Creating a timelapse movie can be daunting especially when you will be committing lots of time to your subject. A distracting side-effect that distorts the time-lapse illusion is flicker, such as parts of the scene that are lighter or darker in each frame. Granite Bay software has an informative guide on what causes flicker in time-lapse as well as cures to fix it. They even have a free Deflicker plugin for Adobe After Effects or Premiere because sometimes you can do everything right and still wind up with flickering footage. Posts with tag AfterEffects
Reduce time lapse flicker with GBDeflicker
Creating a timelapse movie can be daunting especially when you will be committing lots of time to your subject. A distracting side-effect that distorts the time-lapse illusion is flicker, such as parts of the scene that are lighter or darker in each frame. Granite Bay software has an informative guide on what causes flicker in time-lapse as well as cures to fix it. They even have a free Deflicker plugin for Adobe After Effects or Premiere because sometimes you can do everything right and still wind up with flickering footage. Adobe Production Studio eSeminars
Adobe has a bunch of upcoming eSeminars aimed at Production Studio users that are relevant to video editors and post peoples. Sessions include Productivity 101 with Production Studio, Design 101 for After Effects and Flash, After Effects 101 for the Adobe Premiere Pro User, Discover New Features 101 in Adobe Premiere Pro and DV Rack HD, After Effects 102 for the Adobe Premiere Pro User, and others. The eSeminars are free, but you must must register for individual sessions, and they are scheduled January 16th through February 27th. Might be worth looking into. (via flippant)
Tips for compositing DVC Pro HD footage
Shane Ross, over at Little Frog in High Def, writes about his experience keying DVC Pro HD green screen footage for a project of his. After comparing various solutions including Final Cut Pro's own chroma keyer, Adobe After Effects, Keylight for After Effects, and DV Matte Pro, Shane finally ended up going with Shake. His reasoning, "if it is good enough for King Kong and Lord of the Rings and Star Wars...it should work for me."
The post has lots of large images to better illustrate his decision making process. As we all know there are a lot of things that can go wrong with a green screen composite, so it is best to choose the right tool for the job. And after reading this post, you will understand why Shake came out on top.
(via HD for Indies)
Get into After Effects expressions
I use After Effects quite a bit but I am certainly no power user. While I've used expressions in a few projects, my use has been very basic. You may be asking what the heck are expressions anyway? Expressions are based on JavaScript and provide a way of programmatically creating interactions between elements in an After Effects animation. That sentence may be scary to you, but it's really not too bad. The key is to start easy and build on your knowledge. If you are already familiar with JavaScript or programming concepts in general, you'll pick it up quick. Here are a few links you might want to check out:MotionScript
Creative Cow tutorials
After Effects Expressions blog with good basic info
AE Enhancers Forum: Expressions section
Google groups for AE Expressions
If you know of any additional links on expressions, let us know. This should get you started and show you what expressions may be able to do for your projects.
DV Guru Podcast 07 12.13.06
Sweet sassy molassy! It's time for another episode of the DV Guru podcast. This week Randall and I talk about a new camera from Panasonic, 1080p podcast, software updates, Wide angle lenses, and one scary mash-up. Stream it straight from this page with our player below (just press play) or download the mp3 (right-click-> Save As). And be sure to subscribe to our podcast via this feed.
Run Time: 40:46
Show Notes:
Panasonic AJ HPX2000
Road to 1080p part 4
Record directly to You Tube
Vegas 7.0c
Colliding Updates: Nucleo Pro vs After Effects
Scary Mary Mashup
Four Eyed Monsters
Fisheye for HVX200
Distortion free wide angle lens
DIY Pocket Tripod
Camcorder gift giving guide
DV Guru buying guide2006
After Effects makes Annual Macworld Editors' Choice
How much ever I might be annoyed with Adobe right now, I am still amazed at how good After Effects 7 is. This is easily my favorite Adobe software. Every other user interface by Adobe sucks in my book (Lightroom is impressive but I don't use it). I spent the weekend pulling my hair out while working with Illustrator. Anyways, After Effects 7 made the Annual Editor's Choice awards from Macworld. For the full list, check here.Some of the other choices included iMac Core 2 Duo, Aperture 1.5, Fission 1.1, iLife '06, Mac Pro,, MacBook, Panasonic's DV camera PV-GS500, Visual Hub, G-Drive and YouTube.
Also: We will have our annual list of Best & Worst list coming up within the next week, keep an eye out for it.
Adobe After Effects 7.0.1 update released
Adobe has released an update for After Effects users. The update, version 7.0.1, contains way too many bug fixes to list here but you can checkout the full list on Adobe's website. Mac users can download their 12MB update here. Windows users can download their 14.5MB update here. I was able to download and update mine with no problems (so far). You know, sometimes these updates can be scary.[via General Specialist]
How to obscure a subject in your video
Sometimes you capture something in your video that you don't want identified, such as a license plate, a person, certain text, trademarks, etc. I found these quick tutorials over on Bob Donlon's blog that show a couple ways to handle these situations. The first tutorial shows how to obscure a stationary object, in this case a license plate on a parked car. It uses Premiere Pro but you can use the technique in any NLE. The second tutorial shows how to use After Effects to blur the face of a subject and then use motion tracking to follow the subjects movement. Now you know what to do when Uncle Jeb insists you remove him from the family video.Free AE7 animation preset: Film Burn
You've probably seen this effect or something similar dozens of times before. Here it's called film burn, but essentially this transition consists of a quick overexposure. Anyway, Stu Maschwitz has made a film burn animation preset for After Effects 7 freely available on his website. Check out the video sample on his blog to see it in action, or read the detailed controls instructions to learn how it works. Purty slick.My name is stop-motion Earl
If you saw last weeks episode of My Name is Earl, you found out what can happen if you eat too much of a potent herbal medicine meant for your skin. Randy sure learned the hard way. But we've got a secret, it wasn't real. Nope, it was months of hard work with a Canon 20D digital camera, After Effects, Shake, Avid and other fun tools. Check out this article over at DV.com that goes into detail on how the 2 1/2 minutes of animation was created. If you missed the episode, you can check out some clips over on NBC's website.Avoiding the image buffer error in After Effects
General Specialist has a few tips that might help prevent the image buffer error that can plague you in After Effects. It covers how to setup your preferences and provides other tips that might help prevent this error from occurring. I say "might" because all systems are different, but if you've been experiencing the image buffer error it definitely won't hurt to give these a shot.[via FreshHDV]
FxPlug Support in FCP 5.1.2
Don't know if we have mentioned this before but it is worth mentioning again if we have. One of the new additions to Final Cut Pro (5.1.2) is support for its Apple's image-processing plug-in architecture called FxPlug. This means that any plug-in developed for any Mac video effects software like After Effects will be availabe within Final Cut Pro. Because the plug-in's have to be Universal Binaries, current AE effects will not work. However, Motion effects will work natively and sometimes in real time but it the effect is not preserved when you make FCP clips into Motion files. So if you have updated, you can get this feature by turning it on in Effects>All Effects. If they are two effects (like Gaussian Blur) from two apps, you can choose which one you want listed. Very cool.
Win an After Effects training DVD
DV Creators has released an After Effects training DVD designed to help you learn After Effects from the beginning through advanced techniques. Now instead of forking over some dough, you can get your hands on a copy for free thanks to a contest on the Coolness Roundup Podcast. All you have to do is write a 300-500 word review of a consumer product by November 15th and send it in to questions@coolnessroundup.com. They'll pick the best 2 entries and those winners will receive a copy of the After Effects PowerStart DVD. I suppose you could always just buy it for $79.95, but where's the fun in that?
GridIron Nucleo Pro review
GridIron's Nucleo Pro is a powerful application designed to make your Adobe After Effects user experience faster and more seamless. How? The program maximizes untapped CPU power for quicker previews and renders, resulting in a lot of salvaged minutes on your part. Previewing and rendering composites can be extremely tedious, depending on the intensity of your project, and if you can't spare any patience, or need to make the most out of your time in the post-production process, give this Nucleo Pro review by Steve Douglas a look. The software will set you back $495, but the price may be small compared to the time you'll save.Make your own iPod nano ad
Creative Cow posted a video tutorial that shows how to create those light trails featured in Apple's latest iPod nano commercials. I have been trying to figure the details of the effect in my head so I am exicited to see this tutorial which does a wonderful job of explaining everything. The tutorial is done in After Effects and all the source files that are used in the tutorial are also available. (via Tuaw)
