Monday, March 10, 2008

On Artbeats.com: Article on Color Management in After Effects

Chris Meyer | 03/10- 06:31 PM

Over on Artbeats.com, we’ve written a gentle introduction to color management in AE.

Every month, we write a Tips N Tricks article for our friends at Artbeats.com. This month we’ve written an introduction to using Color Management in After Effects CS3, covering input, output, monitoring, and the Project Working Space. It was written in the context of how to handle Artbeats stock footage in a job, but the basic principles apply to a wide variety of jobs. You can download the 884 kb PDF by clicking here.

By the way, Artbeats has a monthly email newsletter which contains links to each of our articles for them as they are released, plus a link for registered users to download a free full-size clip every month. Click here to register. To see the full list of articles we (and others) have written for Artbeats, click here.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

PMW-EX1: XDCAM Transfer 2.5.1 for Mac Released

Adam Wilt | 03/06- 05:07 PM

Fixes clock-mode timecode import bug; qualified for OS X 10.4.11 and higher

Sony has released XDCAM Transfer 2.5.1, software used to import XDCAM clips into QuickTime and Final Cut Pro. This version fixes a bug where PMW-EX1 recordings made with CLOCK-mode free-run timecode were not being properly imported, and it is qualified to run both on OS X 10.4.11 and 10.5.x.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

The Difference Between the “m” Words

Chris Meyer | 03/06- 06:59 AM

Imagineer explains the difference between mokey, monet, mocha, and motor.

As Imagineer is fond of one-word names that all start with “mo...”, it can be hard to know or remember which tool does what. Below is some text I lifted out of an email by Ross Shain (VP of Sales, Eastern Region) to an After Effects list explaining the differences, with links to a comparison chart. It is particularly relevant as Imagineer Systems has been offering some deep discounts on some of their highly-touted tracking and rotoscoping tools; I just posted a News item on them extending some of these discounts until the end of March (click here to view).

In short all our products use a unique 2.5D planar tracking technology that allows you to motion track objects with blur, noise and go offscreen. Simply, the planar tracking technology is hands down more powerful than any point tracking system out there. The technology is then implemented into the products in various ways.

• mokey - removal tool - automates complex compositing techniques to remove unwanted elements from screen. Great for rig, scratch removal, stabilization etc....
• monet - placement station - compositing tool to track and insert elements with luminance passes, mesh warper and lens distortion correction.
• mocha - tracking and roto utility. Motin track and roto. Export the data or mattes to almost any app including AE, Flame, Smoke, DS, Shake, Fusion (adding Nuke soon), etc.
• motor - same as mocha but limited to rotoscoping
• mocha-AE - not a plug-in but a stand alone tracking utility that exports tracking data as AE keyframes. Corner pin with perspective or transform, scale, rotation. Copy and paste to AE layers. Increases AE’s capability as a vfx compositor!

There is some overlap between products but many users have found that with mokey and mocha their bases are very covered. Here is a link to a product comparison chart.

For more questions, please contact us off the list.

US eastern region:  rosss @ imagineersystems.com
US western region: billyw @ imagineersystems.com
Europe/Asia and others: pjc @ imagineersystems.com

If you need more information, here is a link to tutorials on their products.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Artbeats Raises the Bar on Royalty-free Stock Footage, Unveiling Dozens of New HD Titles at NAB 2008

Scott Gentry | 03/05- 08:12 AM

Showcases Exclusive Ultra Slow Motion, City Aerials, Energy, Environmental and Executive Jet Titles

Myrtle Creek, Ore. –— March 5, 2008 –— Artbeats, the industry’s leading creative footage resource, today announced it will debut a wide range of exclusive royalty-free collections and solo clips during the 2008 National Association of Broadcasters Convention (NAB). New titles scheduled for release at NAB include: Ultra Water 2 and Ultra Nature, which feature 1000fps (frames per second) slow-motion footage shot with the Phantom HD, the first use of that camera for stock footage. Additionally, Artbeats will unveil its newest series of HD aerial titles: Miami Aerials; Atlanta Aerials; Dallas Aerials and Texas City Aerials. The company also plans to release Energy and Environmental; Energy includes aerial clips of wind, water, solar, petroleum and nuclear energy; Environmental features footage of air pollution, recycling, replanted timber and more. Other titles planned for release during NAB include Executive Jet, which offers landings and takeoffs of business jets plus exclusive air-to-air footage of a Gulfstream IV, and City Edges, which has unique and dramatic close-up shots of city skyscrapers and architecture.

Artbeats will showcase these and many other royalty-free titles on the company’s massive HD plasma display wall at NAB 2008, booth SL5413. To learn more about Artbeats’ NAB 2008 product releases, as well as special discounts and offers available exclusively for NAB attendees, please visit http://www.artbeats.com/nab2008. 

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

dvGarage Announces Conduit Suite

Scott Gentry | 03/05- 08:00 AM

Powerful Suite for High-end, Real-time Nodal Compositing; Includes Free Three-month Membership to Pixel Corps

SAN FRANCISCO — March 5, 2008 — dvGarage, a provider of tools and training for the next generation of media artists, today announced Conduit Suite, the latest update to its line of Conduit nodal compositing tools. Introduced through Conduit Suite is Conduit Live, dvGarage’s powerful new standalone nodal capture tool that offers real-time video compositing and analysis of any form of digital footage live. Conduit Studio also offers new users the latest version of Conduit for Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, along with Conduit versions for Apple Motion and Apple Final Cut Pro. In addition, the Conduit Suite includes a free three-month Pixel Corps membership (a USD $200 value), an hour of video training and a quick-start guide. Conduit Suite is available for download at http://www.dvgarage.com.

“Conduit Studio will have a tremendous impact on the overall workflow of today’s compositors, directors and artists by offering flexibility, advanced architecture and powerful tools in one solution,” says Alex Lindsay, dvGarage founder and chief architect. “Conduit also utilizes the processing speed and power of the computer’s GPU; as a result users are seeing better performance and color precision than an application can offers on its own, and rendering is done in real time.”

Developed in partnership with Lacquer’s Ben Syverson and Pauli Ojali, Conduit utilizes Apple’s FxPlug technology to combine high-end nodal compositing with high-performance Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) acceleration, providing users with a powerful variety of visual effects compositing tools that render in real time. By relying on the GPU, Conduit provides blazing fast render speeds to augment the power of an “open-ended” compositing environment. As a result, users can do complex effects, even to HD frames, without incurring much or any delay.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Mammoth HD - Rolls Out the RED (4K)

Scott Gentry | 03/05- 07:55 AM

Mammoth HD rolls out the RED with a new library featuring 4K, 3K and 2K originated footage

Mammoth HD’s new MHD/RED Library opens with footage shot on the RED Digital Cinema - RED ONE Digital Camera. The RED ONE captures images in 4K, 3K and 2K resolutions with frame rates from 1-75 frames per second depending on the resolution selected. This completely digital acquisition pipeline produces beautiful, clean images that can be used in every production from Feature and Indie films, advertising/commercials and marketing to HD broadcast and HD digital signage/display. The down-converted images to all the HD and SD formats are fantastic as they are over-sampled from the original files.

The ultra-large capture frame also offers the ability to scale, crop, pan/scan within the original frame for the optimal fit to anything from a film project down to a SD single online presentation. To see just some of the possibilities of the RED 4K format, check out Mammoth HD’s size comparison demo: http://www.mammothhd.com/MHD_compformat2.html
MHD’s launch of the MHD/RED Library features the work of a very talented band of early adopters of RED - Steve Gibby, Ken Corben, Steve Tammi, Jay A. Kelley, 42 Productions, Eli Jarra, Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock and Thor Wixom.

The MHD/RED Library’s initial offerings include Lifestyle, Family/Kids, Scenics, Wildlife, Nature, Underwater/Ocean Life, Locations, Recreation, Scenics, Transportation, TimeLapse, Sports and Weather. New clips are being added almost daily as we gear up with our shooters submissions. As more RED cameras are delivered over the next few months the MHD/RED talent base will be expanding with new locations, subject and styles.

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