Automated Video Production

We’ve all been there: A client asks for a job that requires complex editing and effects, and they say (as part of the negotiation over price): “Don’t you have software where you press a button and it does it automatically?”

Scene vs. Display Referred Profiles

Color management has been improved in After Effects CS4 to now recognize and compensate for the differences between “scene-referred” and “display-referred” color profiles. The short explanation is “Don’t worry - CS4 is merely more accurate now. Leave the option File > Project Settings > Compensate for Scene-referred Profiles enabled when using color management, and in some scenarios your output will now be even more accurate than it was before.” For a longer explanation, read on; these changes affect Photoshop CS4 as well.

Make It Go Away!

After Effects CS4 has introduced two subtle but important changes in the way it deals with many common video formats:

1) There are new PARs (Pixel Aspect Ratios) for NTSC and PAL standard definition 4:3 and 16:9 content. (Actually, they’re not new; they’re the correct, original ones that no virtually one actually used - until now.)

2) Color management now makes a distinction between scene-referred (how you shot it on the set) and output-referred (how it will be displayed at home or in the theater) profiles, and will adjust the former to look like the latter on your normal computer display.

In the long run, you really want to embrace these two changes. And we’re in the process of working up a pair of articles for PVC on these subjects (they will appear in the CMG Keyframes channel, hopefully in the next couple of weeks). But in the near term, these two changes are causing some users headaches, especially as they update projects from earlier versions of After Effects to CS4: however subtly, colors are switching and shapes are squishing. This is causing users to cry out “please - make it go away!”

Okay - here’s how:

After Effects 9.0.1 Update

If you have After Effects CS4 (aka version 9.0), and if you haven’t already gotten into the reflexive habit of dismissing the dreaded Adobe Updater every time it appears, then you might like to know that an update - 9.0.1 - is now available. You can trigger an update from inside After Effects CS4 by selecting Help > Updates. (It will try to update all CS4 applications as a default; if you are in a hurry, you can disable some updates in its options.)

Here is the list of bugs that were addressed according to the release notes:

On Artbeats.com: Intro to Color Finesse

As more of us acquire our own media and import it directly into our computers, the art of color correction becomes more important. However, many - particularly non-editors - shy away from it. Well, if you have a recent copy of After Effects, you have no excuse, as a very powerful color correction tool - Synthetic Aperture’s Color Finesse (CF) - comes bundled free with the program. This article we just wrote for Artbeats.com will give you a quick tour of the CF interface, and then walk you through a sample correction using footage archived with the article so you can compare your results.

Click here to download a .zip file containing a PDF of the “Introduction to Color Finesse” plus associated footage.

By they way, credit where credit is due: Steve Hullfish’s own color correction videos here on PVC are what prompted us to get back into color correction ourselves. His recent video on using Color Finesse is what prompted us to focus more in our piece for Artbeats on using the Waveform Monitor rather than the familiar old Histograms.

Ultimate Insider Gifts

Shopping for holiday gifts? For a peer or co-worker who already has every book, video, and plug-in imaginable? And don’t want to go broke in the process? Here are a couple of gift ideas guaranteed to impress (or at the very least, puzzle) that favorite nerd in your life:

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