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This is a thread where we talk about the release of Final Cut 4 and Shake 3, as announced on www.apple.com.

― Nordicskillz (Nordicskillz), Sunday, 6 April 2003 19:43 (twenty-two years ago)

fuck, i just learned how to use final cut 3.

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Sunday, 6 April 2003 19:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Final Cut 4? Holy motherfucker. What're we talking about here?

I just finally got around to upgrading to 3 and am very excited to learn colour correction etc.

This is very exciting tho.

― slutsky (slutsky), Sunday, 6 April 2003 19:51 (twenty-two years ago)

I just changed to version 3, too. Also got Express. And now...THIS! Anyone used Shake? Is it an After-Effects kinda deal?

― Nordicskillz (Nordicskillz), Sunday, 6 April 2003 19:52 (twenty-two years ago)

And a new DVD Studio Pro to boot! Holy cow!

― slutsky (slutsky), Sunday, 6 April 2003 19:52 (twenty-two years ago)

I think we're talking about more HD features and compatability, above all else.

― Nordicskillz (Nordicskillz), Sunday, 6 April 2003 19:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah. Plus the new Soundtrack/Titling programs, and probably a bunch of bug fixes.

This is confusing me, as I'm still all excited about FCP 3.

― slutsky (slutsky), Sunday, 6 April 2003 19:55 (twenty-two years ago)

According to the specs, you need "60GB of available hard disk space for installing applications" -- !?!

― mark p (Mark P), Sunday, 6 April 2003 19:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Apple is like the ultimate parent organisation-I love them and hate them equally, and their expectations of my capabilities are just too fucking high. But how they spoil me....

― Nordicskillz (Nordicskillz), Sunday, 6 April 2003 19:59 (twenty-two years ago)

60 GB of space? Maybe they mean for media & render files too? There's no way the whole program is 60GB--right?

― slutsky (slutsky), Sunday, 6 April 2003 20:15 (twenty-two years ago)

ten months pass...

Hello.

Could I direct any FCP users to this?:

FCP 3 Problems!

If you can help me, I simply cannot stress how grateful I will be.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Monday, 1 March 2004 20:58 (twenty-one years ago)

five months pass...

What do any of y'all know about Motion?

― adam. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 11 August 2004 18:37 (twenty years ago)

link

― adam. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 11 August 2004 18:38 (twenty years ago)

not much (it's apple's after-effects, isn't it?)

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 11 August 2004 19:00 (twenty years ago)

(I think so - does that mean it's easy to learn???)

― adam. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 11 August 2004 19:01 (twenty years ago)

(probably about as easy as fcp)

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 11 August 2004 19:05 (twenty years ago)

(why are we whispering?)

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 11 August 2004 19:05 (twenty years ago)

(because MICROSCOPIC GERMS are hard of hearing!)

― adam. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 11 August 2004 19:08 (twenty years ago)

(sssssssssillllencio!!!!)

― adam. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 11 August 2004 19:08 (twenty years ago)

This is a really good tip. One of my friends was editing video in Final Cut Pro 4 and after a normal restart, the canvas window had this pinkish/redish tint to everything, so she couldn't really edit anything with any accuracy. It took us a while to find out what was wrong and it was displaying RGB + Luminance in the "view" window. So you need to make sure Luminance is off unless you want everything to look red.

yay

― Adam Bruneau, Wednesday, 11 August 2004 19:09 (twenty years ago)

i think that happened to me once too, drove me fucking crazy!!!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 11 August 2004 19:10 (twenty years ago)

never could figure out what it was so i had to trash prefs... thanks adam b!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 11 August 2004 19:11 (twenty years ago)

two months pass...

This looks fun :

http://www.istopmotion.com/

― adam. (nordicskilla), Monday, 18 October 2004 16:31 (twenty years ago)

Looks super cool, but how do you pronounce "Boinx". I really hope it's not how I think it is.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Monday, 18 October 2004 16:36 (twenty years ago)

two months pass...

Are there any sites that might host a small mpeg or two (couple of megs) or is this something I would need to set up my own website for?

― .adam (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 17:46 (twenty years ago)

what for, hmm?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 18:15 (twenty years ago)

Some bad student films of mine!

― .adam (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 18:17 (twenty years ago)

woohoo!!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 18:19 (twenty years ago)

I guess so!

― .adam (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 18:20 (twenty years ago)

one month passes...

Let's talk about After Effects.

Who uses it?

I have used it in the past for very simple titles and graphics, now I am thinking about going full bore and teaching myself the whole thing. Would it be worth it? How hard will it be to learn? Can anyone recommend tutorials, etc? Is this really what I want to be learning for simple-to-intermediate effects and motion graphics (to be combined with live footage) or is there another program that I should try?

― adam.r.l. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 18:27 (twenty years ago)

i need to get into this. my immediate plan is to get a new 3D package (have some experience with 3D Studio Max but what's the best one to use now?) and play around with animating and effects via that before maybe learning a standalone effects package.

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 18:48 (twenty years ago)

ALSO - I have little to no Photoshop knowledge and always (mistakenly) assumed that it would be helpful to be familiar with the whole Adobe interface before learning something like After Effects. Am I wrong?

― adam.r.l. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 18:51 (twenty years ago)

b-b-bump

― adam.r.l. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 20:30 (twenty years ago)

photoshop would help but i think you can just jump right into after effects! i've done a little stuff on it but i have very very surface knowledge

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 20:35 (twenty years ago)

if you used it...what would you use it for?

― adam.r.l. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 20:36 (twenty years ago)

i was gonna use it for pan&zoom effects on photos but i realized it was totally better to do it on imovie! but i did use it a couple of times for very rudimentary sfx.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 20:38 (twenty years ago)

adam -- I like aftereffects for image correction and minor color work, but I have tremendous misgivings about recommending it for title stuff. In my experience it's clunky and slow-rendering, and overly complicated w. a so-so interface. However: I've always preferred avid products to apple ones, so I may not be the voice of reason.

― Remy (hstencil tastes like bubble gum) (x Jeremy), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 20:44 (twenty years ago)

hey adam.r.l.

I use After Effects almost everyday profesionally. AfterEffects is a wonderfull tool knowing Photoshop will definitly help. For tutorials look at aefreemart and www.ayatoweb.com/ae_tips_e.html. AE is a very flexable,deep and interesting program but can be overkill if your just looking to do very simple things.

lurk

― lurk, Wednesday, 16 February 2005 22:15 (twenty years ago)

thanks lurk!

― adam.r.l. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 22:36 (twenty years ago)

So I want to do a kind of complex matte/composite shot, probably 5 or 6 layers. Is this even possible without being some kind of FX genius? Could After Effects (or even Final Cut) help me here?

― adam.r.l. (nordicskilla), Thursday, 24 February 2005 19:59 (twenty years ago)

i think after effects is what you need! though you could probably work it in fcp. but if you're working with a lot of layers & keyframing AE is probably better

― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, 24 February 2005 20:14 (twenty years ago)

I'm excited! And terrified!

― adam.r.l. (nordicskilla), Thursday, 24 February 2005 20:15 (twenty years ago)

eight months pass...

revive : (
i'm trying, really i am.
2 after effects things i would like someone to explain to me. probably both basic.
the process i'm using right now to animate (inna motion graphics/ident style) involves making hundreds of frames in photoshop or illustrator. can someone explain how this could be made easier in ae? masking? how does it work? i have a ummm not entirely legit pre-release copy of 6.0.9 and i have no help file.
secondly, how come when i export something it's like 243 megs... what should i be exporting to instead of .mov (i know that's not the right format, yes). i need to be able to fit about 2 1/2 - 3 hours worth of stuff that i'm working on onto 1 dvd.

please/thanks! : D

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 19:50 (nineteen years ago)

btw, the reason i'm doing the animating in AE to begin with is because i'm panning, zooming and parallax scrolling across the frames.

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 19:55 (nineteen years ago)

I wish I could help...but I'm probably about a year behind you here. I'm still using that AE book you recommended, though!

― F.R.I.E.N.D. (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 20:00 (nineteen years ago)

can someone explain how this could be made easier in ae? masking? how does it work?

What exactly are you animating? It's not very clear from your first post.

secondly, how come when i export something it's like 243 megs... what should i be exporting to instead of .mov (i know that's not the right format, yes). i need to be able to fit about 2 1/2 - 3 hours worth of stuff that i'm working on onto 1 dvd.

.mov is fine but you need to watch what kind of compression you're using. I'm guessing you used Animation or None which makes the file size huge. Try using Sorenson compression.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 20:03 (nineteen years ago)

to clarify, it's hard to clarify what i'm animating. umm... basically just imagine a 2 1/2 hour long station ident (a la those vh1 interstitial promo things) that's partially vector based and partially bitmap. a changing collage with moving parts. lots of moving parts... for an example of the type of thing i'm trying to do, see here:

http://www.hellologan.com/site/news_fall05.php

and click on 'montage'

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 20:14 (nineteen years ago)

So right now you're just animating stuff frame by frame in Photoshop & Illustrator?

If I had to do stuff that mixed vector and bitmap animation in that Logan style I'd use a combination of Flash and AE (though they have obviously done some 3D stuff there as well). Anything that you're drawing in illustrator now can be easily animated as vectors in Flash and then exported as a quicktime movie which you can bring into AE to composite with other materials, add filters to, etc. Likewise you can take something you designed in photoshop and open the layered photoshop file in AE as a composition. Then you can animate each individual layer of the comp by tweening properties like the positioning, scale, rotation, opacity, filter properties, etc. You can even do some real basic 3d effects with 3d layers in AE. Anyway, it's tough to get too specific with techniques without knowing exactly what you're trying to do but I'd definitely recommend plunging into AE.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 20:27 (nineteen years ago)

thanks walter : )

would you recommend a class in ae? i'm fairly autodidactic, but find myself confrotned by massive obstacles sometimes.

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 20:46 (nineteen years ago)

I don't know, I've never taken a class in AE. When I started using it I was already familiar with Photoshop and Flash and so I just thought of AE as Photoshop with a timeline. I'd say just dive right in. I think you might run into some difficulties when you get started but it will be worth it in the long run in terms of saved time and increased flexibility and possibilities. AE is a pretty deep program but the things you need to know to get started are actually quite simple and you'll never need to touch any of the complex stuff.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 20:53 (nineteen years ago)

please stick around, walter!

― F.R.I.E.N.D. (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 21:38 (nineteen years ago)

Sure. BTW, Apple Motion is a pretty cool program as well. I've been playing with it a bit lately and it seems somewhat simpler than AE in certain ways though it's a bit mystifying in others. Has anyone else fooled with it?

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 21:46 (nineteen years ago)

not yet, but I want to.

― F.R.I.E.N.D. (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 22:28 (nineteen years ago)

thanks, walter. flash is working out much better. tweening is a godsend. web design has always been hellish to me, so i never really bothered much with flash.

i do have another question though. how is it possible to create the effect of a curved object growing? tweening doesn't work because it doesn't effectively reproducing the winding movement that i'm going for. would it be best to create the shape in parts and divide the growth between several layers/staggered on the timeline?

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 17:28 (nineteen years ago)

minus 1 ing

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 17:30 (nineteen years ago)

hmm, I'm not totally clear on what you're asking but have you tried shape tweening rather than motion tweening? With shape tweening you basically draw one vector shape, add a keyframe and modify the shape, and then it morphs between the two. So if you're trying to do something that's blobby for example, shape tweening would work nicely. Sometimes it does weird things because it has trouble figuring out which points to tween to each other so you can add shape hints where you put little numbers on different points of the object so it knows what to tween. I'm not sure if that's quite what you're asking though!

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 17:35 (nineteen years ago)

i am basically talking about a vine growing and winding across the frame. i would imagine that shape tweening wouldn't work because of the variety of shapes/distribution of leaves and their distinct growth. unless you can think of a way to make the vector object in a way that the shape tweening would recognize a pattern to make. is this too complex? hello frame by frame again? i really appreciate your help and feel free to tell me to go buy a book when you're sick of answering my questions.

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 18:15 (nineteen years ago)

Shape tweening could work. You could draw the starting frame of the vine and then draw several of the major keyframes as it winds up but let Flash do some of the intermediate tweening. I'd make the growing vine one shape on it's own layer and then animate the leaves individually on their own layers. You can also animate masks in Flash so depending on the exact look you're going for you may be able to use some combination of tweening and then unmasking different parts.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 18:28 (nineteen years ago)

Wow, this thread really blew up! Maybe there's enough interest here to justify the creation of a whole new board - I'm thinking "I Love Vector-Based Motion and Shape Tweening".

― F.R.I.E.N.D. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 18:35 (nineteen years ago)

Well if you were using after effects you could use a mask on a layer. Double click the layer/ use pen to draw the vine / apply the effect stoke and animate the strokes start and end point/ voila growing vine. If you plan on using flash to have your animation end up on a TV screen you had better know what your doing. I've had to try to " fix " a fair number of things in the past that were made in flash that people expected to be video compatable. I do like flash but its really for computers (maybe its changed lately), affter effects is made for video and can simplify alot of things on the output stages of animation that may not have crossed your mind yet.

― lurk, Wednesday, 2 November 2005 22:18 (nineteen years ago)

That applies either way though. I've certainly created things in After Effects that needed to be fixed because I didn't know what I was doing and the animation was bumping or the colors weren't safe or whatever. I do agree that in general you wouldn't want to export a quicktime from flash and have that be your final file. I think it's good for creating bits and pieces that will be composited into your final AE comp though.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 22:32 (nineteen years ago)

could you elaborate on what some of these issues might be with flash's video compatibility? and i'm not sure i understand your explanation of how the in between part of drawing the beginning and end point of the vine would work... does it automate it?

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 22:41 (nineteen years ago)

bear in mind there is also a lot of other stuff going on in the frame... and would it not be better to make the vine in illustrator or whatever and bring it in to AE?

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 22:49 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.wildform.com/tutorials/flashtovideo/index.php

― LURK, Thursday, 3 November 2005 00:31 (nineteen years ago)

ha! i had just clicked on the thread to post that link for anyone else who might want it. bizarre. thanks.

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Thursday, 3 November 2005 00:47 (nineteen years ago)

one month passes...

So has anyone used istopmotion?

― [jailhouse tattoo] (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 23:12 (nineteen years ago)

three weeks pass...

i need help -

I am used to FCP, but I decided to try out imovie for a quick project I was doin. It was a bitch to use, like splicing film with fat fingers!

but I'm almost there - I just have one problem. The film is 4:30 and both the video and audio tracks end there. However, there is still another 2 minutes of blank space left on the timeline and imovie seems to consider this part of the film. So when I export I just get two minutes of black at the end. Is there any way to tell it "END HERE"? Shouldn't it just know that when the tracks cut out there is NO MORE???

help

― adamrl (nordicskilla), Sunday, 15 January 2006 23:45 (nineteen years ago)

never mind I just figured it out - you can trim the blank space in the viewer.

What a counter-intuitive piece of software, though!

Also I could never get audio scrubbing to work.

― adamrl (nordicskilla), Sunday, 15 January 2006 23:48 (nineteen years ago)

i totally agree

imovie seems HARDER to work with than final cut. i totally don't get it.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 16 January 2006 03:28 (nineteen years ago)

AH!

but I have a new question - so I have an old 16mm movie that I got transferred to Quicktime. It is 2gb and I want to import it into imovie just to clean up the soundtrack, BUT imovie tells me that this filesize is too big! How can I compress it just a little (in other words, without any loss of image quality) so that I can get it in there?

And are there ANY good sound effects collections out there? They all suck.

― adamrl (nordicskilla), Monday, 16 January 2006 04:39 (nineteen years ago)

And are there ANY good sound effects collections out there? They all suck.

Yes. they cost money.

How can I compress it just a little (in other words, without any loss of image quality) so that I can get it in there?

Now you speak in riddles.

― Jimmy Mod (I myself am lethal at 100 -110dB) (The Famous Jimmy Mod), Monday, 16 January 2006 05:14 (nineteen years ago)

THANKS!

― adamrl (nordicskilla), Monday, 16 January 2006 05:38 (nineteen years ago)

adam is there any way you can get a hold of fcp?? cuz the only other option i can think of is somehow splitting the QT file into multiple parts... which would require either fcp or quicktime pro.

or another video editing program! that is not horrible imovie!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 16 January 2006 05:42 (nineteen years ago)

three weeks pass...

Hey firstworldman, I don't know if you're still around or if you're still animating vines but I just saw this tutorial and thought of you. It shows a pretty good vine animating technique using the AE "write-on" plugin which I didn't know about.

http://www.creativecow.net/show.php?page=/articles/hansen_jaysen/growing/index.html

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Monday, 6 February 2006 06:38 (nineteen years ago)

thank you very much for posting this, walter! i had devised various workarounds, mostly in flash, to do this, but this tutorial elucidates a very easy way to do this in AE. I'm hoping to eventually be able to use AE exclusively, rather than half-assing things in flash and finding a way, any way, to make them remotely broadcast compatible. granted, i'm a long way off even needing to worry about submitting work for broadcast, but this is certainly a step in the right direction.

adam, where are you at in your endeavors these days?

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Monday, 6 February 2006 17:21 (nineteen years ago)

also, people who have them should post their reels! i love to see other peoples' work.

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Monday, 6 February 2006 17:22 (nineteen years ago)

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