Move Projects from FCP to AE Seamlessly (and Free!)

I am always on the lookout for things that can make my life easier… sleep in a can, comfortable shoes, great software.

If you use Final Cut Pro and After Effects… do I have a find for you!  I just finished a new book called Video Made on a Mac, and in the process of writing about Motion Graphics workflows, I’ve discovered an absolute gem, from a little place called Popcorn Island.

Universal Format Converter

I wanted to share a little work in progress file.  I find After Effects tremendously useful for resizing video.  In fact I use it often to pre-process footage before applying additional codecs.

What I’ve put together here is a Resizer project.  It allows you to quickly convert an HD file (720 or 1080) to 50 different output formats.  The file is quite simple to use, and covers output sizes ranging from SD, to Presentation Software, to Web, to iPhone.

This is a work in progress… but I’d love to get your feedback.  To learn how to use it (and get the file) keep reading….

The Future Of Image Editing

That’s right - by the time you have honed your skills to perfection, whatever it is that you can do well will be automated. The price of progress, I suppose. See what the smart folks at Princeton are cooking up to automate your Photoshop skills:
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/gfx/pubs/Barnes_2009_PAR/patchmatch.mp4

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!

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