August 25, 2005

Linear color workflow stuff

The saga continues at the blog of Stu Maschwitz...
.

iDive: "iPhoto/Adobe Bridge for digital video"

from sfcutters.org:

A friend at work yesterday told me about iDive. He gave me a tour of it at lunch and I downloaded the trial and captured a few tapes.

What I was blown away by was how good it is at logging a tape based on scene detection. It will also create thumbnails (at specified intervals) or capture the video to the DV codec or an RT codec. It has keywording. And most importantly it exports FCP XML so you can very easily add clips to FCP. For 69 dollars, I think it's pretty it's sweet. It's essentially iPhoto/Adobe Bridge for digital video.

--John Skidgel

Fit to comp AE script

Question on list:
Is there a way to do Cmd-opt-F (fit to comp) in a script? People like to work at 720x540 square pixels, but need to final output D1 aspect ratio 720x486.

Answer:
Lloyd Alvarez's brainchild script was a real collaborative effort, and is now detailed at AEnhancers.com. There's also a new version of the script that puts in a user-definable effect (like Broadcast Colors or Broadcast Spec, but it could be any Effect).

.

August 16, 2005

Planar perspective tracking

Take a look at planar perspective tracking and easy compositing with shadows and highlights offered by Imagineer Systems' products. Mokey has tutorials and the other products have demos movies.

Monet is an expensive but cool solution for virtual product placement, package replacement, inserting screens and so forth.

.

August 15, 2005

Core Image in Avid filters and Edo compositing app

Core Image apps are gaining traction. The latest version of Edo apparently has support for playback of Quartz Compositions as clips.

Also, Noise Industries' Reactor plug-ins are based on Core Image. Factory Floor lets you make your own AVX plug-ins based on any Core Image Unit in just a few clicks. Reactor plug-ins can also be based on Quartz Compositions.

Toolfarm Filter Finder

Toolfarm has developed a "plug-in locator" to search filters by use, developer, plug-in name and keyword. So far searches, samples, tutorials, and reviews are limited, but it's a nice start on a more ambitious project we had kicked around.

Search AE books from the Net

Google Print is still in beta, and scans have been suspended, but it's still cool.

If you look up "After Effects" you get access, at least partially if they've been restricted, to several nice AE books. If you click on the cover picture of a book, you can click through the pages, click "More results from this book," or use "Search within this book."