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Messages - kihlbahkt

#1
I also recommend that you seek out non-Canon prime lenses and adapter to fit on 600D. I shoot with 600Ds and I have been using Olympus 28mm (2.8) and 50mm (1.4). Glass that was made in the 1970s. Glass and metal lenses that are built to last. Resale shops, flea markets, and classified ads, like craigslist or other online sources. You might come across someone looking to dump a box of ancient lenses and cam bodies for little to nothing. Buy the whole thing and then grab those yummy primes from days gone by. I also have a 400mm Olympus lens that is literally 18 inches long. Ridiculous. It is for show only at this point, I have shot some photos but it is so unwieldy that is is best seen as a conversation piece only.
good luck dynazor
#2
Well, we are finally able to publish some preview material from our upcoming release 'Sometimes Why'. Take a peek if you want something strange and funny to watch. These are unofficial pre release versions that have warts and issues, but I have to start making deadlines at some point. All video was shot on 2 600Ds running ML v2.3 and later nightly builds. I used a myriad of the ML functionality that make these cameras much more usable for video. Used old school Olympus OM lenses (28mm, 50mm) and Canon EFS (10-22mm, 55-250mm). Tell me what sucks or is great about it. I think I already know what sucks about it but maybe you can enlighten me. I am ready for feedback from viewers. Be that viewer. Leave me feedback or critique. Be the first on your block to say. "I've seen it... and it kinda sucked."

There are two choice selections for you:

KCUF Skutch's News Leader
Video not available

The Hoard
Video not available

I thank you in advance.

-------------------------------
Preview period has ended. Videos are no longer available. Ironic understatement of the day..."Thanks for all of your comments."
#3
Lovely images.
#4
I am considering the Shooters Suite from Red Giant, mainly for Plural Eyes, Denoiser, Instant 4k and Frames products. I would love to hear back from anyone who has used these apps, particularly any problems or downsides. The marketing material, of course sounds great, but first hand info from  an actual user is what I am looking for.

Also interested in anyone who has used Red Giant Trapcode Particular.

I will be downloading trials of these later this week so I will get some hands on over the weekend.
Thanks for reading and contributing.
#5
Share Your Videos / Re: Brazilian Short: Mc Don't
May 02, 2015, 07:52:15 PM
Enjoyed even though I speak English only. I like the kitchen scenes with irate, messy, violent clown.
#7
I was checking out my wife's new phone, the LG G3 and it can shoot ~120fps @ 720p. Granted it will only output cell phone quality but for experimentation it looks like fun.The video looks good when viewed on the phone but get it into your NLE and you can see the issues. Forget about upscaling, becuz the 720 footage looks crappy enough on its own. If you are producing content for phone or web it might look ok. Slo-mo of the dogs bouncing around was pretty fun. Anyway, there is my thought of the day.
#8
Hey Retrogrand. Thanks for sharing your short film. Here is my mini critique...  The framing, composition, camera work, lighting, all come to together nicely  to convey the story. Kudos to you and your team for just getting it done. The story itself was interesting. As a viewer, I wanted more conflict between the characters and was hoping for a deeper conversation from the two, once that they climbed to the top. Imagine a story line that has some bitterness or animosity while we drive in the car with them. The proposition of "climbing up" and ending with apologies/ respect for each other/ reconciliation/ embrace/ unification/ resolution type themes. etc. The music was loose but effective. Overall, I liked it, and while  there was little to critique on the technical side, I think that a focus on storytelling that would build tensions for the viewer to later be released by resolution of those conflicts would have made for more viewer satisfaction at the end. That is just my opinion. Thumbs up. Keep making more films.
#9
Hey mozq,
The info you provided about your problem is a confusing and you have not really described the workflow well. Changing a comp to 16bpc will not " break" a dynamic link or turn movies into stills. This forum can provide insights for apps like AE but we need to understand your problem to help you. Take some time to understand AE better, read the documentation, read about dynamic linking, about bit depth, experiment, fail, try again. Good luck.

You can change bit depth in AE at the bottom of Projects window in the left pane, right next to the trashcan. I have no idea about the movie to stills issue.
#10
Warning! Colorist at work. Nice Grading.
#11
The juxtaposition of tits and ass with printing is lost on me. Seems to limit the demographic to horny men (a huge demographic, however). Good work though.
#12
Share Your Videos / Re: Backyard wildlife with t3i / 600D
February 15, 2015, 09:46:08 PM
Nice. Cedar Waxwing,Cardinals, Redwing Blackbird, Western bluebird?, and reptiles. That is one interesting backyard. Movie is a bit long for what it is but images look nice generally. Thumbs up. If you had shot it all in h.264, you would have finished it much faster and I still would have liked it.
#13
Raw Video / Re: 700D / T5i RAW video
February 15, 2015, 08:53:43 PM
@ric.pce

QuoteI'm looking to shoot RAW video to improve my green screen scene quality. Do you have any other suggestions than shooting RAW?

Yes, shoot h.264. Light everything good. Light Subject and Screen with different sets of lights. The subject should not wear green or colors with green in them. Keep the subject away from the screen. Keep shadows off of the screen. Post...I use After Effects and Premiere for keying. If you dont use AE then these tips may not be useful. In post crank up the green. Effect: SelectiveColor. Set Colors dropdown to Green, set Cyan, Yellow and Black values to 100% Set magenta to -100%. The green should begin to "pop". You can duplicate the Selective Color Effect...CTRL+D. Now you have two Selective Color effects. The green should be very green. Move onto Keylight Effect. Eye dropper the green close to the subjects face or hair. Go into the color panel and pull the green down and to the left. You should see improvement with that action, more green being removed. Switch view to Screen Matte. Now you have to dig into the settings.Screen Gain...go easy, make small tweaks, you will probably increase this value by 10-20 points. Screen balance somewhere between 40 and 60.
Screen Matte settings. Clip Black and Clip white...make small changes to these settings. Generally you will want to shrink the matte 1-3. Go easy on softness and Despot Black and White settings. Clip rollback can be slightly increased. While you make these adjustments flip back and forth between Screen Matte view and Final Result view. You may have some green fringe  on the subject. Describing the removal of fringe is not easy. Precomposing, Mattes, secondary color correction, multiple layers are all in the mix possibly. To  finish I link the project back to PP and use mattes and secondary color correction to get the best look possible. Many of the tips I provided coincide with this tutorial from  8bitdigitaltv.


I don't use the matte method described at the end of this tut but it is a good workflow and might help you reach your goal of better final results with your green screen work.

Here I show original footage look and work in progress look of project I am working on.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-4Lg-sjsw0eVEJIWGNzQkQtYW8/view?usp=sharing

You can shoot h.264 and get great chromakey. You need  a workflow that works and I hope you find one that works for you.
Peace and Cheers,
Kihlbahkt
#14
Thumbs up. Seems fine to me. Short and to the point with some interesting visuals.
#15
Canon 10-22 is an awesome lens. I have one in my possession right now, but it is borrowed from a friend for indoor work in February.  I have used an adapter and they will give you a wide FOV but the image quality may be less than desirable. Depending on what you are doing the adapter is significantly cheaper. If you need the best image possible, drop the money and buy a lens.
#16
So here is another update for a workflow I use for preparing timelines in Premiere and Chroma Key work in After Effects.
Always create a folder for each of the new file  groups you create since it makes it so much easier to find crap later...we have all been there. Organize your project logically and use descriptive names.
This describes putting together a newscast sequence from multiple prproj files using audio from H4N.

Edit Video and Synch audio in Premiere for each segment. (sports, weather, traffic) Each of those segments is a separate Premiere project. (Alt+left/right) to nudge clip one frame is handy to synch A/V.
Select Video and Audio track, right click and Link.
Right click and Nest.
Rename timeline seq and project sequence to the same name. ie weather.
Backup each project with a copy.

Create  new Premiere project which will hold all of the nested sequences you created. Call it Master Timeline or similar.
Import each nested sequence using File>Import. Navigate to the folder that is holding the premiere project files and select one.
Choose Import Selected Sequences and grab the right sequence. Build up your final timeline using these sequences.
I add two seconds to the start and end of the timeline.
Again Save and make backup copy.

Prepare for chroma key in After Effects.
In Master Timeline unlink audio from video, select all clips and right click, Unlink.
Lock the audio track.
Starting with the first sequence, right click, Replace with After Effects Comp.
After Effects will open, prompting you to define  save location and name.
Now you are working with the sequence from Premiere in After Effects. In this case I will describe a simplified chroma key for a green screen that can have ok to pretty good results.
ALT+Click on 8bpc at bottom of Project Panel to change to 32 bpc. In After Effects apply effect Selective Color. Set color to Green from dropdown.
Set Cyan, Yellow, and Black to 100.
Set Magenta to -100 (minus 100)
Select Effect and CTRL+D to duplicate this layer. Green screen should be hot glowing green. You might want to dupe it again, maybe.
Apply Keylight. I wont describe the setting tweaks here...maybe another time, but each clip will need its own settings most likely anyway. Dont go nuts on the sliders. Focus on Screen Gain and Screen Balance and the settings in Screen Matte. Change view to Combined or Screen Matte to see the matte and tweak settings. It can take awhile.
You can also apply other effects in AFX.  When completed with work in After Effects, save and open new project in After Effects. If you dont then next sequence you Replace with After Effects Comp in Premiere will hijack the open After Effect project and add it as a new comp. I did not want that to happen. I am trying to keep everything separate. You dont want to close After Effects when doing this dynamic link work.
Back in Premiere the Green Screen is gone.
Save and backup your work.

In Premiere use Fast Color Corrector to adjust Black, White and midpoint of the luma range. Use the YC waveform monitor to adjust.

Anyway, so far this has proved to be relatively simple. Unless you are running a super computer you will lose realtime playback in Premiere once you apply effects in After Effects. So you need to make sure that you have a solid final timeline.
That is all for now. These clips still have work to be done on them.  Primary and maybe some secondary color correction, de-noising, beauty work in Mocha, background composites, motion graphics, chyrons, bugs and the lower thirds crap. So much work, so little time.


#18
There is an easy way in Premiere and you might consider doing some basic correction in Premiere first if you are going with PP>AE. Skip the LUTs and do it manually. Premiere actually has a pretty good set of tools for primary and secondary color correction and they all aren't in the color correction effect folder,and some of the ones in there you might want to avoid but I digress.Pull up your waveform and do some fast color corrector tonal range adjustments for white, black and mid to get the flavor you want. Use Fast Color Corrector Input Levels and Output Levels sliders below the Saturation settings. Set up white balance, deal with color casts, shot matching etc. The 3way CC effect allows secondary control of isolating areas by luma. Then move onto secondary and grading. You need balanced footage to start with then you can build on that basic foundation.  I would recommend to do primary and some secondary color correction in Premiere vs AE based on what I know from your post. Don't overlook the power of Premiere which has a great set of color correction tools. The Fast and 3way CC effects can take you a long way with the right tweaks. Grading the project is near the end of doing color work. You don't start grading until primary and secondary color correction is complete. Also, dont forget about mocha in After Effects it can provide powerful secondary mask tracking. mocha is awesome. Everyone who reads this and runs After effects and has not used mocha, needs to reconsider that decision.Good luck.
#19
Great low budget tips. Thanks Chungdha.
#20
Thanks @ DeadEyeJedi. I would be glad to know that any info I share will help someone. I am still working out denoising settings in Neat Video and reducing and obscuring posterization artifacts. 8-bit compressed provides challenges for final high image quality, particularly with the plans I have for heavy modification of the video.Currently working with blending color gradients to add some additional color data and adding noise back into the video to reduce posterization with terrible to satisfactory results. I am also considering adding graphic elements to break up large color fields, like walls, with composites of fake photos or other wall hangings to hide posterization from the viewers eyes. Thinking like a magician could be helpful. Misdirection and guiding the viewer to see what I want them to see and to not see what I don't want them to see will provide some cover for less than great video quality. I have wide latitude since there is no one but me to decide what is satisfactory and appropriate for each of the segments.Total elimination of artifacts for all sequences is not a goal. It is a compilation of skits, fake commercials, and animation that are intended to represent content from many sources, so one goal is to produce a variety of image quality from poor to excellent. Just like one might see if you were to turn on your TV right now and flip thru the channels. 

I have been shooting at higher bit rates, 1.3 or higher for recent shoots and I will be trying to determine how that compares to the default bitrate video I shot earlier in the project and whether it provides value for increased final quality over default bitrate.

The worst part is that I have a full time job and wife (let's go out/ watch a movie with me/clean up your messes)  to keep me from full on engagement with the project.  She has been great dealing with me taking over parts of the house and cramming it full of lights and stands and green screen. Having the dining room table in the living room for a week was different.
#21
So more testing complete and I have come to some conclusions about integrating Resolve into my Adobe workflow.  The most significant issue is that without the proper hardware you cannot dump Resolve output to a second monitor. The real estate available for video is insufficient generally. This factor alone is enough for me to step back since it complicates the grading process if doing power window tracking on small details, for example. As a free tool is is pretty awesome but I have decided to only use Resolve for simple grading work in this project.

I have found that 16 bit TIFF image sequences work fine for passing data between Resolve and AE or PP.

I would love to work with Resolve using a control surface and a second monitor. This wraps up my posts for this subject. Now I need to get busy in Adobe and get this project moving to completion.
#22
I will document my workflows here for anyone else who might deal with this in the future. Still in research and discovery mode for adding Resolve to the mix. I have denoising, green screen removal, bg compositing(3d virtual), actor beauty work, and effects compositing that will occur in After Effects. I am still on the fence and need to do some tests around whether I want to deal with titles and other lower third graphics and text before or after Color Correction in Resolve. I am leaning towards doing all titles and graphic composites after color correction is completed but could output some
(simple ones) of those in my export to Resolve and mask then out of color correction. That sounds like a terrible idea but it is in the mix right now.


The only reason I am doing this is because Resolve is an awesome tool for color correction and I have only been using it for less than a week. I have been grinding thru the Resolve training course by Patrick Inhofer @ lynda.com and he provides some great training for Resolve. He also has a colorist website that is a great resource for color correction and resolve specific information.

I will need more than one workflow depending on complexity.These are the bare bones flows I am considering currently.

Most complex:
PP>AE>Resolve>AE
Less complex:
PP>AE>
Simple with limited or no CC/FX:
PP
Simple with CC only:
Resolve or PP

The plan is to use PP to do final output to Blu-Ray and web video.

I will add more detail as I determine what does and does not work for me and flesh out these workflows.
#23
Hey Gang,
Asking about post workflow around here is pretty RAW-centric these days but this is not related to RAW video.
I am hoping that someone here has had experience working on h.264 footage on Premiere v6, After Effects v6 and Resolve 11 (free) as part of their workflow. I am preparing to begin editing footage and I am trying to sort out my options. I need to do the rough and final edits and synch audio in premiere, do post effects in after effects and then use Resolve to do color correction and other tweaks for the overall look.
I am new to resolve but have found it to be really nice to work with so far. I downloaded it last week and crammed thru a bunch of training videos. I have done plenty of editing, post effects and color correction working between AFX and Premiere but I am trying to figure out how to integrate Resolve into the workflow. I am sure to sort it out be myself over the next week or so but if anyone has tips, suggestions or real world experience with a similar workflow challenge I would appreciate your input.
My research so far has led me believe that I can export EDL (along with the clips) from Premiere to Resolve but then getting anything back and forth between Resolve and After effects is pretty much doing hi res output. Not exactly ideal.

I have tons of green screen to remove and lots of post effects, 2d and 3ds graphics and animation as well to integrate into the final cut so I have much work to do. My original plan did not include Resolve so I can easily drop it from the mix but I really liked the ui and capability in Resolve so I am considering using it for this project. Thanks for your help.
#24
 One could try a variety of things. In after effects you could duplicate the layer and try blurring and blending modes and opacity to minimize the impacts of those artifacts.  You could use mocha to track these weird edges and use data from another layer (solid with color you need) to obscure. Use blending modes, opacity to tweak the look. Using mocha would be hard if you don't have a good idea of how it works already. Layer dupe with blend mode and opacity tweaks is worth a try as a first pass. Even if you do know how to use mocha it would be a real task if you have lots of footage. Regarding the softness, the image is not in focus. Investigate sharpen, unsharp, and noise reduction to clean it up. These recommendations are off the top of my head. If you really need to do something with this footage, go youtubing for vids that might touch on this subject. That is all I got. Maybe someone else can provide alternatives.
#25
Share Your Videos / Re: DIY Slider, ML silent picture.
September 29, 2014, 10:08:20 PM
That is a hefty rig, but looks like it gets the job done.  I have a super portable rig that uses two ski poles, a  Lego microcontroller, motors and string. I have used when camping or in remote areas. I will look for some of the footage I shot with it and post it along with some pics of the rig. I'm looking to upgrade with new tubes and less friction from the cam carrier but has not happened yet.