NoWhere I figured this thread would be filled with bullshit answers as I am the self proclaimed king of premiere/after effects/Final cut but I'm actually impressed.

good stuff, im actually learning some shit.

what software produces the best screen caps off MPEG videos?

Ya, Premiere and After Effects are my main tools. And thanks for the compliment. People have helped me out throught my career, now's my time to give a little back.

Plus I guess it proves I actually know what I'm doing lol, that I'm not just a surfer.

If ya got any questions, go ahead and ask :)

I thought that question was answered in your other thread. The guy gave you a pretty decent solution too.

Just thought I'd add that the best and cheapest way to go about the green screen is to hit a local fabric store. Spray on adhesive and a nail gun on a piece of sheet rock or plywood. Thats how I set up my last one anyways.

Yup, thats one good way. There alot of sites that give you ways to do cheap greenscreening. The problem I've always encountered after the is the tremendous amount of post you have to do for the "touch ups".

So to save time, make sure you have good lighting and use that backlight!! lol It saves u so much time trying to eliminate that green aura around your subject and helps alot when it comes to keeping detail in someones hair .

I thought he was talking about when shooting your own content. I'll go back and re-read.

Never tried the blacklight. Next time I do some keying I'll definately give it a shot. So far I've only used the green screen for foreground and object effects. Have only fucked around with human subjects.

Greenscreening is a gem! Best thing you can do is setup a permanent (or easy to install) greenscreen set. You can do SO many things with it AND make tons of money with it (lots of lower quality production companies don't have the budget to rent a real greenscreen studio and would kill to have access to one already setup).

Thats what I did near I live, something really basic... and its a bloody gold mine

I'll help you dewd.
It sounds like you don't have tracks 1 and 4 enabled to export. Most non-linear editors rip Avid with their interface so most likely if you look to the beginning of the timeline you'll notice that the actual track marker is either subdued or has some other way of marking it active. It should be that easy... although I haven't cut on an Avid system in a while. :)

SixNine

100 video editor :glugglug

Nowhere, ironic you posted this thread.. I gotta nother problem in Sony Vegas 4.0 at the moment. I wanted to add a brightness filter to "one" event. I dragged the filter to the event but it brightened the ENTIRE track with all the events. Instead of backing up, I kept going and now I gotta complete piece with the brightness on every event. Is there a way to simply "remove" the brightness filter from off the track (And all the infected events)?

Haven't played with Vegas in awhile, but isn't your brightness effect changeable? I mean, can you change the value of brightness? If so, bring it down to 0, that way it'll be as if there was no effect at all. If not,click on HELP and CONTENTS and in the index search for "effects control". There should be a way to tell you how to turn off effects in there.

i often need to render .mov files (from a client who uses an apple) to windows avi files, i use after effects to do so, i also need to combine several avi timelines into a single timeline so i can author it to DVD format in encore. . .

my questions are-
1. is after effects the best proggie for re-rendering .mov files to avi?
2. is there a way in after effects to not only export it as avi but also export several .mov files out as one avi timeline?
3. what books do you recommend for learning more about adobe after effects?


thank you

1 - http://www.videohelp.com/mov2avi.htm this here might save you a bit of time.

2 - Every avi timeline is in its own comp right? Well create a comp whose length is the sum of all of the other timelines (ex : you got 3 timelines that are 30seconds each, well the new comp will be 90 sec) and bring the compositions into your new compostion and arrange them in the order you want. Then make a movie from that final Composition.

3 - Samething for your several .Mov you want to export into 1 avi, put them all in different comps and combine those comps into a larger comp. This process is called Nesting and is a VERY important process in After Effects. When creating animations etc, it speeds up your render time tremendously!

4 - My favourite book, and the one I used to get me off the ground with After Effects was : After Effects In Production by Trish and Chris Meyer.

Its for intermediate users and has shows you the ropes on how to create animations AND optimize your speed and workload. Its not that intensive on render formats, but thats something you learn as you work.

Heres a link to the book : http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...34407?v=glance

They also made a book that came before that : Creating Motion Graphics which is more for begginers, but its good to know the basics if you skipped a few steps. They show you stuff you prolly didn't know... little shortcuts, etc.

super! thank you.

also, if you are familiar with adobe encore,

i would like to author DVDs of mutliple timelines without having to put them all in one long timeline in premiere pro 1st, but when i do that and link the end action of one timeline to the beginning of the next timeline and put a chapter point there, the remote control buttons on set top DVD players do not work properly on the DVD, they will not jump to the next chapter (time line) is there a way to resolve this?

Lol, you got me.

I'm stumped.

I've never used Adobe Encore before. So I would have no idea where the problem lies.

Try the Adobe Forums, someone there probably has already covered the topic or just make a new post.

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/[email protected]

What is the easiest way to simply join .mpeg clips together. Which software would you use?

thanks again for your input,
we have done the above and my question is, when you say "make a movie from that final composition" does that mean to highlight that comp and export it as an AVI?

thanks again

If you just want to JOIN them, play them back to back without any editing (cutting out little bits and pieces of the clip), then try an MPEG JOINER like http://www.media4pc.com/mpeg-join/

But if you want to edit little bits out, then go with a popular editing program such as Premiere, Vegas, Avid, etc

Click on COMPOSTION (at the top of your screen) and then click on MAKE MOVIE. Or just click Ctrl+M

Now click on BEST SETTINGS

Change the quality to FULL
Change the resolution to FULL
Change your time span to WORK AREA (make sure that your work area spans all of your clips)

click OK


Now click on LOSSLESS
Make sure that the format is VIDEO FOR WINDOWS
then click on FORMAT OPTIONS, choose the format you want (I usually choose Microsoft DV)
Click on AUDIO OUTPUT (otherwise you wont have sound)

click OK

Now click COMP 1 (or whatever is written beside OUTPUT TO) and give the final file the name you want and choose where to export it to.


This should help you out. If your having problems, my ICQ is at the bottom

thank you, nice chatting with ya on icq too

Donations are always accepted :) lol jk

My pleasure

Donations are always accepted :) lol jk

heheh, i'll be giving you some biz in the future! :thumbsup

Bump for those that havent seen the thread yet

Im interested in begining to do some digital video editing but im on a budget. What type of system would you recommend for ~$2500 US. Btw, i dont need a monitor and already have software.

I guess i would need to know about processor speed, RAM, type of storage, capature card, etc.

Thanks for a great post!

Alright, well I'm not gonna recommend you specific names, but I'll tell you what to look for.

1 - If you're looking into becoming a full time editor, get yourself a video card that can handle alot of mediums. I.E : Analog capture, DV capture, S-Cable, etc. Dual monitors support, etc. I think the most popular one out there for this type of stuff is the ATI all-in-wonder

2 - For editing, its simple. Get yourself a TON of Hardrive space, and by that I mean AT LEAST 500 gb, get yourself the highest CPU u can find, preferably a multi-threader, minimum 512 mb of RAM (the more RAM you get, the less time you'll waste when working)... lets see, am I forgetting anything? Oh, audio card of course. Unless you intend on mixing your own shit and creating music, just get something standard. Nothing too fancy.

I haven't shopped around for a system lately, so I don't know whats out and what the prices are. So if anyone has suggestions to make, its an open forum! Go ahead

thanks................

Anytime!

Thanks for the info - its much appreciated. Just to clarify - im looking at it more as a hobby, not super high quality, fullt time work etc, just soemthing to play around with for fun - hence the low budget. I used to do a lot of DV editing in college and thought It would be fun to start to mess around with it again. I see systems on DELL that they claim are good for DV work however I cant speak from any experience.

Well for 2500$ US, you can get a VERY good video editing system, so if you're gonna spend that kinda money, might as well start making some money off of it hehe :)

Haha,

Good point. I mainly do design work for a living and my box is getting a little old, so i figure as long as im replacing it why not two birds with one stone :)

Thanks again for a great thread and your thoughful replies..... a rare occurance on gfy :thumbsup

how do you blur someones face or simply put a white box over the face if you have a 5 minute video and dont weant to do it frame by frame

Is there a way to add branding / watermark / text on a video without losing any quality? I use vegas video 6.0 - but if there is a specific program that does this, please let me know!

HQ

What is the best encoding to WMV from Final Cut Pro HD. Most of the converters are very choppy? The best I found is Flip 4 Mac, but is there any better that will render a smooth Broadband and Lowband quality vid?

The fastest way I can think of doing it is through After Effects and its Motion Tracker. Basically the you define what you want to track with the Motion Tracker.

When that is done, create a white box using a solid and masks (or add an adjustment layer, make a mask to around the layer you want to cover and add a blur if you just want to blur his face out.)

Then copy the keyframes generated from the Motion tracker to the Box.

It takes somewhat intermediate skills in After Effects to do it. But if you know how, it takes about 30 seconds.


If you're having too much trouble, add me to ICQ, I might be able to do it for you.

Well, standard converters are usually pretty good. What settings do you encode at? Maybe the problem lies there. If its choppy, are you rendering at 29.97 frames? Drop frame? how many KBPS? Are you using a standard size? (720x480 or 640x480, etc)

if you could show me a capture of your settings I might be able to find the problem.

Just keep in mind that, in my experience, lowband videos run at 250kbps, mid band 500kbs and broadband 800k or more.



As for other softwares, all I can do is say google my friend, cause I'm not a MAC user lol... I don't know which programs are better than the others when it comes to MAC

I found the Flip 4 Mac is decent for conversions, but wondered if any better for Mac. Convert at 800+ for broadband and around 250 for lowband. I find the mac system has some issues converting to Windows Media. Thanks for the feedback!! :thumbsup