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As far as quicktimes…
Make sure that when you render out from avid, you have the uncompressed, or “none” CODEC selected. Also be sure that you are rendering MILLIONS OF COLORS, not millions of colors+. Also check the audio on the quicktime. Flame should be able to import a QT with two channels of audio, but be sure that they are uncompressed (there are codec options in QT audio as well). Finally, there’s the old 2GB file size issue, if you’re on a Mac that is.
Try rendering out the first 10 seconds or so in QT, and then AVI. If they work, you should be OK.
Hope this helps…
-Andy
I started working with smoke 6.5 on a tezro in December (I was on an Octane2 before that). I have had no problems. Have you logged a call with support?
-Andy
I’m a big fan of subscription for two reasions: Depending on which system(s) you have or are purchasing, it’s a decent savings over support plus the cost of upgrades. I am not sure of your situation, but I can tell you that it always is uncomfortable having to go to the boss and ask for $$$$$ for a software upgrade. To be able to present a “support” budget for the year that is a fixed cost is a much easier sell.
HTH,
Andy
With respect to the frames that are not recovered when deleting, running VIC (volume integrity check) will identify these lost and found frames and delete them. There are two ways to launch vic, the simple way (more time consuming) and the complex way (faster, but if you are not comfortable with UNIX, then avoid this)
VIC is run after the system reboots. So, the simple method is to reboot your machine.
The complex way is to open a UNIX shell, become ROOT, and type:
vic -v stonefs -f
vic -v stonefs will launch VIC on your stone (I am assuming you only have one stone, and you have not modified the factory installed name of stonefs) The -f option will force delete all clips in the “lost and found” directories in all of the projects on your stone. You are force deleting media here, so be sure it is what you want to do.
After VIC does it’s thing, go to:
/usr/discreet/sw
run the program sw_df by typing ./sw_df
This will show you the amount of free and purgeable space on your stone. If there are any “purgeable” frames, you can run sw_df again to remove them. Again, this assumes you have one stone, labeled stonefs.
./sw_purge -partition 0
HTH,
Andy
I’ve run into similar issues in the past — although I was never quite able to nail down repeatable steps. It sounds like something in the resource fork is not written, but that’s only a guess. Here’s a couple of suggestions, though:
When trying to play back one of these movies or avis on the mac, make sure you copy the movie local (do not play it off of the server).
Open quicktime player first, then go to file –> open movie in new player.
If you’ve copied the movie to the desktop (and I know this is going to sound rediculous), try putting it in a folder.
As far as troubleshooting goes, have you tried exporting the movie without audio? I’d be curious to see if it opens that way.
HTH,
Andy
Toxy,
It should work as expected. There’s a chance your user settings (which store the hotkeys) got corrupted. When you’re in the colour warper, press F8 to see your list of hotkeys. You can add or edit the F1, F2, etc hotkeys there.
HTH,
Andy
Raj,
I would do all of my work at 24fps. When you are finished, you can always make a 25fps version. You can make one in smoke with the reformat tool in the library, or you can do it on a shot by shot basis within the timeline.
With respect to colour correction, the CRT is fine. You need to get in touch with the facility that will be shooting your final back out to film. They should be able to tell you what type of film stock, etc., that they are using, and you can set up a look up table (LUT) to use for playback and colour correction. The LUT will show you what your footage will look like on the film, giving you guides to go by.
HTH,
Andy
Is this clip field based or frame based (interlaced or progressive)? If the clip is field based, or interlaced, make sure that the clip is flagged F1. You might be having a metadata conflict with scan mode. For example, you may have a progressive scan clip, but when you brought it in from tape, you had FIELD 1 selected. With this, you have a progressive clip, but smoke thinks it is interlaced. If this is the case, when you enter the stabilizer, it defaults to field based tracking and rendering. This could mean that artifacts are added when processing, since it is processing on fields.
I have also seen situations where mis tagged clips are interpreted by smoke as having the wrong field dominance, which could also introduce jitter.
HTH,
-Andy
You need to select the imported clip in the quicktime and reformat it. Select the clip in the library, click UNLINK/RELINK, and change to REFORMAT mode, Then change the aspect ratio of the clip to 16:9 and click REFORMAT. All that this does is change the metadata tag for the clip so that it is displayed as a rectangle, instead of a square.
HTH,
Andy
A link is nothing more than a shortcut to an expression, so an expression is written. Have you tried editing the expression (EXPR button), and then erasing in the expression line?
Not sure if this works, but give it a try!
HTH
Andy Milkis
I had the priviledge of working with the Flinux as a beta tester. I was completely blown away with the performance of the system. It was, depending on task, 2-4x faster than my Flame on Octane 2.
Highly recommend taking a look at it…
HTH,
Andy
Try this…
Go into the keyer of the layer that has the clip you want to use in ADD mode.
– Select Lum Key
– Click Blending, and take the lower left point and move it to the upper left.
– Click Return to go back to Action.Transparency will now work as expected.
HTH,
Andy
Wolf,
Are you using flame 8 or higher? If so, you can do fades and dissolves in the batch timeline.
-Andy
Lars,
Absolutely! You have to add a new reference before you analyze your clip….
1. Place your tracker over the area you want to track.
2. Go to the last usable frame for that area.
3. Change your cursor mode to ADD (from the popup menu, or by pressing “A”)
4. Reposition the tracker over a new part of the image.
5. Change your cursor mode back to MOVE (from the popup menu, or by pressing “M”)
6. Analyze.There you go! Remember, you must add your new references BEFORE you analyze. If you are analyzing and you realize you need a new reference, simply reset the track (or just the shift) and follow the steps above. Also, this technique only works when analyzing FORWARD. It does not work when analyzing BACKWARD.
HTH,
Andy
TV in the US (NTSC) Runs at 30 frames per second. Film runs at 24 fps. A method was needed to convert 24fps film to 30fps TV and still maintain lip sync. The method that was created is called 3:2 pulldown (it has many names, including 2:3 pulldown, cine expansion, film expansion, etc.)
Every frame of TV is made up of two fields, odd number lines and even number lines. The additional 6 frames needed are created by combining fields from different frames to create in-between, or “jitter” frames.
It works like this:WHOLE FRAME – WHOLE FRAME – WHOLE FRAME – JITTER FRAME – JITTER FRAME
What you are left with is a pattern… 3 whole frames, 2 jitter frames, 3 whole frames, 2 jitter frames, 3 whole frames, 2 jitter frames, etc. Hence the name, 3:2 pulldown.
When compositing, you generally need to remove the jitter frames, do your compositing, and then re-insert the jitter frames when rendering (or after your render). In Combustion, click on the icon for the footage of a layer (or in the footage library). Click on Source, and in the source window you will see a button called “Guess 3:2 Sequence.” If you click that button, Combustion will analyze the footage, find the 3:2 pattern, and remove it. Once identified, the pop up menu above teh “Guess 3:2” button will show you the pattern. Using the pattern listed above, the pop up would show a pattern of “WWWSS” for 3 whole frames and 2 jitter frames. When you go to render your comp, you need to enter in the same pattern in the render settings box to put the 3:2 pulldown back in.
For a more in depth and generic (non combustion specific) description of 3:2 pulldown, check out the following FXGuide Tip:
http://www.fxguide.com/fxtips-54.html
Hope this helps!
-Andy