After Effects Workflow questions

[BENTrandom]

I just recently wrapped a music video shoot over the weekend that turned into a giant clusterf*** and now I've been thrown head first into being the post-production supervisor.
We shot at 3K 2:1 with varying frame rates. The video is quite post heavy with almost every shot requiring some sort of motion tracking, compositing and digital zooming. The will end up being 1080P HDBeta and 480i SDBeta tapes.

I'm doing the very basic edit for the artist's producer in FCP at 720p. No problems there. Everything has run smoothly for that.

The real questions I have are; Is there a way to batch render out of REDcine or another program at 3K quicktimes (I highly doubt this so probably stick with TIF sequences)? I'd like to be able to just render out all the takes used in the edit in one quick swoop.
Does anyone know a simple mathematical equation for the amount of digital zoom my animators can use in the 3K file before it becomes too soft in the 1080 sequence? I'd like to give them something easy to remember at least to begin with.
Can an animator successfully track motion, rotation and scale on a smaller resolution file or a proxy and then apply it to the 3K file? This would be great time saver as we do have a rapidly approaching deadline. If that is the case what's the easiest way to create proxies from REDcine or again another program.
And lastly, this is more of a preference question but to make the 480i Beta a 29.97 video file what would you use to create a fake pull down? Just export from AE that way or use another program?

Thanks for your time. Any answers would really help me out.

 

[Adam Glick]

I'm no post supervisor, but I don't think I've heard of an equation that could be used for anything like that.

The loose "rule" is that if it looks good enough - it is good enough.

Of course, that's a very subjective topic and beauty is truly "in the eye of the bolder". (and it sounds like that may be YOU)

If you shot 3K and want to finish in HD, then you could almost certainly get by using 2K DPX/TIFF sequences rendered out in Redcine.

You might talk to the guy(s) who will be pulling keys and masks, tracking, etc. Have them do some test comps on the shots they think may pose the most challenges. Give'em 2K frames and see if they can produce a nice looking deliverable.

If they need more pixels, re-render those sequences at 3K...

my $.02

Adam
BOXXlabs

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

I just recently wrapped a music video shoot over the weekend that turned into a giant clusterf*** and now I've been thrown head first into being the post-production supervisor.

music video ... giant clusterf*** ...?

what a surprise.

We shot at 3K 2:1 with varying frame rates. The video is quite post heavy with almost every shot requiring some sort of motion tracking, compositing and digital zooming. The will end up being 1080P HDBeta and 480i SDBeta tapes.

I'm doing the very basic edit for the artist's producer in FCP at 720p. No problems there. Everything has run smoothly for that.

The real questions I have are; Is there a way to batch render out of REDcine or another program at 3K quicktimes (I highly doubt this so probably stick with TIF sequences)? I'd like to be able to just render out all the takes used in the edit in one quick swoop.

Scratch can that with ease.
Crimson can do it too.
You can also spit out a BATCH LIST from FCP and use Automator to do batch render with REDrender (as soon as Deanan squishes one little bugger).

Does anyone know a simple mathematical equation for the amount of digital zoom my animators can use in the 3K file before it becomes too soft in the 1080 sequence? I'd like to give them something easy to remember at least to begin with.

subjective - but just stay under 200%.

Can an animator successfully track motion, rotation and scale on a smaller resolution file or a proxy and then apply it to the 3K file?

Yes, but it can be problematic - and as it sounds like you may be a wee bit in "over your head" - you don't wanna go down that road.

But if you are finishing in 1080 as your biggest delivery format - I'd be tracking the 1080 renders - not the 3K.

This would be great time saver as we do have a rapidly approaching deadline. If that is the case what's the easiest way to create proxies from REDcine or again another program.
And lastly, this is more of a preference question but to make the 480i Beta a 29.97 video file what would you use to create a fake pull down? Just export from AE that way or use another program?

Thanks for your time. Any answers would really help me out.

You can just let the KONA3 downconvert to SD and add a pulldown on layback to tape from a 23.98 timeline - no render needed.

 

[BENTrandom]

Hey Mark,

Thanks for the reply. You too Adam.

music video ... giant clusterf*** ...?

what a surprise.

No kidding. I was originally only on set as the RED "tech" and ended up being Co-director, special effects supervisor, grip and assistant camera. RED ran flawlessly. One of the only things that did the entire weekend.

Scratch can that with ease.
Crimson can do it too.
You can also spit out a BATCH LIST from FCP and use Automator to do batch render with REDrender (as soon as Deanan squishes one little bugger).

That batch list solution sounds best but the delivery date is in four weeks. Another thing I was informed of after the shoot. If that seems like a short turn around it was originally only two weeks to get it on BET and VH1... Trial by fire.

Yes, but it can be problematic - and as it sounds like you may be a wee bit in "over your head" - you don't wanna go down that road.
But if you are finishing in 1080 as your biggest delivery format - I'd be tracking the 1080 renders - not the 3K.

Yeah anything they can track at that's smaller than 3K will work wonders. I ran a test on Thursday off the 3K without any filters (There needs to be blur to match the lens focus and motion) and it was almost an hour to track 8 seconds.

You can just let the KONA3 downconvert to SD and add a pulldown on layback to tape from a 23.98 timeline - no render needed.

That is fantastic news. Having not done that before I would guess that the added pulldown would be an option in Print to Video out of FCP?

Thanks again. If I don't reply later it's because this project has melted my brain.

 

[Mike Harrington]

just my humble opinion

but if i were up against that deadline
i would just redcine everything in 1080p and do the edit and effects on that...

with the possible exception of the digital zooms... that i may do in 3k and render to 1080p

3072/ 1920 is 1.6 ....so mathematically that would be a pixel for pixel zoom

 

[BENTrandom]

I would totally agree with you on that BUT (And I love this) The design of the MV makes almost every single shot a digital zoom transition. In and Out.

 

[John Tissavary]

Offhollywood's (Mark) suggestions are pretty much in sync with how I would do it - though I'd try to keep the zooms to %100 scale maximum.

Scratch would definitely speed things up for you as you don't have to mess with pull lists - you can conform from an fcp edl, and do color correction, digital zooms in real time, and tracking at 3k is quite fast.

RedCine is great for basics, but it will require more manual intervention (there is no built in conform tool), has limited CC tools, and you can't animate scaling and translation like in Scratch. Also if you just output 3k in RedCine then I'm going to assume the images are headed for non-realtime systems for the rest of the work, which will, of course, slow you down.

If you need more specific help, please feel free to PM me.

cheers,

jt

 

[chocblu]

Hey, if you want to go from FCP to AE, Head on over to www.creativeworkflowhacks.com i think it is. Gets a FCP XML sequence, converts it into a AE composition. Relink with whatever media you want, and your away!

Free and works. Always a good thing. Turns AE into at least part of a conform tool. They if you have the space just batch convert the entire clips to what ever you want.

Hope it helps

 

[Bruce Allen]

I hope you're billing them a lot of money. Very few music videos NEED a pristine high-def delivery. That's just the producer / client / you trying to have something to boast about.

If you are not making a decent day rate on the job (eg LA rate is $300 - $700 per day, depending on your skill level - and that's for a 8-10 hour day), tell them to suck it and take 960x540 or SD. Unless there is some kind of major reason that this job will personally advance your career, or it's a favor for a good buddy, etc.

For the Ringo vid we did that ended up on Red's reel, we only delivered standard-def to the label. It played in entirety on the Today show every day for a week. Tonight I got a call from a friend that they just showed a clip on Larry King. So don't let anyone tell you that it's industry standard to have a HD master. It is a vanity extra that they need to pay you for your labor for.

For Ringo, I worked at HD but didn't care very much about the 1:1 pixels. A lot of times we'd take a ProRes 1920x1080 QT and blow it up 20% - 30% etc. But when Red asked us for our file, we gave them the ProRes file and nobody has complained about its crispness at HD.

BTW, I'm still trying to do a gratis 4K version for Red but re-doing everything at 4K just sucks and I have a lot of paying work, so it is taking months! If there were no Reduser to distract me I'd probably be done by now though.

Also, having done both, I recommend that you don't get married to the idea of conforming it all in After Effects. The fact that you have to load all the frames into RAM in order to play back is just not conducive to working with something the length of a music video. Personally I'd do chunks in After Effects and reconform in Avid / FCP / Premiere. We did Ringo on FCP but its general sluggishness drove us utterly nuts AS USUAL. I finally made the switch and bought two Avid licenses after that.

And try Automatic Duck - it allows you to bring your FCP timeline across with all of your scales, moves, etc intact. Well, in theory at least. It screwed up the scales and moves for Ringo but I think they've fixed it since then (a new version came out). I don't care to check because I'm on Avid now and all's good bwahaha.

Any of this help?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[number6]

I hope you're billing them a lot of money.

BTW, I'm still trying to do a gratis 4K version for Red but re-doing everything at 4K just sucks and I have a lot of paying work, so it is taking months!

Bruce, is this a "do as I say, not as I do example?

If there were no Reduser to distract me I'd probably be done by now though.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

I'm considering selling my cameras and opening a REDuser Rehab. Gotta kick the habit myself before trying to cure others, I guess. (Don't want to be accused of telling others to do as I say, not as I do.:usd: )

 

[BENTrandom]

Hey, if you want to go from FCP to AE, Head on over to www.creativeworkflowhacks.com i think it is. Gets a FCP XML sequence, converts it into a AE composition. Relink with whatever media you want, and your away!

Free and works. Always a good thing. Turns AE into at least part of a conform tool. They if you have the space just batch convert the entire clips to what ever you want.

Hope it helps

I will definitely check that out. Thanks!

I hope you're billing them a lot of money. Very few music videos NEED a pristine high-def delivery. That's just the producer / client / you trying to have something to boast about.

If you are not making a decent day rate on the job (eg LA rate is $300 - $700 per day, depending on your skill level - and that's for a 8-10 hour day), tell them to suck it and take 960x540 or SD. Unless there is some kind of major reason that this job will personally advance your career, or it's a favor for a good buddy, etc.

Basically no money. And by no money I mean at present time absolutely zero.
The high-def is something the producer offered up without talking to me first. But why should he have. At that time I was just going to be on set logging footage. I don't mind having the 1080p version for my personal reel and what not. I figure for the delivery date all that is needed is the SD version. I can only assume that the HD would be used for the artist's online site or for some sort of download off itunes. At this point in the post I don't give a flying flipping monkey butt. I'm focused on just getting all the shots synced and rendered.

For the Ringo vid we did that ended up on Red's reel, we only delivered standard-def to the label. It played in entirety on the Today show every day for a week. Tonight I got a call from a friend that they just showed a clip on Larry King. So don't let anyone tell you that it's industry standard to have a HD master. It is a vanity extra that they need to pay you for your labor for.

I will try to bring that up about the extra pay believe me. And I plan to bring it up a lot until the delivery date. And possibly after.

For Ringo, I worked at HD but didn't care very much about the 1:1 pixels. A lot of times we'd take a ProRes 1920x1080 QT and blow it up 20% - 30% etc. But when Red asked us for our file, we gave them the ProRes file and nobody has complained about its crispness at HD.

In the base edit I did a couple of quick digital zooms for effect and even in 720p they didn't seem too soft or awkward looking.

Also, having done both, I recommend that you don't get married to the idea of conforming it all in After Effects. The fact that you have to load all the frames into RAM in order to play back is just not conducive to working with something the length of a music video. Personally I'd do chunks in After Effects and reconform in Avid / FCP / Premiere. We did Ringo on FCP but its general sluggishness drove us utterly nuts AS USUAL. I finally made the switch and bought two Avid licenses after that.

The plan was to farm out around 2 to 4 shots per person of the 18 main shots in the video and just get back the finished 1080 renders. I doubt any machine I would have access to could handle the entire video at 3K-2K in AE. I wish there was such a magically delicious machine. If I was at my old job I could have used a Flame box but that access is no longer granted unless I have the money to rent the room. Which I don't... Nor do I think it requires that type of super polish.

And try Automatic Duck - it allows you to bring your FCP timeline across with all of your scales, moves, etc intact. Well, in theory at least. It screwed up the scales and moves for Ringo but I think they've fixed it since then (a new version came out). I don't care to check because I'm on Avid now and all's good bwahaha.

I will look into this program as well. Never hurts to learn them even if they don't work for this project.

Any of this help?

Yes, yes it does Bruce. Thanks alot!

 

[Bruce Allen]

Sounds good BENTrandom! Just focus on the SD finish. 1080p source material should be FINE for this, even with heavy digital zooms. You can hide a lot with motion blur / radial zoom blur / etc.

PM me or tell the producer to email me if he gives you any more lip about not getting a HD final deliverable. What he is essentially asking for is 3-4 minutes of effects at 90% of theatrical film resolution in record time with no budget. Not gonna happen.

I was just re-watching Gondry's famous Star Guitar video for the nth time... there are a TON of glitches, etc if you look for them. But the video and concept is awesome, so you don't care.

I think if your transitions are clever or the concept is good nobody will worry about a little blockiness. If people are so bored they're watching out for resolution gitches then it's the director's concept that has failed, not your effects.

Bruce, is this a "do as I say, not as I do example?

Yes. And I'm not doing it again until computers get considerably faster.

I'm considering selling my cameras and opening a REDuser Rehab. Gotta kick the habit myself before trying to cure others, I guess. (Don't want to be accused of telling others to do as I say, not as I do.:usd: )

One day I'm just going to post in Off Topic saying "I'm away from Reduser, trying to start writing script again and make movies... see you all in 3 months' time!" but I think I have to wait for Build 16 to be verified bug-free so I can post a lot saying how awesome RED is for fixing it (only fair since I complained so much previously).

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com