More Motion, Less Control

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.

Urban Legends of 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.

Open Wide: 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.

Enter a New Dimension: Moving Into 3D

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.

Luminance Ranges in Video

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…

Spinning Gold

In a perfect world, clients supply gorgeous video clips for you to use in the graphics they’ve hired you to create. When that doesn’t happen, there are a few tricks in our bag for adding punch to these clips. Our goal is not to add “effects” or to make video look like film - but rather to make your client say “How did you make our video took so great?” We covered tinting movies using various tint and tritone effects in Getting Behind The Color Wheel, and those techniques can be combined with the tricks contained in this column.

Getting Behind the Color Wheel

Ever composite a number of clips, only to have the result like an explosion in a paint factory? This month we’ll search out a variety of plug-in effects for adjusting color and applying tints to video clips. I’m using Adobe After Effects, but many of the same effects are available in other programs.

Field Order - Who’s on First?

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.

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