Advanced transitioning with video, how?

[Phire]

Anyone know how CNBC does it's transitions? or where I could learn to do such type of transitioning. The logos and background videos they have are pretty nice. I can't seem to find any good books for Adobe Premiere.

[Dr Mordrid]

Please discribe the effects you're talking about. I watch FOX

If you mean the graphics at the bottoom of the screen those can be done with *.tga's saved with transparancy. Inscribers Title Express (bundled with some products) or TitleMotion ($$) can also do them and come with 150 or more of them as presets. You can get a demo of TitleMotion here;

http://www.inscriber.com/downloads/demosoftware.html

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 29 March 2001).]

[Phire]

Hehe, actually I meant the startup logos for their programs. Maybe you've seen the commercial for the company called Corning? They have a tunnel like effect which then has some nice text effects. I could do alot if Adobe Livemotion would export in AVI, but it doesn't

[Dr Mordrid]

3D software for those. Cool3D 3.0 can do a lot of that kind of stuff at a low price, but the learning curve is, like most 3D proggies, steep.

These effects are typically generated in layers. You do the foreground effect first, export it as an uncompressed *.avi with an alpha channel then do the next layer back and so on 'til you're at the background.

Clips with moving paths applied are the easiest way to get moving video panels often seen in these effects. They have to be positioned on their own overlay tracks, properly interspersed among the others.

A lot of the kaleidoscopic effects can be done with a combination of bitmaps, video filters and moving paths.

To finish up you put 'em on sucessive overlay tracks in your editor and composite them there, adjusting transparancies as necessary to get the "look" you need.

Yes, it's complex.

Rendering a project like this can take a while

Dr. Mordrid



[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 30 March 2001).]

[jrr]

Most TV Commercials, Station idents & title sequences are done on high end SGI systems running packages like Discreet's Flame and Inferno, or Quantel's Hal, Henry & Editbox. These systems cost upto $500,000. However, a while ago Discreet launched Combustion which is a pretty good compositing package and runs on NT or Mac - for that you're still looking at around $10k for a system.

The high end systems have a range of plugins by companies such as:

GenArts http://www.genarts.com/
5D http://www.5-d.com/
Photron http://www.photron.com/

Some of these are in the process of being ported to After Effects.

Having said that - often it doesn't matter how many plugins and effects you have on a system. The only way to make somthing look professional is to custiom build the effect or transition out of many simple processes and key them together. Even with Premiere's limited capabilities by layering lots of elements together you can acheive some great results - it just takes longer to process.

James

[Phire]

Hehe, sorry to be bringing back such an old topic alive, but i'm really interested in doing these effects. I realize that an effect usually takes alot of layers and proper timing to get the right fx going (The same sort of goes for non-motion 2D imaging). I've been trying to find some sort of examples of what Discreet and Genarts can do.. Mostly the things i'm seeing are like what Photoshop plugins can do, just that they can work with motion picture, which is not a bad thing. But i'm still wondering how exactly are effects like this produced:

http://www.belief.com/usa.htm# (Click the 3rd one on the right)

As you can see it has many fancy flare effects. There must've been some sort of plugin they used to actually generate those flare effects and to manipulate them like that.

And here's the tunneling effect I was trying to look for:

http://www.belief.com/lightguide.htm#

This one seems like it could be 80% made in 3DSMax, I'm not really sure if they generated the tunnel effect by using a video editing package there.

[Dr Mordrid]

These were done in 3D packages, most likely 3D Studio MAX, MAYA or SoftImage. All of these are out of the normal users price range.

The effects in your first example are multilayered composites with "lens flare" effects applied to some of the layers. There are also animated textures applied to some of those same layers. Most competent 3D programs can do this easliy, but learning how to do them is another matter

The second is a worm hole type effect with animated textures applied to the tunnel and surrounds. They could very likely be duplicated in something like trueSpace, but again remember that the learning curve is a bit steep for 3D programs of this type. trueSpace, however, is one of the easiest to learn and there are a several good webrings for it.

Lighter duty effects of the first type could be done in Cool3D, but not as fancy, since it has lens flare and other handy effects in its PluginMadness II and III upgrade. The worm hole is a bit tougher and not as likely to be doable in Cool3D. trueSpace is perfect for it though.

Dr. Mordrid




[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 25 May 2001).]

[wkulecz]

Contraian that I am, I find these flashy intros to be self-indulgent creations of kids with very expensive toys and wish they would simply go away. Besides being genarally butt-bustingly boring to watch with zero useful information content, Monday Night football is a classic example of how this crapola gets in the way of why on turned on the tube in the first place.

I'd rather the stations and networks drop this junk and show a few less comercials with the money saved on hardware and production costs.

I'd personally like to strangle the ID10T who decided the sci-fi channel logo should always pollute whatever they show. Don't get me started on their stupid "widescreen"
broadcasts that wastes at least 1/3 of my vertical screen display so I can have a "wide view" of nothing happening on the sides.

About the only "overlay I can tolerate is the clock showing current time on the morning news so I can get out the door on time while checking traffic and weather before hitting the road. Of corse the ones that show the wrong time zone really PO me!

--wally.

[Dr Mordrid]

Spoil-sport

Dr. Mordrid

[wkulecz]

Wow, I expected this would be a hot thread by now with people flaming me big time.

Kinder, gentler group these days it seems :-)

[Dr Mordrid]

Nawww....I have another battle I'm fighting on another forum so I don't need new ones....

Actually, I agree with you to a point. Lots of program intros are way too "ornate", almost as if they were concentrating on the Attention Deficit Disorder demographic

Still, there is the occaisional intro that warrants fireworks. Just not as many as directors seem to think. The same goes for editing and effects. While fancy effects like the RT-2000's are very useful, and I personally use them a lot, you could still safely say that 95+ % of transitions should be crossfades or cuts.

Basically they should be used as punctuation, not as sentences in and of themselves.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 27 May 2001).]

[Brian Ellis]

[QUOTE]
Basically they should be used as punctuation, not as sentences in and of themselves.

Couldn't agree with you more, well said!

------------------
Brian (the terrible)

[Aspen]

Dr.

What are the other forums in which you participate?

Aspen

[Elie]

wkulecz,

While I agree with your view as well as Doc's, I think there's a lot of dead air on TV these days so effects or fillers like the ones Phire showed us would be alright, just don't over do it.

After FX 5.0 is a good package that can do some of the effects not all for the money.

Cheers,
Elie

[Dr Mordrid]

The public ones;

RT-2000 official forum, RT-2000 UNofficial forum, Matrox user forum, MUG mail list, Ulead user forum, rec.video.desktop, rec.video.production, comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.tech, WWUG MSPro (& other) user forums, Creative Cow MSPro (& other) forums etc. etc.

and several private beta forums and/or mail lists.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 30 May 2001).]