4th of July Weekend Newsletter Update

A few weeks ago, we published our fifth electronic newsletter: PVC Pipeline | Post, which included an essential article making your videos searchable using Adobe’s automatic transcription feature, a great tutorial on using Mocha for After Effects CS4 on a tricky tracking shot, a deep explanation of where non-square pixel aspect ratios came from and the confusion surrounding the new numbers that appeared in Creative Suite 4, and a very handy primer for those thinking about switching over from Final Cut Pro to Avid Media Composer, taking advantage of Avid’s new free trial version. Subscribers had exclusive access to these articles for the past few weeks. These articles are now available for all PVC visitors to view; a list of them is included below.

We are about to publish our sixth newsletter, which will be the second edition of our PVC Pipeline | Distribution publication, covering a variety of subjects in the areas of web video, mobile media, and more. To receive exclusive access to these articles before everyone else, click here for your free subscription!

The Basics of Avid Media Composer for a Final Cut Pro Editor

What follows in this article is not a debate of Avid vs. Final Cut Pro or a conversion document that says you should move from Final Cut Pro to Avid Media Composer, but rather a step-by-step guide for anyone new to Avid (or curious about the software in general) to launch the software and perform a few basic functions. It will be geared more toward the FCP editor, but a lot of the basic functionality is the same in many non-linear editors. I won’t compare and contrast various Avid and FCP features as that’s not the focus of the article though I will point out the Avid equivalent of a number of FCP tools. And if you’ve never edited with a NLE application before then consider this primer a way to get your feet wet in Avid Media Composer 3.5.

(6) Comments: • Most recent comments by: Dylan Reeve, Jon Chappell, raymondroman, Ra-ey Saleh, Scott Simmons, Ra-ey Saleh,

Believable Hand-Held Motion Tracking with Mocha & After Effects CS4

One of the best additions to After Effects CS4 is the inclusion of a stand-alone application called Mocha for AE from Imagineer Systems. This is a powerful planar motion tracker and stabilizer that does an amazing job of tracking all kinds of elements in motion or to stabilize a character or a scene with shaky footage. Many of the example movies you may have seen demonstrating Mocha with After Effects CS4 (including some of my own) have been inserting something into the screen of a portable device or a TV. But what if the object you are tracking goes off the screen? What if you want to track something in motion but want to retain the realism of the hand-held camera shake? Even though Mocha does a remarkable job of stabilizing footage I thought I’d put Mocha to the test with some hand-held footage from a compact DV cam and track the footage, shaking and all!

(6) Comments: • Most recent comments by: Lasvideo, Mark Spencer, Lasvideo, J. Curtis, Mark Spencer, Lasvideo,

PAR for the Course

Over the years, I have seen a lot of folklore and bad math employed to determine how to work with non-square pixels, resulting in a plethora of incorrect working practices. Therefore, in this article I’m going to spend a lot of time laying out the historical and mathematical basis for where these numbers came from. Hopefully this will provide you with a solid foundation on which you can build a new set of working practices.

(2) Comments: • Most recent comments by: stephen v2, Mark Spencer,

Searchable Video with Creative Suite 4

With the proliferation of video on the Web, access to information is getting easier to find and understand (for most).  The challenge is twofold: first is getting people to find and search your video for the right information and second is if the individual has an auditory impairment, so much information is only available in the audio track.  This is why there has been such a big push to make video searchable online and more accessible. In this article you’ll use Adobe’s tool set to set up your video content for both goals.

(1) Comments: • Most recent comments by: Jared Scheib,

Facebook Mobile spot, Shot on RED

“Hey Art,” said director Ian McCamey, “I want to shoot a Facebook spec spot. I’ve got no money. Are you in?” “Of course I am,” said I. “Let’s do it.” And we did.

(1) Comments: • Most recent comments by: Mark Spencer,

GridIron Flow Ships with Surprise Additions

GridIron Software this morning announced on a conference call that Flow, the one-of-a-kind visual file management, workflow and time tracking tool that has been in development for three years, is now available for purchase or 30 day demo from the GridIron site.

In addition to a demonstration of how the software can be used to recover otherwise lost versions of graphics files, to discover the use of an element – including even a font – in a given file, or to track time spent on a project, Steve Forde, CEO of GridIron, brought on John Nack, Product Manager at Adobe, to show how Flow has been integrated directly into CS4 via Flash Panels.

A Flow icon was shown right in the tool bar of Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign – and reportedly is available for all CS4 apps – that opens a Flash panel showing… more »

Seeing the Future - In Color

We’re still recovering from the HOW Design Conference in Austin last week, where temperatures hit 107. After the ice packs melt, we’ll post a summary of interesting things we heard there.

In the meantime, for those who have color-focused jobs (or color-fussy clients), you may be interested in the work of the Color Marketing Group: a global consortium that attempts to determine what the hot trends in color for various market segments will be in different parts of the world. Click here to see their predictions for 2009 (white for business, blue is the new green, etc.). They also have a free weekly newsletter of color trends and ideas.

Using CoreMelt Transitions as Filters in After Effects and Motionvideo

G’day Guys,
Learn how to quickly and easily create cool transition effects using CoreMelt’s PolyChrome Transitions plugins as filters in After Effects and Motion so you can access all the great features your used to in Final Cut Pro, right in After Effects and Motion.
The process is nice and simple and the results are stunning, check out our video tutorial for a step by step guide.

For more information on PolyChrome Transitions, check out this page:
http://www.coremelt.com/products/v2/polychrome-transitions-v2.html

For more video tutorials check out our YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/coremeltfx

Cheers,
CoreMelt

Please label tapes and disks: An open letter to DPs, camera ops, DITs

Man, there are a lot of high definition formats out in the world today. Just to spell them out would be a dizzying array of letters and numbers. 720p, 1080i, 23.98, 30p ... this list could literally go on and on so I won’t even attempt a partial list other that what I have above. Just take a look at this HD format chart. That’s a lot of different formats and it doesn’t even take into account the different flavors of a particular format that camera manufacturers often come up with on their own.

With that in mind this PVC post is an open letter to all DPs, ACs, camera ops, DITs, anyone and everyone associated with the camera department to please label their tapes and hard drives with the usable, relevant information of shooting format and frame rates, codecs and cameras so post-production will at least have an idea of what is being handed to them.

(9) Comments: • Most recent comments by: Scott Simmons, Rob, Scott Simmons, Martin Weiss, Martin Weiss, Mark Raudonis, J. Curtis, Scott Simmons, John Burkhart,

50% off Artbeats Stock Footage

Stock footage prices have risen considerably over the past several years, making it less of a discretionary “that’s cool” purchase and more one where we may wait for a client who needs a particular shot. That’s why we were particularly happy to see a nice deal arrive in our mailbox from Artbeats: 50% off all footage collections, and 30% off of all single clips (excluding low-res and any other special offers), through midnight PST on July 4. Just use code 4017 when you check out.

(While you’re there, sign up for their newsletter; subscribers tend to get a free clip each month.)