Mishandling Pulldown

Video, as idiosyncratic as it is, has been around for awhile. Which is why I can’t understand it when even today, broadcast networks and now online video distributors don’t get some of the fundamental issues of video - such as how to handle interlaced fields and pulldown - right.

Essential After Effects Information

Every After Effects user should bookmark the Region of Interest blog by Todd Kopriva of Adobe. Todd was the documentation lead for several versions, and now is very active in tech support. His blog always has the most recent information on bug fixes, bug avoidance, best practices, and learning resources.

Todd recently helped create a learning resource of his own: a free series of After Effects Frequently Asked Questions videos on video2brain. These answer several of the most common panics users (both beginners and nont-beginners) may experience. One caveat: Most involve Preferences, which is under the Edit menu on the Windows machine Todd is using in these videos; on the Mac, prefs are found under the After Effects menu. Other than that, they’re short, clear, and to the point - well worth the very minimal time required.

Creative Suite 5 is Shipping

Less than three weeks after “launching” Creative Suite 5 at NAB, Adobe has started shipping it, including After Effects and Premiere Pro. In case you missed it in the middle of the NAB information overload, Scott Simmons has already (p)reviewed Premiere Pro CS5, and we did the same with After Effects CS5. I imagine we’ll all have a lot more to say once we get a chance to use it more in real-world situations; stay tuned…

After Effects, ProRes, and Gamma Shifts

Adobe’s yeoman After Effects documentation guru Todd Kopriva maintains a highly useful blog over on Adobe.com.

Today he just posted instructions on how to modify the After Effects CS4 QuickTime gamma rules XML file (did you even know such a thing existed?) to allow proper round-tripping using ProRes4444 without getting those gamma shifts that cause many of us to rip our hair out.

The post also includes links on how to make ProRes 422 roundtrip, and general background information on gamma shifts and After Effects.

Unsafe Areas

Two of the more intriguing new features in After Effects CS4 (and other members of the Adobe Creative Suite 4 family) are updated pixel aspect ratios, and the ability to display 4:3 “center cut” safe area guides inside 16:9 widescreen compositions. I applaud both. But as I work with them more, I realize there are some slight errors in where the safe area guides are being drawn, particularly in light of the new pixel aspect ratios. First I’ll cover the relatively minor 4:3 case, and then move on to the far more egregious 16:9 case.

NAB Tuesday: Getting Plugged In

Noise is everywhere in Vegas. Slot machines are mostly just noise, and everywhere there is loud music - we heard U2 at the breakfast buffet, AC/DC in the hotel restroom, and even the popcorn street vendor on the corner aimed his radio at the crowds walking past while a live band played across the square from him. Every party and event had loud music to create “ambience”, even when the attendees secretly (and not so secretly) wished the music was literally ambient music. The end result is that your voice is shot by the end of the day, making it near impossible to hold a normal conversation (let alone give a presentation the next day).

This year, the only peace and quiet you could find in Vegas was on the show floor. Gone are the days when you could only reach the Adobe booth in the South Hall by jostling through the gauntlet of what was the Apple and Avid booths, both trying to drown out each other from different sides of the aisle. If you were a golfer, you could have practiced your putting on many of the aisles this year - although Tuesday did feel busier than Monday and vendors at the Plug-in Pavilion reported a busy morning. We were among those hanging out, and here’s what we saw:

NAB Monday: Best of Times; Worst of Times

NAB this year is certainly a cross between the best of times (catching up with friends and seeing cool new toys) and the worst of times (the horrendous economy casting a pall around the halls). We’ve been in Las Vegas since Friday night, and teaching a few sessions at the Post Production World conference in the North Hall. So it was nice to finish up our sessions Monday morning and hit the show floor. Word has it that attendance is down from 107,000 last year to just 80,000 this year. You can tell its down because you don’t need binoculars to see Peder Norbby demo Particular 2 at the Red Giant booth in the Plug-in Pavilion (more on that, and other plug-ins, tomorrow). But first, what we saw and heard on Monday:

Autodesk+RED Workflow Guide

The RED One camera and its ability to capture large frame size, RAW-format files has certainly ignited the imagination of filmmakers and videographers. But its unusual file format and requirements has also created a lot of head-scratching among users trying to find the most efficient way to send RED footage through a normal production pipeline.

To this end, Autodesk just released a white paper that covers using RED One footage with their Smoke, Inferno, Flame, Flint, and Lustre systems. It covers shooting, lighting, color spaces, proxies, going from offline to online, audio, finishing and final output including suggested settings, as well as an appendix on RED-specific applications and where they fit into the workflow. In other words, this isn’t a brochure; it’s a mini-handbook for users that describes the current recommended practices in some detail.

You can download the white paper here. Here’s a thumbnail sketch of some of its suggestions:

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