Director and editor Paul Del Vecchio has created a fantastic video tutorial on how to convert 4:3 SD footage into 16:9 widescreen footage. He first shows how to accomplish this using Adobe After Effects, then later in Sony Vegas and other NLE’s using his free aspect ratio overlays. There’s quite a few handy tips along the way, and I personally found this to be an informative and helpful video tutorial.

We wanted to help host an HD version of the tutorial, and Paul has agreed to share it here at FreshDV. You can watch at FreshTV, or download an iPod version via the podcast feed. There are also 720p HD WMV and MP4 options linked below.

 720p HD Quicktime Tutorial Video [14:22m]: Download
 720p HD Windows Media Tutorial Video [14:22m]: Download

For more info on Paul Del Vecchio, check out his blog and production website.

Are you an Adobe After Effects user who can’t afford Nucleo Pro and doesn’t have the geek-cred to setup a command-line render? Then check out this handy After Effects CS3 freebie from Lloyd Alvarez. BG Renderer is a script that enables you to take whatever items are queued for render, and send them to render in the background. This allows you to keep working in AE even while you render your queue. You can get the script here.

On the subject of working faster in AE CS3, here are a few optimal setting suggestions to speed up those renders.

(via Flowseeker)

Editing Organazized has two great posts up with tips and tricks for getting the best-quality slowmo footage out of Final Cut Studio using Compressor. The first outlines the basic workflow, post #2 delves deeper into Compressor’s behavior at various retiming percentages and provides examples of the sort of results you can expect. In the footage for this example, best results degraded past 1/4 speed. At 25%, Compressor’s Optical Flow appears to preserve much more detail than what you can expect directly out of Final Cut Pro. Very informative articles.

We’ve mentioned Jeff Han several times here at FreshDV, from his first multi-touch demo at the 2006 TED event to his tech growing into a company and garnering mainstream attention. Well it’s time for another Jeff Han Multi Touch Update. Embedded below is the latest interview and video demostration. I can’t wait until we can get multitouch in the edit room!
Continue reading ‘Specialized Multi-Touch Interfaces Mature’

VideoCopilot has uploaded another great free After Effects tutorial, this instructional video walks you through simulating a dolly move through a car side window. Andrew does a really nice job covering every step along the way, from motion tracking the footage to creating an extremely realistic car window complete with reflections and sky color gradients. Very informative.

Ripple Training has a short and sweet video tutorial on how to save commonly used filters and groups of effects as Favorites for later re-use. Doubtless this is used by many FCP editors…I personally have found it to be extremely handy. However, I wasn’t aware that you can also save motion keyframes as a Motion Favorite, which can then be re-applied to clips or text on demand. Very cool, and very useful.

Here’s a quick tip for Final Cut Pro editors. It can really save you some clicking when you need to check which filters are applied to a timeline full of video clips.

*Double click the first clip you want to check, this will load the clip into the Viewer window.
*In the Viewer Window, click the Filters tab
*Using your keyboard Up/Down arrow keys you can now quickly jump between clips on that track.
*Rinse/Repeat for clips on a different track.
*This tip unfortunately does not work for audio filters, you still must double-click each clip to check those.

Here’s another fantastic Creative Cow video tutorial, this one on Simple Object Removal. You’ll need Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, and ObviousFX free CopyImage plugin (for both Mac and PC users).

Bill O’Neil has a detailed article up at Creative Cow on creating a 3D Arena environment in After Effects, something that is normally done using more traditional 3D modeling applications. He breaks down all the virtual elements of the world, how performances were captured on greenscreen, and dishes out some handy tips and tricks along the way. A very informative and useful tutorial.

Here’s a neat little free FxFactory plugin for Apple Motion users, it uses Motion 3’s Audio Behaviors capability to generate a dynamic and unique audio meter. Very cool. You can use it in previous versions of Motion, but you’ll have to manually adjust the effect. Get it here. Thanks to The Editblog for pointing this one out.

Popular Mechanics has an interesting article on Michael Bay’s latest $150 million special effects extravaganza, “Transformers”. There is also a nice feature on the art and concepts behind the robots over at CGSociety.

(Via Scott Simmons Editblog)

ProLost has posted a video tutorial on making wire pull blood squibs indie-style. Simple, cheap, and very effective. There is also a thread on the Rebel’s Guide forum with a detailed realistic blood recipe.

The latest version of Adobe Photoshop has a two new interesting features…one is called Import Frames as Layers and we quickly covered it in our NAB 2007 Video Podcast on After Effects. The other is called Auto-Align Layers, and is a carry-over from Imageready. John Nack posts about a very cool and very creative MIS-use of these two features combined.

“After attending NAB this week, however, Photoshop engineer Mike Clifton came up with a crafty (and, to be honest, not “as-designed”) use for the Auto-Align Layers command: stabilizing a chunk of video. First, he shot some deliberately horrible footage out the window on our floor. He then used Photoshop’s new Import Frames as Layers command* to turn the video frames into Photoshop layers. Lastly, he selected all the frames and chose Edit->Auto-Align, telling Photoshop to line them all up. To our surprise, the results are not half bad…”

You can view before and after comparisons here. Pretty sweet results, actually.

Graeme Nattress has released the latest plugin package for FCP users, this one called the “Big Box of Tricks“. The title says it all. Steve Douglas has a rundown of what plugins and features the Big Box of Tricks package will net you for a paltry $100. And owners of the discontinued Nattress Set 1 and Set 2 are eligible for a special upgrade rate. Rejoice! Why? Because Nattress plugins rock the casbah.

Patrick Sheffield has shared a variety of free plugins for Final Cut Pro that emulate different film color strip processing techniques. Hotness.