows “2.5D”? “

Apologies if I’m needlessly overcomplicating this — unless the effect is very, very slow, I doubt that any viewer would ever notice. Just for clarity, what I was referring by 2.5D is this:

After Effects doesn’t think in true 3D; everything in After Effects is two-and-a-half dimensional. You can position a 2D layer anywhere in 3D space and rotate it in 3 dimensions, but everything AE works with is a flat plane with no depth, like a sheet of paper or a playing card.

When it shatters something, CC Pixel Polly gives the illusion of three dimensions, but as you swing the camera around, you see that it’s really a flat plane that exists in 3D space. This is the “2.5D” I was referring to.

In this case, if you precomp everything, you can position the precomp in 3D space, and you can have it cast shadows, but it will be a 2D plane in 3D space that’s casting the shadow; particles will not cast shadows on each other, and there will be no difference between the shadow from a “foreground” particle and a “background” particle, because to AE, there is no difference in Z-depth.

I’ll also note that some effects like Shatter and many of the Trapcode plugins work around this 2.5D limitation by rendering a 3D perspective within their 2D layer of what the composition’s camera would see in a true 3D environment.

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]

If you use lights with Optical Flares, there is no need for expressions or scripting — change the positioning mode source to “Track Lights.” (There are some very useful options if you are working with more than one light.)

Just like with Knoll, the effect should stay on a static 2D layer, and the light itself should be animated in 3D space.

Here’s the tutorial on positioning lens flares in 3D space with Optical Flares.

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]

[Marc Thomas] “To be clear, I’d like to use the Shatterize effect on text that is casting shadows so as to have the shadows Shatterize along with the text… is this possible? “

CC Pixel Polly’s 3D space is separate from (but related to) the After Effects 3D space. You’ll never get true 3D shadows from it, because as far as AE is concerned, it’s a 2.5D layer.

Dave’s suggestion should let you fake it with 2.5D shadows, which is about the best you will get from AE. Don’t forget to promote the precomp to 3D.

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]

[Chad Kettering] “What advantage is there to using the 23.976 frame rate over a pure 24 fps?”

Most video systems that say “24p” really mean 23.976p; the benefits I see are these:

• Easy pull-down to 29.97 fps, for monitoring, tape, broadcast, or cross-conversion to other HD formats.
• Easy down-convert to SD DVD, which requires 23.976 fps and does not support 24 fps.

Sorry, I’m not familiar with Premiere, so I can’t help on your other questions.

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]

[Chad Kettering] “I would like the final project to be 1920×1080 24P for a BluRay disc release. Should I setup AE for true 24fps or 23.976fps?”

Either. Blu-Ray technically supports both 23.976 and 24 fps. Personally, I’d choose 23.976 fps unless I had a very good reason not to.

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]

[matt gosciminski] “Am i using a bad codec? is there some setting i should be aware of i havent tinkered with? or is it just normal for after effects to never play back smooth video? “

Dave and Michael have pointed out AE-friendlier codecs, AE memory requirements, and RAM preview.

I’d like to add that After Effects will ONLY play media smoothly in RAM preview. AE is not designed as a realtime system, and while adding RAM and transcoding your media will greatly improve performance, AE will never behave like an NLE. RAM previewing to evaluate your work is a normal part of the workflow.

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]

[Eric Steinberg] “1. Is it possible to set a duration for a still? I’ve figured out that you can set a still to freeze, and also check “link” on it, so that all you need to do is hit Return/Take to jump to the next item in preview. But what if I want a still to stay on the screen for 10 seconds, and then the next item in preview takes automatically?

2. Similar question as the first one: Is it possible to have a video freeze on the last frame, and stay frozen on that frame for 10 seconds, and then automatically the next item takes?

3. Is it possible to freeze video only, but audio keeps playing? Or do we simply have to make our clips ahead of time with the video freeze?

4. Any possibility to do more advanced transitions than dissolves? Could I key an animated graphic overlay over a cut between 2 clips, or in any other way do something a little sexier transition than a dissolve? “

Unfortunately, I think the answer to all of these questions is no. You can use the “Link” parameter to create delays between clips, but if I recall correctly, it’s limited to 5 seconds and doesn’t work with “Freeze.”

You could solve all these issues in pre-production, though.

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]

Whether you do system maintenance or not, your downtime would be a great time to make sure your backups are complete. Also, it’d be a great time to make a bootable clone of your main system drive to keep on-hand, just in case you experience problems in the future.

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]

[Paul Campbell] “A small club that holds maybe 200 people will host scaled-down “unplugged” versions of music acts. The stage is big enough for about 5 performers, typically acoustic guitars and fiddles. The venue has two other rooms of similar size with video monitors hanging on all of the walls, but are not in direct line of sight with the stage as the first room is.”

What’s the lighting like? I would imagine that this will have the biggest impact on image quality.

[Paul Campbell] “All of them are claiming to have a 2mega-pixel sensor. Does this seem rather low? Even the cameras on iPhones are 3MP…or is this apples and oranges?”

Apples and oranges. 1920 * 1080 = 2,073,600 pixels. I’d guess this is where the 2 megapixel number comes from, and you don’t need anything higher to get an HD image. Raw pixel count is a greater concern for a still camera than a video camera.

[Paul Campbell] “I find that at moment like this, my biggest handicap is just not knowing what kind of picture quality to expect from any of these cameras. Some of them are a little pricey too, so it makes me all the more hesitant to just run out and buy something.”

You might call around to distributors or VARs for the cameras you’re interested in and discuss your needs with them. They might have done similar installs and offer some guidance. Perhaps you could even rent one before you buy.

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