Monday, December 10, 2007

This Revolution Will (by definition) Be Televised

To paraphrase Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore, this writer’s strike will end someday. Amid more and more speculation as to the irreperable damage being done to the Hollywood studio system is a major ray of hope for thousands of aspiring filmmakers - not just those outside the system currently, but even those striking writers - particularly the ones with an entrepreneurial streak.

And help is lining up. Just today, the mother of all alternative distribution channels, YouTube, announced a somewhat unclear yet promising expansion of its revenue sharing model which, when combined with their earlier announcement (also vague) that quality will improve in 2008 starts to make digital distribution a real and appealing option. Meanwhile, Flash 9 now supports HD, one more arrow in the arsenal of AMP beta.

Mark my words: the differentiator on youtube will move from sensationalism t0 production values, or the public will move on from youtube to the distributor that has them. A well-written story with poor visuals is certainly better than a fabulous looking vacuum of ideas, but a good looking, entertaining movie or series that can be created without the middleman? Now there’s the money. All it takes is teamwork by people who can write, edit, pull off some great color or visual effects work, light, and/or shoot.

There’s some fun and adventure to be had here.

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Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Fun with Gamma, Quicktime and After Effects

Here’s a scenario being replayed at studios around the globe: The decision is made to upgrade to After Effects CS3. A big project comes in. All proceeds quite well until it’s time to render for final output, at which point files coming out of After Effects - particularly those being edited in Final Cut Pro - appear darker, even when rendered with a codec traditionally thought to be “safe” for gamma such as Photo-JPEG or even Animation (as was used to create this image). Howls of pain and gnashing of teeth ensue, After Effects is blamed, and in at least one case the entire studio reverts to 7.0. True story.

Don’t let this happen to you, folks.

Although there are various permutations of this problem, it generally comes back to rendering Quicktime movies directly from After Effects. “Why is After Effects messing with my Quicktime output?” you might ask. “Why doesn’t it just work like in previous versions?”

The short answer is that a simple checkbox may help you. Open Project Settings in After Effects CS3 and under Color Settings, toggle Match Legacy After Effects Quicktime Gamma Adjustments. This causes After Effects to work with QuickTime movies the same way as previous versions of After Effects. Boom. No need to set a Working Space or mess with gamma in any other way.

The longer answer is that gamma in Quicktime has essentially always been unpredictable for a couple of reasons: Apple changes the gamma according to their perception of how you’re viewing it (i.e. which platform you’re on, whether it’s a web codec, and what application is being used) and, being Apple, they haven’t published their gamma settings so that anyone else knows what the heck is going on, other than empirically.

Oh, don’t get me wrong Apple, I’m typing this on a MacBook Pro running Leopard, an iPhone at my left hand, Mac Pro behind it, ready to send this post via Airport Extreme.

I will likely have more to say on the subject of color management and I/O in After Effects, also a huge topic for the new edition of the book. Meanwhile, please freely post your horror stories (or revelations) here and I will scan them for more specific points to address. There’s also more to say about Quicktime and how it handles (or doesn’t) things like aspect ratio.

If you’re feeling bitter, boycott Quicktime until Apple and Adobe work this out together and use image sequences instead, like your pals who are film professionals.

By the way, here is a post from FreshDV a couple months back showing another culprit feature for unpredictable Quicktime gamma, in Quicktime 7.2’s very own preferences.

Compositing •
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Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Mythbusting

Why isn’t After Effects used more for feature film effects? And is the future of compositing software up for grabs?

This post is prompted by the following questions and comments from a reader:

Was AE used for Davey Jones in Pirates 2?  Is it capable of those kinds of effects or was that another program altogether?  I don’t expect to do anything that advanced in my movies yet but I love learning new things.

I’ll extract the real question here, rather bluntly, and then address it (hopefully without falling into the usual traps inherent in comparing software, operating systems, religion, sexuality and party politics): Is After Effects a real high-end tool or does its mass appeal make it more limited?

The short answer is: you can do pretty much anything you can think of (2D compositing-wise, at least), in After Effects.

That’s it. Seriously.

Okay then, has it been used at the pinnacle of effects work? Yes. Want proof? Look at The Day After Tomorrow, which I happen to know was composited in just about every package available - not just After Effects but Flame/Inferno, shake, Nuke, and probably more. Can you tell which shots were done in After Effects? Of course not. But now it gets complicated. Is After Effects the software of choice at most high-end visual effects houses?

Clearly not.

Although the list of features on which After Effects has been used is long and prestigious, numbering well into the hundreds, among high-end visual effects houses, The Orphanage (and preceding them, ILM) have been prominent among a very few to use After Effects for the biggest vfx jobs. Why? Is After Effects not up to the demands? Let me try to avoid the religion/politics part be as simple and concise as possible.

There are four basic points on which compositing software (and, perhaps, all software) is evaluated:

A) Features
B) Performance
C) Workflow
D) Price

Which of these is 80-90% responsible for major vfx companies choosing anything but After Effects? If you said C, we agree. After Effects does not fall short on features, nor is its performance truly inferior, compared with other desktop sotware. It’s price used to be cheap but would now be considered middle-of-the road with shake having reached the bargain bin.

Yes, with every new release of After Effects, people find some feature to pick on that other software has and it lacks, but if you pay attention, that’s true of all of its competitors as well. The After Effects team has consistently responded to the needs of the visual effects community, and the complaints of what’s missing (individual curves for x, y and z axes! More iterations in the motion blur!) are not true deal breakers.

And yes, work in After Effects can be slow on a big shot - but I can tell you from working on 2K plates in Shake, very similar speed issues exist there unless you manage the shot properly, something I focus on quite a bit in the After Effects Studio Techniques books.

The real reason After Effects isn’t considered for more feature films clearly has to do 80-90% with workflow.

But here’s the funny paradox: of all of the major desktop compositing software packages available, only After Effects has been used both for the highest-end visual effects work and the highest-end motion graphics. And because the needs of those communities, while closely related, are unique, serving both markets actually makes the After Effects workflow more complicated for visual effects work. Certain operations require far more steps in After Effects and involve pre-composing, an operation foreign to the all of the other node-based competition.

Therefore you could make the case that After Effects is its triumph - it is more versatile than the competition. So what makes the difference?

The strength, and therefore the Achilles heel of After Effects is the Timeline. It is the heart of the application (or as I call it in my book, the “killer app"), the place where all of the work gets done, and it allows for complex timing and spatial animation of elements. Among all major compositing packages, this workflow is unique to After Effects.

And in some cases, the Timeline becomes a liability instead of the fantastic feature that it often is.

Why, you might ask, if I can acknowledge that After Effects isn’t the software of choice at most feature effects studios, do I persist in writing books about doing feature-quality visual effects work in After Effects? Two reasons come instantly to mind:

1) Today and for the forseeable future, more shots will get done in After Effects than in all of the others combined.
2) I can comfortably argue that After Effects is more powerful than the competition, because of the breadth and depth of work you can do with it.

Number one is a no-brainer. There are way, way more copies of After Effects out there than Shake, even now that it costs half as much. Even if, out of the dozen or two highest-end vfx shops, only a handful use After Effects, when you add the full range of artists creating visual effects for everything from television to youtube, After Effects moves into the dominant position. And with good reason - you can deliver the highest quality results with it. In the previous post I acknowledged what specifically about the workflow hangs up film compositors about After Effects, but there have still been an awful lot of film shots done in it, and will continue to be.

Number two is also a no-brainer, if you consider this: try to create the highest-end motion graphics and the highest-end visual effects in a single compositing package. The only other software that is even a candidate to do this is probably Combustion, and because I don’t use it, I can’t make a meaningful comparison - I just know that it’s the only one that even has a comparable feature-set, because it offers both nodes and a timeline. In my books I refer to the After Effects timeline as its “killer app” - ask a shake artist to create a shot that involves lots of intricate timing, the choreography of numerous elements and type, and then listen for the howls of pain.

And maybe that’s the point - most feature film effects don’t involve the type of animation and timing artistry that requires the timeline, and so feature film artists end up paying the price of pre-composing and nesting compositions without typically getting the benefit of this fantastic feature.

So, while I can put on my pundit hat and admit that After Effects CS3 doesn’t add anything that would win over the feature effects houses - except maybe the forward-looking Color Management features and the amazing Puppet toolset, along with a few other features I’ll mention in my next post - I know that I, and many other artists, will be creating uncompromising effects and graphics in After Effects for years to come. As for Nuke and Motion - well, they make things interesting. We’ll see if the former can become user-friendly enough, and the latter deep enough to sway After Effects die-hards like me.

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