Non-Square Strategies

No matter which workflow you choose, always make sure your source footage has been tagged with its true pixel aspect ratio - this is the only way your software will know what to do with it in order to keep you out of trouble.

For a variety of arcane technical reasons (trying to record NTSC and PAL on the same tape, cutting corner on data throughput, being compromised by camera sensor technology of yesteryear, etc.), virtually all digital video formats have non-square pixels. This means they must be projected in a way that stretches or squashes them on playback to properly fill the television screen. Unfortunately, a side effect of this is that they will also look odd on a computer screen. When all you do is send the digital signal from camera to tape deck to switcher to monitor, this is neatly hidden from you. But when you start working with digital video inside a computer, you have to deal with these misshapen pixels.

As a result, a common question is what is the best way to work with these pixels: Stretch them back out to being square? Or leave them in their native format? The answer depends on what your primary goal is in life: preserving maximum image quality, or preserving your own sanity.

Toolfarm Sales and New Releases

ToolfarmIs a handy one-stop shop for anyone looking to buy plug-ins for After Effects, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Shake, Motion, Cinema 4D, Avid, or Autodesk products. They also sell the host applications themselves, upgrades, stock footage, and training. It is worth getting on their mailing list, as they regularly have special offers, plus inform you about product updates.

Below is an example of some of their current deals and promotions (if not visible, click on the “more” link):

After Effects 8.0.2 Interpretation Rules Issue

Normally, when you install a minor update to After Effects, it does a pretty good job at remembering your previously-installed plug-ins and the such. That said, there is an exception in the case of the 8.0.2 updater. This version writes a brand-new interpretation rules file that alters how it handles some YUV color space files. However, it does not merge in any changes you may have made to the previous interpretation rules file. Fortunately, it doesn’t delete your file; it just sets it aside.

Click here for an Adobe Tech Note on what’s going on, and how to work around it.

Nifty EPS Conversion Tool

Ever need to convert a puny JPEG or GIF of a client logo to EPS so you could scale it up? Adobe Illustrator’s Live Trace will do the job, but I don’t always have access to Illustrator on the client’s NLE. This handy web application does the trick quite nicely.

Update 2/27/08: Vector Magic has officially moved away from Stanford and is operating independently at vectormagic.com. It is no longer a free service, though the first two image conversions for new account holders are free.

The Second Revolution in Desktop Video

If you’re reading this blog hoping to learn - with post-humus apologies to Douglas Adams - The Answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything (view on Amazon), I’m afraid we may disappoint you from time to time: We don’t know all of the answers. But sometimes just asking questions is important, because it starts the discussions which eventually lead to the answers.

One question that’s floating around these days is “How the heck do I make money creating video content for the web, such as podcasts?” Indeed, it seems there is more money in teaching podcasting than in podcasting itself!

Motion Graphics concepts demonstrated…on a trampoline.

This isn’t new, but we just stumbled across it, and thought it would provide some comic relief going into the weekend. It’s a live, one-take, in-front-of-an-audience music video (for the song “zZz is playing: Grip") that is also a demonstration of common motion graphics techniques and video transitions, performed by folks on a trampoline. Ya gotta watch it more than once to pick up all the details, like the musicians on the left and right (the drummer on the left is also the singer), and the person painting the progress bar in real time underneath. Hang around until the end to see that it was indeed in front of an audience.

Page 18 of 26 pages « First  <  16 17 18 19 20 >  Last »