Thursday, September 04, 2003

A Track of the Clones

Combining the enhanced tracking and cloning features in After Effects.

One of the most significant but underused sections of After Effects has to be its vector-based painting engine, introduced back in version 6. One of the capabilities of this engine is the ability to clone one area of a piece of footage onto another area, including cloning from different points in time. As sexy as that sounds, in the real world cloning can quickly become tedious, especially when the object you are trying to replicate (or eliminate) is moving. Fortunately, other features in After Effects – including Expressions and its Motion Tracker - can greatly ease the pain. In this column, we’ll walk through such a task. These same general techniques can probably be applied to other compositing/motion graphics programs as well.

Motion Graphics •
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Monday, December 16, 2002

More Motion, Less Control

For more realistic camera moves, try introducing some imperfections.

Most of you are probably familiar with the concept of using a camera to pan and zoom around still images. Popularized by Ken Burns in his documentary on the Civil War, it is a great trick for any occasion when you don’t have moving video for a scene. You can simulate this by simply animating the position of a still image in virtually any compositing or video editing program. However, there are a number of refinements that can make your life easier, and the end result more realistic.

Motion Graphics •
Post Production • (2) Comments • Most recent comments by: Chris Meyer, adam, • Permalink

Tuesday, July 24, 2001

Urban Legends of Video

A trio of common myths and misconceptions that arise when working with video.

Like urban legends, there are a few pieces of “conventional wisdom” that float around the motion graphics and 3D communities about how to handle video. They are oft-repeated, but several are simply not true. Some are based on wishful thinking; some on a germ of truth; some from articles or manuals which are incorrect. Yes, you probably already know all of these – but they certainly have caught out colleagues of ours.

Not surprisingly, many of these legends are based around the subject of frame rates and interlaced fields. Fields in particular are an area where traditional video diverges perhaps the most from the computers we’re creating our video on, and for that reason are easiest to misunderstand.

Editing •
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Monday, March 26, 2001

Open Wide: Creating That Widescreen Look

Widescreen can have different meanings, depending on how you have to deliver. Here’s some tips on creating that widescreen look.

For years, the widescreen look has held a certain allure. Most widescreen imagery originated as film that was reframed for television, implying “classy”, “expensive” and “not of video.” Now, with the arrival of high-definition television, widescreen also means “cutting edge” and “the future”, and more clients want that look. The question is, how can you achieve it without hi-def sources? As strongly as our hi-def future beckons, the reality is that many productions for some time will need to be created or repurposed to standard definition.

Editing •
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Tuesday, October 17, 2000

Enter a New Dimension: Moving Into 3D

Learning a 3D program can be an important career move for an editor or graphic artist.

Because of either lack of time, or simple Fear of the Complex and the Unknown, many editors and 2D graphic artists resist learning how to use a 3D program. And that may be unwise. More graphic design is incorporating 3D elements - from the ubiquitous extruded flying logo, to cool lighting effects, to wireframes of simple geometric shapes added as visual spice. Your clients may not even know this is “3D”, but they know it’s a look they want...and if you can’t supply it, they’ll look for an artist who can. Don’t worry - you don’t have to create Toy Story 3 single-handedly - but some basic skills will more than pay back the moderate effort invested.

3D •
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Monday, January 17, 2000

Luminance Ranges in Video

Different video systems have differing internal definitions of “black” and “white.”

It would seem like a simple concept: “black” is the darkest color you can have; “white” is the brightest color. However, not all video hardware and software think this way. Quite often, systems can go “darker” than black and “brighter” than white, allowing safety margins for certain situations.

This means that some systems uses different values for black and white than others. This can cause a lot of problems for a video editor or artist who uses a variety of tools during a production, because images may shift in relative brightness and contrast for no apparent reason. Compounding this problem is a lack of accurate information about how to manage these shifts. But if you ignore them, the results can range from washed-out images to illegal color values.

Therefore, you will need to take it upon yourself to be aware of the black and white definitions that different systems are using, and to translate between them as needed. We will also discuss the oft-confused analog concept of “set up” and how it relates to these digital values. It initially requires a bit of a mind-twist, but will pay off in the long run. We will be using After Effects for some of the examples later in this article, but these concepts apply to all systems - so read on…

Editing •
Motion Graphics •
Post Production •
Visual Effects • (3) Comments • Most recent comments by: Graeme Nattress, Chris Meyer, bill, • Permalink

Friday, January 30, 1998

Field Order - Who’s on First?

Mastering field rendering may not top your list of creative exercises, but you can’t achieve professional results without it.

If you thought most NTSC video ran at 29.97 frames per second, that’s only half the story - literally. It actually runs at a speed of 59.94 fields rather than 29.97 frames per second (fps), with pairs of fields “interlaced” to form a complete frame (see the illustration at left). When you shoot footage with your camcorder, it does not record whole video frames unless you are explicitly in a special mode known as “progressive scan.” Instead, most of the time it captures one field, then a second field, and lays these fields down in a linear fashion to tape.

Motion Graphics •
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Thursday, July 06, 1995

On The Level

Techniques for mixing layers of audio with maximum clarity.

Admit it: How many of you mix audio by dragging the music, narration, and sound effects or ambiance bed into your authoring program...and think you’re finished? Okay, you don’t, but I’ve heard numberous television programs and pieces of interactive media that sound that way. Each component might sound fine individually, but when more than one is playing at the same time, they obscure each other. Or maybe during quieter sections, an unacceptable amount of noise or distortion appears when played back on a system with lower bit-depth or compressed audio. The solution to both comes from proper management of audio levels.

Audio •
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