Phun and Typography 2.0

Not enough distractions? Here's a couple of ways to seriously kill your productivity:


Phun: Real-time Physics Sandbox




FontStruct: Online Typography Editor


And when you're done, make sure you watch Animator vs. Animation part 1
and Animator vs. Animation part 2.
- Jonas

What happens in Vegas doesn't stay there

Stuck at home? Me too...

Here's how to keep tabs on NAB. I'll keep on updating the links as we go...




Basically, if you want the latest as it happens, get a Twitter.com account and follow the people below!

• Mike Seymour of fxphd.com is twittering and posting images
• ...as are his colleagues John Montgomery and Jeff Heuser (blog + tweets)
• fxguide.com's redcentre podcast #3 discusses RED's NAB announcements
• fxguidetv and fxpodcast has episodes from every NAB day
  


• FresHDV's NAB videos (please de-interlace, dude!)
• DigitalContentProducer is hosting a BlogLive and a Virtual Press Conference
  
• Digital Production Buzz had videos and podcasts from NAB last year, not sure what they will have now...
• Mike Curtis' HD for Indies is blogging from the floor
• StudioDaily (I guess their News section might be a better place to look, we'll see...)
• Stu Maschwitz is tweeting on Twitter.com
  
• ...as is Alex Lindsey from the PixelCorps
  
• ...and Ron Brinkmann
  
• ...and Carey Dissmore
• ...and Mel Matsuoka
• ...and DorkmanScott
• List of all the parties at NAB as well as a Twitter feed.
• The IMUG mailing list has a NAB08 Twitter feed
• Carolina FCP Users Group is twittering
  
• LostRemote seems to be blogging, twittering, shooting video and images
  
• Digital Media Net
  
• Broadcast NewsRoom's NAB page
• VideoMaker.com had an NAB blog last year
• Flickr images tagged with NAB
• NAB's own blog (right now showing three RED videos)
• DV.com's home page has up-to-date news items
  

If you are actually at NAB, the nice people at fxguide.com has written an fxguided Tour: Getting the Most Out of NAB

Oh, if someone could please record this key-note, I'd be a happy camper.

What sites did I miss? Write a comment and I'll add them...

- Jonas (also on Twitter since today)

Image by Clinton Steeds

Don't Miss the New Term at fxphd.com

Regular readers know I'm a big fan of fxphd.com and that you can't get any more current and professional training even for ten times the price. I've been a member from the start, and the things I've picked up from the past seven terms come in useful every day in my work.

I'm hoping to shoot a documentary in the fall, and can with confidence say "I really think we should rent a Red One for this shoot" based on that I know I have both fxphd's training and forum discussions to lean on for figuring out the workflow. Priceless...

Last term Tim Clapham held a great course on motion graphics in After Effects, and this term he's in charge of a Cinema 4D course. And the creator of 250 HD effects shots in 5 months holds an After Effects course.

I really enjoyed the Photography for VFX course last term which is repeated this term, and I am happy to see a SynthEyes course that I will definitely take.

Here's a complete list of available courses. The term starts on April 14 2008, but you can join later and have access to all the classes you've signed up for.

If you want to know more about fxphd, take a look at the fxphd Tour Movie. There's also a great FAQ and the Orientation Week movie (torrent link) that covers all the upcoming classes.

Oh, if you enter humlan in the Referring Member field on the signup page, I'll get an extra class, which would be really nice. Thanks in advance!

- Jonas

Photoshop CS4 Will Be 64-bit on Windows Only

What does this mean for you as a Photoshop user? That working with large images on Windows Vista64 machines will be a lot faster. Don't expect everything to be faster in 64-bit, though, as Photoshop architect Scott Byers wrote in 2006.

So why won't the OS X version of Photoshop CS4 be 64-bit when the recently posted Lightroom 2.0 beta is 64-bit? All "older" Mac applications such as Photoshop, After Effects and even Apple's Final Cut Pro and iTunes are developed on the Carbon framework. Last year Apple canceled the 64-bit roadmap for Carbon so only applications built on the newer Cocoa framework will be able to be 64-bit-enabled, even though Steve Jobs in 2006 said "You can have fully native 64-bit UI Carbon or Cocoa applications."

For more in-depth explanations (and conspiracy comments) please see Adobe Product Manager John Nack's blog. There's also an FAQ: Plans for 64-bit processing support in Photoshop (PDF.)

It's still unclear if Photoshop CS4 will run on Windows XPx64 or if Vista64 (oh, the horror!) will be required.

- Jonas

Locking After Effects' Layers So They Can't Be Moved

UPDATE:You can lock the position with a script put together by Jalea. If you want to lock more properties, Jeff Almasol (scripter extraordinaire) pointed out that Nab has a script that locks/unlocks all properties. Also, check out his plug-in experiments and scripting experiments. Truly amazing!

**********************************

When you lock a layer in After Effects, you don't just lock the position; you can't do anything with it at all. This is particularly frustrating when you have Adjustment layers, Solids and Mattes where you want to tweak effects but you definitely don't want the layer to be nudged (which is easily done just by selecting it.)

This is often a problem in complex compositions where you can spend hours figuring out what went wrong when you accidentally moved a layer. Users of node-based compositing program (i.e. almost all others, like Shake, Fusion, and Nuke) find this extra irritating since this never happens when you work with nodes.

Here's how to make sure your layers can't be moved:

• Select the layer you want to save from accidental moves.
  
  
• Hit P on your keyboard to reveal the Position property.

• Hold down the Alt or Option key and click the stopwatch to create an expression on the Position property.
  

• Look at the current position values for the layer, and enter the same values like this, depending on if it is a 2D or 3D layer:

• Click outside the layer, or hit the Enter key on your numerical keypad.
  

If you animate masks and rotoscoping, this is almost a must-use tip, since AE is so sensitive to where you click on mask handles.

- Jonas

QuickTime 7.4.1 Fixes Rendering Bug

Those who were too fast to upgrade to QuickTime 7.4 were bitten by rendering problems, not only in After Effects, but also in RED and even Final Cut Pro. Apple just posted a patch that is designed specifically to fix these issues:

• QuickTime 7.4.1 for Leopard
• QuickTime 7.4.1 for Tiger
• QuickTime 7.4.1 for Panther
• QuickTime 7.4.1 for Windows

However, I'll still stay on QuickTime 7.3 (I even have a machine on 7.1.3.) I mean; who wants to find out what other surprises Apple has in store for us?

Also, don't miss John Montgomery's article Pro Living in a Consumer QuickTime World.

- Jonas

After Effects 8.0.2 Update Available Now

The update just went live via Adobe Updater (choose Update... from within a CS3 application) or via the web (8.0.2 for OS X and 8.0.2 for Windows) but before you do, please note that you should avoid QuickTime 7.4 at all cost, since the iTunes DRM causes rendering errors in all versions of After Effects.

Important installation note: Quit all web browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera etcetera) before running the updater, and stop yourself from starting any web browsers while the update is running. This is because the browsers lock certain Flash components that must be updated.

If you have created your own interpretation rules (by editing the interpretation rules.txt file) you need to copy and paste those into a new file, as detailed in this article: Custom interpretation rules don't work after the After Effects 8.0.2 update is applied.

If you have been having gamma shift issues (QuickTime renderings appearing darker or lighter compared to inside AE,) the 8.0.2 patch tries to circumvent these QuickTime issues by not following Apple's guidelines so strictly and instead applying different meta tags depending on what QT codec is use (matching the quirks in Apple's own products that don't follow the standard.) More about these gamma issues.

New features in 8.0.2:
Work with Panasonic P2 video


Here's the goodies from the Read Me file:

Noteable fixes in After Effects 8.0.2:

• On Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard), Dynamic Link didn't work correctly in Premiere Pro when switching between UI and non-UI versions of After Effects. Fixed. (5482671/W1610284)
• On Mac OS, clicking a folder alias in an import or replace file dialog box in All Acceptable Files or All Footage Files mode displayed a “Can’t import file” error. Fixed. (45378)
• On Mac OS, OpenGL and hardware acceleration used all VRAM on the GPU until the driver failed, causing display corruption of the OS and After Effects, or possible crash. Fixed. (44855)
• On Mac OS X v10.5 on PowerPC with OpenGL enabled, received an error "composition too complex..." on NVIDIA GeForce 6800 graphics card. Fixed. (45295)
• On Mac OS with OpenGL enabled and project in 32bpc mode, colors were dropped. Fixed. (45475)
• PSD layers didn't import properly from PSD files with layer groups. Fixed. (45320)
• Crash when saving a project with a custom output simulation when output profile is the project's working color space. Fixed. (45404)
• On Mac OS with OpenGL enabled, better memory management on low memory cards. (45492)
• Fixed support for AJA's QuickTime codec suite. (45351)
• On Mac OS X v10.5: After Effects dock icon was not updated while RAM previewing: the progress bar appeared on the AE icon after RAM preview starts and it stayed on. Fixed. (45791)
• When Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously was enabled, there was a significant pause >12 sec, on an 8 core, 16gb Mac between when RAM preview finished building and when it started playback. Fixed. (45181)
• When you import a PSD file with vector masks inside layer groups using the import Composition - Cropped Layers/Layer size option; the PS vector masks are no longer offset from their original location. (45319)
• If you import a PSD file with Photoshop shape layers into After Effects 7, save the project, and then open that project in After Effects CS3, the masks created from the Photoshop vector masks are no longer scaled up to fill the composition. (45341)
• Linear light footage setting is now preserved cross-platform. (45653)
• When animating type to drift slowly, the tops of the type (when moving vertically) and side (when moving horizontally) of the letters were clipped on every other frame. Fixed. (45898)
• Low-end laptops that don't meet minimum OpenGL requirements crash on quit in some cases. Fixed. (45937)
• Adaptive motion blur for layers in collapsed compositions was based on the local speed in the composition, rather than the effective speed---so static layers only got two samples of blur even if the precomposition layer was moving fast in the containing composition. Fixed. (45967)
• Preserve Underlying Transparency is no longer ignored when layer styles are applied. (45974)
• Layers that are inside of a PSD layer set no longer have the layer set's opacity applied twice. (45975)
• Photoshop clipping group was applied twice on import. Fixed. (45976)
• Layers inside a PSD layer set with a mode other than "pass through" were cropped to document bounds rather than reflecting layer data. Fixed. (45977)
• Footage conformed to a higher frame rate left footage frozen on a frame before the end is reached. Fixed. (45986)
• After Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously was enabled, After Effects CS3 would show high CPU activity even when idle. Fixed. (45993)
• QuickTime gamma handling scheme broke WYSIWYG color management workflow common to video users. Fixed. (46027)
• QuickTime footage that imports with SDTV/HDTV profile will be assigned an sRGB profile on Power PC, or with the "Match Legacy After Effects QuickTime Gamma Adjustments" option checked on any platform. (46032)
• After Effects CS3 v8.0.2 fixes Mac OpenGL support for supported video cards under OS X v10.4.10 and v10.5. See also http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/opengl.html.
• Multi-machine rendering rendering of Photoshop files failed with error "The Photoshop Library operation failed because the file name was not valid". Fixed. (46119)
• Error occurred when using Increment And Save if the project was saved at the root volume of a boot drive. Fixed. (46120)
• The current frame didn't finish rendering if you switched away from application. Fixed. (46128)
  To enable this fix, please modify the preferences file and restart the application:
  ['General Section'] 'Allow Idle Application Rendering in 8.0.2' = 01
• Wav files listed as 24-bit 48 KHz played back as noise or highly distorted. Fixed. (46149)
• Camera raw files now display correctly after being adjusted in the Camera Raw dialog box on import if color management is off. (46194)
• Important bug fixes for encoding and decoding H.264-compressed content.
• On Mac OS, support has been fixed for Apple's Uncompressed 10-bit (v210) codec when FCP Studio 2 is installed. (45324)
• Incorrect layout and functionality of localized PSD choose-layer dialog/radio buttons has been fixed. (45273)
• A mask path or shape path can now be correctly extended from its first point using the Pen tool. (45365)
• Decoding of PAL v210, UYVY, and 2vuy formats has been corrected. (46201)
  
• With Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously enabled, QuickTime footage was sometimes not included in rendering by background processes if any QuickTime footage was missing when the project was opened. Fixed. (45302)

Known issues in After Effects 8.0.2:

• Layer blending modes and opacity are not honored for imported Illustrator CS3 files. Please set the blending modes and opacity in the After Effects composition in the Timeline panel after importing Illustrator footage items. (45067)
• When Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously is enabled, Save RAM Preview and Save Frame As > File render slowly because they do not used the cached rendered frames. (45202)
• Crash may occur with ATI x700, x800 graphics cards if the project's color depth is 32bpc and Transparency Grid is enabled during OpenGL interaction. Please check http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html for availability of updates. (45250)
• When you import or place a PNG file that was rendered from Adobe After Effects CS3 or earlier into Adobe Flash CS3 or Adobe Illustrator CS3 and earlier, the image is several times larger than expected. See also http://www.adobe.com/go/kb402369. (45274)
• Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard): Crash when previewing per-character 3D text animation if the project's color depth is 32bpc. Please check http://www.apple.com for availability of OpenGL support updates. (45814)
• When importing a Photoshop file as a composition, vector mask blending modes are incorrectly set. Please set the blending modes in the After Effects composition in the Timeline panel as needed after importing. (46017)
• Launching After Effects CS3 v8.0.2 under Rosetta on Macintosh Intel hardware breaks P2 import. To reset the functionality, please delete the following file: ~/Library/Preferences/com.Adobe.After Effects.8.0.2.plist
  (46180)
  
• Freeze or crash when you start on a system with Realtek HD Audio (Windows XP). See also http://www.adobe.com/go/kb402308
• Multiprocessing performance issues with multi-core machines, especially high-end 8-core hardware. When all 8 cores try to render a complex or memory intensive composition with Render Mutliple Frames Simultaneously, the application can become memory starved if each process has insufficient memory. To remedy this, there is a text preference to control the maximum number of cores that Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously will use. Open the text preference file and look in the ["MP"] section for:
  "MaxNumberOfProcesses" = "0"
  "0" is the default setting, which disables this preference setting. For better performance on an 8-core machine with 8GB RAM, for example, change the "0" setting to "4" and save the preference file and restart After Effects. This restricts multiprocessing with Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously to 4 cores, each getting approximately 2GB of RAM.
• For other performance tips using large dimension or complex compositions, see the "Improve performance" section of After Effects CS3 Help on the Web.

- Jonas

30 Courses to Die For

I've been meaning to post about great training resources for my beloved After Effects, but here's something even better; training for the entire video / animation / graphics / broadcasting / film business.

Regular readers know how I'm a big fan of fxphd.com and that you can't get any more current and professional training even for ten times the price of one term. I've been a member from the start, and believe me; you won't get as much value for your money anywhere else!

You have 30 courses to choose from, ranging from motion graphics in AE with Tim Clapham and typography with Frank Jonen, to RED production and 3D tracking.

Here's a complete list of available courses. The term starts on January 14, 2008, but you can join later and have access to all the classes you've signed up for.

If you want to know more about fxphd, take a look at the fxphd Tour Movie and the Orientation Week movie (torrent link) that covers all the upcoming classes. There's also a great FAQ.

Oh, if you enter humlan in the Referring Member field on the signup page, I'll get an extra class, which would be really nice. Thanks in advance!

- Jonas

Avoid QuickTime 7.4 for Now

UPDATE: QuickTime 7.4.1 Fixes Rendering Bug

*******************

Just like with QuickTime 7.2, the newly updated QuickTime 7.4 seems to be creating problems when rendering, not only from After Effects but even from FinalCut Pro. People report getting a errors like:

After Effects error: opening movie - you do not have permission to open this file (-54)

There are some suggestions that this is the movie rental DRM in iTunes that tries to verify the copy-protection in all open QuickTime movies every 10 minutes.

The work-around is to render to a file sequence, such as TIFF, and then either assemble that into a QuickTime movie in QuickTime Player Pro or by importing the sequence into AE and rendering out a movie from that sequence.

Apple's discussion board: QuickTime
Thread about AE and QT 7.4

- Jonas

Better Corner Pinning with Mocha

When you import tracking data from Mocha, you get the four corners applied to the Corner Pin effect. To get better edges, use the same data but apply it to the CC PowerPin effect instead, which has better edge anti-aliasing and also supports expanding the layer outside the actual tracking points.
Just line up the corners of the two effects on the first frame and copy the keyframes from the Corner Pin effect and paste it into a CC PowerPin effect, or link each point with an expression.

- Jonas

Tip by Danny Princz on AE-list

Choosing a Professional Mic

I'm no audio guy, but I am a geek fanboy, so I just couldn't resist the temptation to link this thorough review on how to choose a mic. It even has has sound samples and cool looking graphs for all the tested mics. Respect!



- Jonas

If You Built a TV Studio Today, What Would You Build?

I've spent the last few years around TV studios that have slowly been upgraded to handle new additions like 16:9, overlapping projectors, animated LED lighting. In the good-old tradition of public service, everything installed has been proprietary and expensive broadcast equipment.

This slow update-cycle means that older equipment is moved to shows deemed less important. I'm currently re-rendering a title sequence I did four months ago for a show that was shot in 4:3 since their old cameras didn't have a widescreen option. This season they are changing to 16:9...

That's why it's so interesting to see a behind-the-scenes look at how Revision3 is building a studio using cheaper equipment, based on the production principles of today, rather than yesterday. So much has happened in post-production that seemed impossible just a few years ago, and it's inspiring to not have to fight old broadcast engineers that want to spend great wads of cash on dinosaur stuff.
I love how the studio engineer gets all worked up over all the equipment.
"I love patch-bays!"



PS. There's a HD QuickTime available if you want to get motion-sickness from the really bad camera handling.
"It aint't rebel if it ain't shaky..."

- Jonas

QuickTime 7.3 Posted: Better or Worse than 7.2?

Apple just posted QuickTime 7.3 for all platforms. I'm still on 7.1.x on many of my machines because of numerous reported problems with 7.2.

If you've been brave enough to update and are seeing problems, please post a comment.

- Jonas

Updated After Effects Troubleshooting Tips

I just wanted to bump my own post about Troubleshooting After Effects since I've updated it with lots of new tips, links and even an quick illustration.

- Jonas

Blue Screen of Leopard

I'm writing this in Windows XP on my Mac Pro, since I'm getting the Blue Screen of Death after installing Mac OS X Leopard. I'm truly enjoying the benefits of a closed system from a single vendor... ;-/

Apple claims it's some APE software that I don't have, and apparently I'm not the only one with a Leopard installation problem. Apparently Logitech drivers install APE.

It's at times like these that I wish I had listened to myself.

Update: These arcane Unix commands worked, but remember to remove the Leopard DVD first, and type everything really carefully since you don't get any warnings if you mistyped anything. You need to find the correct keys if you are on a non-English keyboards. I found the / and - keys on a Swedish keyboard (type - and +.)

After running OS X 10.5.0 for 30 minutes, I'm sitting here wondering what's new and exciting. Using Apple's list of 300+ new features to navigate around Leopard, I'm still not finding anything that makes me glad I updated, other than these funny ones:

• "The active application window stands out with a deeper drop shadow and a distinctive toolbar color. One look at Leopard and you’ll know you’re in for something special."
• "Empty the Trash from the Trash itself with the Empty Trash button"
• "Easily delete Windows and restore the disk space being used by the Windows partition back to Mac OS X."

Where are the "Wow, dude, you've gotta see this" features? I would have settled for being able to resize a window from any edge, or avoiding the spinning beach ball when waiting for network drives. However, some people feel differently: "Leopard will have the same effect that the Macintosh 128 had on computing." I must be drinking the wrong kool-aid.

In all fairness, it seems like it's the stuff under-the-hood that we're supposed to be excited by. I'm all for geekery, but since I tend to like cross-platform apps, I need a really cool app to make me go for single-OS solutions.

- Jonas