Week 11: Music Vid part 2 of 2

Screenings: Michel Gondry
-Hardest Button to Button
  Making of 

-Sugar Water
Making of 

-Kylie Minogue "Come into My World"
  Making of 

FCP:
Sequence menu/Seq settings/Timeline options
-Show audio waveforms checkbox

FCP time remap
-Constant speed: change the duration or speed of your clip uniformly throughout
-Variable speed: keyframe your clip's timing.
-3rd tool in Slip edit (in FC toolbox) is your time remap tool.
-hotkey is SSS

Graph in your Motion tab, represents Current time vs. Clip time.
-Slope upward means the video plays forward
-Slope downward means video plays backwards
-Moving a Time remap keyframe Up makes the frame you're watching go up a frame in original clip value
-Moving Time Remap keyfr left or right changes its timing
-keyframes close=fast mov't
-keyfr far=slower mov't

Smoothing the Time Remap graph: 

-use the 3rd tool in the pen tool, "convert" Hotkey is PPP
-Click on the keyframe in the graph to smoothe it.

Retiming in AE:
-To show just video, turn off audio switch
-To hear just audio, no video, turn off video switch

To view Audio waveform

-select your audio layer and hit LL
-if you don't see it well, go to AFX/Prefs/User Interface colors, and darken
-if you still don't see it well: select your audio layer, hold shift and type L
-This brings up your audio levels property.
-Up your audio levels. Remember to reduce them before final render.

PRESS Period on num pad to play audio alone
PRESS Zero on num pad to play audio and video together
-Hold Apple while scrubbing to see/hear audio and video frame by frame.
-Turn on Caps Lock to freeze your onscreen preview while you scrub your audio.

MAKE SURE auto-save is ON
AFX menu/prefs/autosave
-i do every 2 min, max versions 5
-set this up every time you work on a school computer.
-and then SAVE your PROJECT

MAKE SURE your audio preview is as long as your audio clip.
-AFX prefs/Previews/change the duration of the audio preview.

can create markers on the timeline 

-using Asterisk * on Number pad, or going to Layer/Add marker.
-Double-click the marker and Name it in the Comments field.

Select video layer
-Layer/Time/Enable Time remapping
-it gives you 2 keyframes: 1 for your original clip-beginning and 1 for your original clip-end.
-create new keyframes on "coolframes"
by clicking in the little box between the keyframe navigation arrows.

You can also make new time remap keyframes

-by sliding the keyframe value in the Time Remap property with the Pointer finger.

Assignment: Time remap music video.
1-edit music in FC
2-rough edit of picture in FC
3-RETIME in FC or AE
advantage of FC: realtime playback
advantage of AE: kickass frame blending.
4-color-correction, transitions, and visual effects

Week 10: Music video part 1 of 2

Screenings:

-Michael Jackson's "Thriller"

-Michael and Janet Jackson's "Scream"

-Bambi sings Soulja boy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdi48oUdZP0

-Lasse Gjertsen's "Amateur"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzqumbhfxRo

Morphing tutorial

http://library.creativecow.net/articles/zwar_chris/morph.php



to change your DVD footage to usable MOVs

MPEG Streamclip
http://www.squared5.com/

mac the ripper
http://www.mactheripper.org/
-remove copy-protection from a DVD

dvdXdv
Handbrake

Places to download free footage:
archive.org
prelinger archive

Places to get music:

Limewire
Off a CD
iTunes
-comes Locked.
-take a blank CD and burn from iTunes a CD.
-lower-left corner "Burn Disc"

FCP and AE hate MP3s
-open it in QT player
-File/Export/Sound to AIFF

Google code to take music offa people's websites:
searches for music based on Song or Artist you input

intitle:index.of "mp3" +"Song or Artist" -htm -html -php -asp "Last Modified"



1st part: gathering your video and your music
either: a) retime half of your piece
b) roughcut of all of your piece

Quality 1st, Duration 2nd.
-Listen to music
-Pick out a 20-30 sec maximum section.
in Final cut, edit that music.

1-edit music in FC
2-rough edit of picture in FC
3-RETIME in FC or AE
advantage of FC: realtime playback
advantage of AE: kickass frame blending.
4-color-correction, transitions, and visual effects

iPodRip
-to rip music from your iPod to computer

mediaconverter.org
-convert music from YouTube

keepvid.com
-convert video from YouTube

if you wanna do lipsynch, here are mouth charts:

Select your MP3 file, and File/Open With
-Quicktime player
-File/Export
-Export Audio to AIFF, saved to Assets folder

Open FCP
-Set your Scratch Disks to your FCP folder (within wk9_retime)
-FCP menu/System Settings
-Save my project to that same FCP folder

Double-click my sequence, and go to Sequence/Seq Settings
(apple-zero)
-Check my format. NTSC DV works most times.
-in Seq Settings, go to Timeline tab.
-Click the box next to "Show Audio Waveforms"
-Cut the audio using Blade tool and Arrow to select.
-Rt-click the end of the clip to get a fade.
-double-click the fade to change its length.

Adjust audio levels
-Acceptable levels Peak at -10Db

Open your archive.org video in QT player
-use the brackety things to make your video selection
-Go to Edit/Copy
-File/New Player
-Edit/Paste

Convert your weird format to a good editing format
-File/Export
-Export: Movie to QT movie
-Use: Default Settings
-HIT OPTIONS
-Settings:
-framerate 29.97
-Keyframes all
-Millions of colors
-Quality Best
-Size
-NTSC 720x480
-Preserve aspect using Letterbox
-Sound:
-Linear PCM or Apple Lossless
-Stereo, 48.000, Best, 16, No boxes checkd below.
-Turn off "Prep for internet Streaming"

Imported our video into FC
-Made sure our Seq Settings (Apple zero in FC) matched those from QT Inspector (Apple i in Quicktime)
-lay my new video on track 2 of my timeline.
-delete my old audio
-Un-clicking the "Link selection" button on upper right corner of the timeline
-Click the audio, hit Delete
-cut up my video (Blade and arrow)
-Set in and out points on my Timeline for the duration of my 1st beat. (this will show up in the upper left of the Canvas window)

create a new seq, call it "work" have the same seq settings as orig seq
-copy-paste your 1st shot into "work"
-double-click the 1st shot, and go to Motion tab
-Time Remap
-In Duration, input the length of that 1st beat

Output from FC to AE
-Choose your shots in FC
-edit your audio in FC
(if you need more than 2 audio edits, don't do it in AE)
-set in and out points on timeline, 1 shot at a time
-File/Export/Image sequence. Tiffs, @your framerate, Best quality (no compression), Millions of colors
-Do this for each shot
-Set in and out points on the timeline around your audio
-File/Export/Audio to AIFF, Stereo mix
-SAVE all this to Assets folder

In Ae

AE/Pref/Import: set the Sequence Footage framerate to that of our FC Sequence.
Drag in our folders o' images, and our AIFF.
Drag our AIFF into a new comp
Show the columns In and Out on your timeline (Ctrl-clicking the header row and choosing in and out)
-Have each "sequence" of images start 1 frame after the last one ends.

Select our audio layer.
-Hit L twice to see the waveform
-Select our shots, NOT our audio
go to Layer/Time/Enable Time remapping

the keyframes are based on what actual frame of video we're seeing. timing of our retimedshot vs. time on the timecode of the Timeline.
-something goes faster if the framecount betw keyframes is larger than the framecount in the timecode.
-something goes backwards if the time remap value goes let's say from 3:00 to 2:00 while the timecode is going 1:00 to 2:00
-slower if time remap goes over a few frames while timecode goes many. time remap from 0-10 frames while we're watching those 10 frames for 5 seconds! SLO-Mo

Homework:
-15 sec to 1:30 of music selected and cut in FC
-Footage shot/collected
-Rough edit created in FC
-Bring headphones next week!

Week 9: Particles and Explosions

Particles & explosions:
you can use footage for this (shoot your own, go to detonationfilms.com)
And/or you can use a particle generator, such as Particle Playground or Trapcode's Particular (particular costs extra)

with Detonation films, you can key out a black background using linear color key, experiment with blending modes, duplicate the layer, use masks, animate Scale and Opacity, apply blurs, and apply color effects.

Color effects we covered in class included Tint, Photo Filter, and Colorama.

Particles, I'd recommend learning from online video tutorials.

Cast Shadows
don't forget cast shadows, which can be created by:
-duplicating your explosion layer
-using the effect "Fill" to fill it with 1 color like black or grey
-applying corner pin to attach it to the ground in perspective
-Using the blending mode "multiply" will allow the shadow to "sit" in the scene better.
-reducing the opacity can help as well.

Maltaannon's Fire-Hands tutorial:
-imported video
-made a comp of it. (called it Source)
-precomposed video (called this Final)into a new comp
-trimmed layer to just the area where we want particles

In Source comp, apply the Time difference effect
set time offset to 0, 050
changed the contrast to 50,0
Apply Fast blur 5.0, with Repeat Edge pixels on
Apply Threshold 15

make black transparent by applying luma key

This is the source for particles.

time to create particles themselves!
-drag source into another comp, call it Particles.
-Apply particle playground to Source layer in Particle

Set particles per sec to 0
In layer exploder (tears image apart based on alpha channel)
Set to Source.
This makes pixels explode from that layer.
Go to Gravity, set direction to 0 degrees to get particles going up instead of down.
Increasing force to 300

make new solid, precompose it with itself. call ModMap
inside that comp, apply ramp and turbulent displace.
-set size to 11 and amt to 533 and complexity to 3,9
-change displacement to turbulent smoother
-opt-click on evolution stopwatch, time*1000

Turn off ModMap in Particles comp
In Source layer, go to Effect controls for Particle P-ground
-Go to persistent property mapper
-map red to Opacitty
-min to -0, 20, max 1,00
Map green to Y force, max -30
Apply fast blur to Source layer, 5

go to layer exploder parameter, change radius to 3 and velocity to 60

Go to Final comp, place particles comp on video
-apply turbulent displace effect to particles
-amt 50, size 8
complexity 2
evolution expression time * 500

colorama!
input phase: from alpha
output phase: uncheck modify alpha
output cycle: fire and smoke, change the colors
apply glow, based on A&B colors yellow and red, threshold 52% radius 44, intensity 1.2

To apply particle playground to a layer (fountain of eyeballs)
-create eyeball layers. precompose them. Eyeball named comp.
-use region of interest to crop.
-Comp/Crop to region of interest
Back to Main Comp
Layer/New Solid
Effect/Generate/Particle Playground
-Layer Map: set Use Layer to your Eyeball comp
-in Cannon, adjust particles per second
-in Gravity, adjust force
-in Cannon, adj direction and spread.

Additional Particle Tutorials:
Particles of Incorporation

Muggle's Magic Wand

Maltaannon: Particle Playground on Ice

Text that Blows like Sand

Blowing Snow

Text Effects (including using Text as Particle)

Smoke!

Nerdy Particles made using Expressions

Getting your files from FCP to AE:
-File/Exp/using QT conversion
-Format: Image sequence
-Use: Targa 29.97
   -Click options
      Format: Tiff
         -Click options again!
           -Millions of Colors
           -Compression NONE

After Effects/Preferences/Import
Sequence footage framerate should match to that of your FC Sequence

suck frames
QT and AE frame count instead of timecode, watch the tracking video and make a list of all the frames that suck. Draw a star next to the ones that are really bad. Fix those first. you can use left and right arrow keys in QT to watch it super slowly.
-To change AE to frames instead of timecode, option click the timecode in the timeline or go to File/Project Settings and choose "Frames"


Homework:
-Make something blow up/Explode using detonation films and/or Particle Playground.
-You can use photo or video as your BG
-Please shoot it well. well-lit, well-composed.
-Turn Off AutoFocus when shooting video for post-production!!
     -How to focus without AutoFocus:

-zoom in all the way with autofocus on, then turn off autofocus and zoom out. This will keep everything sharp.