SF Cutters Nov 10: JVC, Mocha FCP, editor Sarles

The SF Cutters are meeting Tuesday, November 10th at the Delancey Street Screening Room on The Embarcadero in San Francisco, not far from the ballpark and train stops. The agenda includes JVC PROHD tapeless cameras, editor Bob Sarles, and Mocha for Final Cut. Meeting details are on Eventbrite; this one has a fee.

Painting with Light

No, it's not another post on Picasso's Light Graffiti, but a nice write up by Trish & Chris Meyer on Thomas Wilfred (left, 1889 - 1968), a pioneer in developing what he called Lumia, or the art of light. They've got specific background on Wilfred, including some movies.

The Lumia is in the class of devices called color organs. For some additional details see the AEP's Visual music and motion graphics. Here's an excerpt:

In After Effects, since version 3.1 and the defunct Motion Math, you can synchronize any parameter with any other parameter, so a range of audio effects can be tied to graphic properties to create visual music.

Visual music has a long history in media like color organs, film and abstract animation, light shows, CGI, installation art, and even cave art. Abstract animation is not just eye candy, but often attempts to communicate or stimulate synesthesia or mystical states. While forecasts for an expanded or synaesthetic cinema (PDF) haven't quite come to fruition, motion graphics seems to have been coined or at least popularized by visual music artist John Whitney, who pioneered motion control cameras and the slit scan technique -- and in 1960 named his company Motion Graphics, Inc. SIGGRAPH has a peek at some of his movies.

In addition to the Center for Visual Music, another specific resource for visual music is The iotaCenter. Also noteworthy is the work of William Moritz, who was tireless in documenting early work by abstract animation artists at CalArts and elsewhere and filmmakers like Oscar Fischinger. The Moritz article "Abstract Film and Color Music" in the book The Spiritual In Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985 (documenting an LA museum show) is quite good. Online, there's a good roundup of color organs and such in Colour and Sound: Visual Music by Maura McDonnell.

Tutorial Gap Friday

Topher Welsh rounds up some missing After Effects tutorials in his latest update, 44 Kickin’ AE Tutorials, over at AE Tuts. This is the 2nd roundup for Topher this week, and this one netted some new AE-specific ones.

AE filters: GenArts acquires Wondertouch

Via Xconomy... GenArts, a major FX filter developer, acquired Wondertouch, which had scheduled the release of an After Effects version of particleIllusion (Win, December; Feb for Mac).

There's more in the press release at Genarts and in a Youtube audio post. Previously this year, Genarts has acquired filter developer SpeedSix and sold a site license to Lucasfilm.

Update: Beth Marchant at Studio Daily has some analysis, as does Fxguide.

Boris XML Transfer: FCP sequences to AE

Boris FX has released Boris XML Transfer, an "After Effects plug-in designed for seamless transfer of Apple Final Cut Pro program sequences to Adobe After Effects. Boris XML Transfer preserves all aspects of a Final Cut Pro project including effects, audio, media clips, transitions, and geometric transformations."

Looks good -- they promise the world and all its effects, at least in the trip to AE -- but compare with established solutions by Automatic Duck.

New AE filter: Digieffects Falloff Lighting

Digieffects has released Falloff Lighting, which 'is much more like that of the real world where light naturally decays or “falls off” as surfaces increase distance from the After Effects light. Falloff Lighting offers a key feature missing in After Effects. With After Effects’ built-in lights, it doesn’t matter how far away a layer is from a light, it is still illuminated the same amount by that light.

Falloff Lighting offers the control and flexibility you need to properly light your scene. You can display the distance from the camera to the corners of the layers. Also, you can adjust the distance scale to account for the scale of objects in your scene. You can also control the intensity of light reflecting off an object and the gradual falloff as the distance from the light increases.'

This seems like another example of Digieffects revising and unbundling useful tools from earlier sets at a low price, like their recent Camera Mapper, which also stemmed from Buena Depth Cue.

There's 2 tutorials available already too.

VCP Halloween tutorial with lightning strike & explosion

Video Copilot has a 2-part tutorial that builds a lightning strike with rain effects using built-in After Effects filters and then composites an explosion with stock footage. Apparently Andrew's voice is very soothing on this one!

Keyframe TV: a new podcast show on motion design

Keyframe TV is a new podcast show that will scour the web and TV looking for news on motion design & animation and applications. Keyframe is hosted by Tim Allen, Nick Campbell, and Pasquale D'Silva.

The first episode talks about Trapcode Particular, breaks down of an animation of Digital Kitchen’s Keybank Campaign, and answers the question: "Do I need to go to school to learn motion design and/or animation?"

Episode 1 from Keyframe on Vimeo.

Update: check out Enhancing Trapcode Particular with scripts at Motionworks by guest blogger Sébastien Périer.

A plug-in developer's thoughts on AE CS5 64-bit

Stefan Minning posted A plug-in developer's thoughts on After Effects CS5 being 64-bit ...

While Stefan isn't a major developer he fills niches and is raising a question on many minds. The side effects on AE filters of Adobe's move to 64-bit is worrisome to users (see the Toolfarm survey results) since AE filter development across platforms and OS updates is often asymmetric.

One example of problems (elsewhere) has been with QuickTime on Windows. Since there's no 64-bit version of QuickTime, import/export of QT files haven't been available in the 64-bit Windows versions of Nuke, Eyeon Fusion, or Syntheyes. On the Mac, Apple does provide technology that passes 64-bit Quicktime requests to a 32-bit server process, but it's slow and codec-limited. There's likely little incentive for Apple to develop for authoring on other platforms and maybe even other applications; see Philip Hodgetts Why is QuickTime X like OS X? for a more optimistic view.

While Adobe does have a good history of development and support to leverage, for example with QT and other formats in Premiere timelines, we'll have to wait to see how they adapt to the problems of QT in 64-bit Windows -- and if they end up providing some slow, short-lived, and expensive-to-develop emulation for 32-bit AE filters.

Update: see Stefan's comments below on simple software bridges to inexpensive 64-bit audio apps.

Atlas: a new tone map­ping filter for After Effects

Stefan Minning has released a new tone map­ping plug-​​in for After Effects, Atlas. It's a work in progress and open-​​sourced under the free GPL license.

Atlas is Win­dows-only for now -- but the full source code is included, which means that any­one can com­pile a Mac ver­sion. Here's more from Stefan...

"So what’s tone map­ping you ask? Accord­ing to Wikipedia:

Tone map­ping is a tech­nique used in image pro­cess­ing and com­puter graph­ics to map a set of colours to another; often to approx­i­mate the appear­ance of high dynamic range images in media with a more lim­ited dynamic range.

The tech­nique is par­tic­u­larly use­ful if you have high dynamic range images, such as ren­dered CG-​​imagery in float­ing point color-​​depth (OpenEXR) or HDR pho­tographs, and you want to bring their broad spec­trum into a range more suit­able for dis­play on a com­puter mon­i­tor or tele­vi­sion screen."

Note: Stefan released [umm sorry, teased instead] another filter recently, Edgar, "which is designed to work in com­bi­na­tion with Nor­mal­ity and gen­er­ates squeaky clean car­toon out­lines. Edgar uses a novel, pro­pri­etary algo­rithm devel­oped specif­i­cally for the pur­pose of con­vert­ing nor­mal passes into line art for use in car­toon and anime pro­duc­tions."

Effects A-Z: Bilateral Blur with Eran Stern

Motionworks' sorta weekly tour of built-in AE filters continues onto the Bilateral Blur filter, with guest host Eran Stern demonstrating Bilateral Blur.

Tutorial Gap Monday

Topher Welsh links to some neglected After Effects, Motion, and Photoshop tutorials amidst the mostly 3D stuff in his latest update survey, 2 Weeks = 114 New Tuts!

PremierePro "Next": 64-bit CUDA GPU + CPU model

If you're a Premiere user, you might keep an eye out choosing the graphics card in your next machine upgrade. In September there was news from Fxguide at IBC on demos of Adobe nVidia CUDA acceleration for compression and RED.

Now at Dav's Techtable there's more on PremierePro"Next" in It's Official: The future of Adobe video is 64 bit! (excerpts):

"For PremierePro"Next", we are moving to new GPU + CPU model which allows us to scale and divide the workload more efficiently between multiple CPU Cores and GPU Cores. It uses the new nVidia CUDA technology and is designed to work with nVidia cards such as the Geforce 285 and FX4800/5800 series.

We want to give our users plenty of time to upgrade their systems to 64 bit and to get ready for the changes that are quickly coming. Both Apple and Microsoft have released 2 excellent 64 bit OSes in 2009. Mac users already know how great the Mac OS is and Windows users can look forward to seeing Windows7 64 in action.They can also finally look forward to using all of that RAM they purchased.

Anyone looking to buy new hardware might want to know what the requirements will be to run CS"Next" and how make great use of their CS4 investment today. I am recommending Multiple Cores, 8GB RAM or more, one of the nVidia cards mentioned above, and either Win7 64 or OSX 10.6. Again, CS4 runs excellent on this config as well.

The 64 bit versions are still many many months away... The early performance tests are truly amazing."

Unplugged 12: interview with Nick Campbell (Greyscale Gorilla)

Motionworks' Unplugged 12 features an interview with Nick Campbell (the Greyscale Gorilla):

"Relatively new to the online training scene, Nick Campbell has quickly established himself in the After Effects world, with his popular site Greyscale Gorilla. In this episode of Unplugged we discuss how Nick got started in the industry, his view on the benefits of university, and the challenges in his early freelance career. We also discuss our similarities in tutorial style, developing design skills on the job and of course Cinema 4D, plus plenty more."

Today: an After Effects team call-in hour

from Todd Kopriva:

"Michael Coleman, the After Effects product manager, has just invited people to call in and talk with the After Effects team this afternoon. Here's his post."

A Graphic History of Newspaper Circulation Over the Last Two Decades

via Recovering Journalist's When Presses Roll Less, Execs Spin More (see also Twitter feed subscription numbers of the "biggies")...

A Graphic History of Newspaper Circulation Over the Last Two Decades by The Awl, which also noted How Are Newspapers Reporting on Newspaper Circulation?

Update: Advancing the Story posted on Jesse James Garrett’s “12 Things I’ve Learned about Online News.” Garrett coined the term Ajax; here's an excerpt:

'The Online News Association convention in San Francisco included a session titled, “Design Solutions from News Experts.” While panelists from the New York Times revealed a glimpse into new features coming to the newspaper’s Web site, Adaptive Path president Jesse James Garrett offered practical advice from his company’s work on Web redesigns for CNN, PBS and NPR. During the session, one person tweeted that Garrett’s speech got him thinking of a news site as something like a “dashboard” and less like a “publication.”'

After Effects workflow at The New York Times

Zach Wise posted some notes on the After Effects Workflow at The New York Times. The workflow generally consists of a conversation, then on to script, storyboard (template included), and rough draft.

Unplugged 11: interview with Eran Stern

Motionworks' Unplugged 11 features an interview Eran Stern:

"Based in Israel, Eran Stern is well-known in the After Effects world, thanks largely to his tutorials and podcasts for Creative Cow. In this episode of Unplugged learn how Eran balances his focus between a worldwide audience and his growing Hebrew-speaking fan base. Eran also gives his thoughts on the ever-growing quantity of online training and chats about the ACE (Adobe Certified Expert) exam for After Effects, of which he is the author."

Some new presets, scripts, and tutorials

Eran Stern has some freebie AE projects, including a magnifier device built with shape layers and expressions and a cube intro where you replace the text, cube face, and logo.

There's also some new preset, scripts, and tutorials posted on motion graphics eXchange offering better deinterlacing, TV noise, and nesting cameras using expressions.

For more, see the AEP post AE presets & projects round-up.

Intro to Programmatic Animations in AE

After Effects Product Manager Michael Coleman MAX 2009 presentation, An Introduction to Programmatic Animations in After Effects, is now online.

"You'll learn how to use JavaScript-based expressions to link the behavior of any property on any layer to that of any other property, either simply or by writing more complex code. Next, we'll explore some of the ways you can use scripting to streamline workflows..."

Green light for After Effects on Windows 7

Michael Coleman, product manager for Adobe After Effects green lights AE on Windows 7, which was released today. For more details, see Thinking of running After Effects on Windows 7? All signs point to yes.

Update: John Nack notes the Adobe Windows 7 FAQ.

Harry Frank interviewed by Satya Meka

AETuts has the text of an interview with Harry Frank by Satya Meka:

"I had the pleasure of meeting Harry Frank, the founder of Graymachine a resourceful website filled with various tutorials and many articles related to the industry. He is a popular freelancer and a veteran in Motion Graphics and is extremely popular for his training series “After Effects Expressions” and his training series on Trapcode products."        -- Continue Reading

Effects A-Z: Bevel with Topher Welsh

Motionworks' sorta weekly tour of built-in AE filters continues onto the Bevel filters, with guest host Topher Welsh demonstrating Bevel Alpha and Bevel Edges.

Chris & Trish Meyer have a similar series on Lynda.com, except it is running though filters by Effect category (as in the Effect Menu). Chad Perkins had a similar treatment in his Lynda.com 2008 series After Effects CS3 Effects.

Offered for your consideration: Codec Wars 2009

While QuickTime X (more here) may just take time to unfold, as it did during the initial transition from OS 9, QuickTime as we've known it could end. It's odd to say since Mac users enjoy the benefits of many codecs and formats that can be used without a hitch.

It's pretty confusing when you step just beyond the world of Apple, and not just because of the gamma problems posed by QuickTime. Since there's no 64-bit version of QuickTime, import/export of QT files haven't been available in the 64-bit Windows versions of Nuke, Eyeon Fusion, or Syntheyes. On the Mac, Apple does provide technology that passes 64-bit Quicktime requests to a 32-bit server process, but it's slow and codec-limited. It's really an industry problem, not just an Apple problem -- but one made apparent by the dependence on QuickTime, as noted last year by Mark Christiansen in Why QuickTime is the US Dollar of Digital Video.

On the distribution front, Adobe Flash video versus HTML 5 video is developing news. Apple is embedding video with HTML 5 style; see, via MacRumors, Apple goes live with HTML5 video. For background on HTML 5 video, see the latest overview from Mark Pilgrim and an AEP post from July, HTTP video: reports on Firefox and Apple. Meanwhile Microsoft seems content to block DivX from Windows 7, and only Google knows if the VP6+ codecs gained by gobbling On2 can compete with MPEG-4.

On the post production side, one might have hoped that Adobe would be a cross-platform savior and buy Cineform to trump Apple ProRes and Avid DNxHD and solve millions of small time intermediate codec headaches from compression, bit depth, and color. Unfortunately there's no one decoder ring to rule them all, and not likely to be in a competitive environment despite the whining, but there's not even an updated OneRiver Media Codec Resource Site. There are some good discussions though, like Codec Wars 2009: Lossless and virtually lossless codecs (eg, ProRes and Bitjazz, which lets you author on Windows) and various threads on REDUser.net.

Blu-ray Templates for Final Cut Studio

FCP World announced FCP World Blu-ray Templates for Final Cut Studio, a collection of 60 Blu-ray Templates for Final Cut Studio 2009 designed by Kevin Monahan, author of Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro.

Monahan says, "Final Cut Studio 2009 ships with a total of 5 templates. That’s not nearly enough! I’ve designed 60 new templates that give video makers a lot more options for creating a Blu-ray or AVCHD disc. These are fully animated, high-quality looping backgrounds, not just stills. Also, I’ve designed many of the templates with Motion content, so that users could create, say, a title sequence or lower-third, that could match a particular template.

The templates work with FCP 7 and Motion 4 through the 'Share' protocol, while Compressor 3.5 accesses them via 'Job Actions.' The templates are localized for Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Spanish."

Multi-camera synchronization tutorial

It's a bit older, but Paolo Ciccone's Multi-camera synchronization tutorial is still useful:

"Sometimes you need to shoot with two or more cameras and that introduces the need to synchronize them. Some high-end cameras have genlock capability but what happens if you your cameras don’t have it or you work with a mix of different cameras? Slating is always a good idea but there is an easy way to have immediate synch in your NLE, this first tutorial shows you how."

Getting proper clapper can be awkward in many circumstances. Making a little movie with the Timecode filter in AE (for alternatives see AE Help), as Paolo recommends, is easy enough that you can get most camera people to shoot at a laptop playing this movie. And when using Premiere Pro, you can change the Timeline from timecode (video frames) to audio units (audio samples). This is a nice feature of Premiere because you can scrub to synchronize in 41,000 or 48,000 audio samples as opposed to 24 or 30 video samples.

I'm Not Bruce noted (along with other things good to remember) that Syncing Multipclips 1/100th of a Frame at a Time is possible in Final Cut, so better scrubbing is not just in Premiere Pro. In FCP, you can scrub in the audio Viewer with the Shift key down to help with precise tasks.

New Frontier in Video Search: Facial and Scene Recognition Metadata

Beet.TV notes A New Frontier in Video Search: Facial and Scene Recognition Converted to Metadata: "A Research Triangle, North Carolina company called DigitalSmiths has developed a technology to recognize faces and scenes and convert that information for publishers to index content."

For background on video metadata and search, including companies doing automated recognition, see the AEP post Adobe: 'The future of video is searchable'. Here's the Beet.TV interview:

Harry Frank's 5 Favorite Expressions

Harry Frank posted My 5 Favorite Expressions: Intertial Bounce, Autofade, Snap Zoom In/Out, Y Axis Jitter, toComp. He explained them and made them available as FFX presets for AE CS3:

"I realize that expressions can be daunting, and some would rather copy and past useful code rather than learn the language. That’s cool with me. Therefore, I’d like to share with you my 5 favorite expressions. These are expressions I use in just about every project, and I consider them to be incredible workflow enhancements."

CS5 After Effects & Premiere: 64-bit only

In a post at ProVideoCoalition, Simon Hayhurst, Adobe's Sr. Director of Product Management for Dynamic Media, confirmed that After Effects & Premiere will be 64-bit only in CS5. See The Future is 64-bit at PVC [note: Autodesk discreet smoke is 64-bit already] and the FAQ at the CS4 Production Premium page. From the FAQ:

"Adobe continues to prioritize 64-bit support based on the potential user benefits and the complexity of the code transition. At this time, After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro are the only products that we are announcing will be 64-bit only in the next major release."

There's a bit more on this from AE Product Manager Michael Coleman in The future of After Effects is 64-bit native. At this point 64-bit might be a problem only for some people on Windows, but there's plenty of time to upgrade before CS5 (next Spring, assuming the usual release cycle).

Well, that's not quite right, since all your old plug-ins -- on Mac and Windows -- have to be 64-bit too, unless there's some emulation. As Frank Wylie remarked on the AE-List , "Looks like some late nights for the after market plug in folks!"

Update: Dav's Techtable there's more on PremierePro in It's Official: The future of Adobe video is 64 bit

Unplugged 10: interview with Aharon Rabinowitz

Motionworks interview Unplugged 10 features Aharon Rabinowitz:

"Aharon Rabinowitz is widely recognized in the world of motion graphics but how much do you actually know about him? In this up-close and funny chat, we discuss how Aharon started in the industry and his years working with Creative Cow and now Red Giant Software. Aharon also speaks openly about the online tutorial phenomenon, copying tutorials Read more…"

SF Cutters Oct 20: FCP & Smoke, GenArts, Blu Ray Templates

The SF Cutters are meeting Oct 20th at the Delancey Street Screening Room on The Embarcadero in San Francisco, not far from the ballpark. The agenda includes a look at Final Cut Pro to Autodesk Smoke Finishing, GenArts Sapphire Plugins with Todd Prives of GenArts (& essay contest), & Kevin Monahan's Blu Ray Templates. Meeting details are on Eventbrite; this one has a fee.

Update: "Here’s the GenArts Sapphire Essay requirements:

* state why you want the Sapphire GenArts plugins, your plan for using them
* one page essay -- you may write it ahead of time and bring it with you; do Not send it in an email, it must be handed in in person
* you must be present to win, one essay per person
* includes name and contact info: phone with area code, and email
* legible -- either printed out or readable handwriting
* We will select the top winner, and the runner up at random from the qualifying essays turned in on Oct 20th, winner(s) must be present, and be in attendance for the SF Cutters’ Tues Oct 20th meeting.
* We will also give away a one month’s rental certificate to a runner up."


Also, SFMograph is meeting, at Adobe on October 22.

Broadcast Skype: Look Ma, No Truck

Via andydickinson.net...

More broadcasters are willing to use Skype in tight spots, and (no surprise) finding that a nice camera improves the image. Here's an excerpt from KGMB9 in Hawaii:

"As Hurricane Felicia headed towards the Hawaiian Islands (The Big Island and Maui in particular) in these past 72 hours, all of the local news stations had to make some smart decisions. Who would go to what island and how would the video be relayed back to the news rooms here on Oahu. Shipping the live trucks was no longer an option for anyone. And flying our video back on cargo flights had the risk of being held because of the weather. So what to do?

On August 11th at 5:00 am from the property of the Maui Seaside Hotel all four Honolulu TV stations broadcast their reporters live from Maui …. via Skype."

See also similar reports by Al Tompkins at Poynter and Broadcasting & Cable, and the AEP roundup of live web video resources from April, Overview of live video over the internet.

Effects A-Z: Beam with John Dickinson

Motionworks' sorta weekly tour of built-in AE filters continues with the Beam filter, explained nicely by host John Dickinson.

He even managed to avoid much discussion of a lightsaber effect with the Beam filter, once so popular that it drew birds of a feather into its orbit -- Andrew Kramer (2006) and Mark Christiansen (but with alternative methods noted).

AE filters coming: Holomatrix & Optical Flares

It's not fresh news but both Aharon Rabinowitz and Andrew Kramer are close to releases of new After Effects filters. Holomatrix is a new set of tools designed by Rabinowitz and AE scripting guru Dan Ebberts, to be published by Red Giant Software. The plug-in creates "the look of holographic imagery, digital signage, bad TV signals, and ghostly apparitions."

Meanwhile, Andrew Kramer unveiled some features of the forthcoming AE filter Optical Flares in the most recent Video Copilot VP6 "podcast." The new filter will challenge the ancient but widely-used Knoll Light Factory (seemingly on life support at Red Giant). The humorously disjointed communique also showed a "Fight Enhancement Tip" in AE (paint in a punch impact) and parts of an upcoming bar graph tutorial.