HD100 Bluescreen music video
 

Here is my latest music video:

All bluescreen with the HD100, stock lense, cinewide HDV SD 50p on a 25p timeline.

Edited with Avid Liquid, keyed and CC in AE.

let me know what you think.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu...oid=2010403852

or download the mpeg1s here:
www.niimthedream.no/akeron/akeron_min.mpg (34mb, 360*288)
www.niimthedream.no/akeron/akeron_med.mpg (94mb 720*576)

- Nima

How did you go from Liquid to AfterEffects? How did you get it out of Liquid and what codec did you use?

After you used Aftereffects, did you put the video back into Liquid?

What is your final codec for encoding into your delivery formats?

Thanks!

Hot! Nice job...

Nice piece. Very entertaining Nima.

very good. Nice clean professionl look. I wouldn't have realised it was blue screen except for the shots of the bluescreen and the title of this thread

Andrew

why did you CK this ? should of just hung a brown muslin and saved a world of work. for the couple of shots that had something move on the BG you could of simply of used a bright video projector. video projectors are very cool for doing it all in camera... and since I'm picking, getting the girls dressed better would of been a big help too.sorry...

Thanks for the feedback so far!

Jack:

From Liquid to AE: exported the timeline to uncompressed QT. The slo-mo shots I went with Uncomp QT 50p and used Twixtor for smoother motion.

I didn't put it back to Liquid, but will export from AE to AvidXpressPro with the OMF export, and then record to tape. Then transfer that tape to DigiBeta.

Steve Oakley:

Picky is good, not being picky results in sloppy work. I thought of hanging a backdrop behind, but went with the blue because of several reasons:
- I couldn't add the monkey and the other logo, which the artist wanted to be added.
- We did not have a video projector, neither did the lighting guy have time to move the lighting within a shot, which would also make it real hard to match the spot movements in shots that went back-to-back shots.
- I wanted the option to decide exactly what dance moves and postures I wanted behind the rapper and put it on beat, which would have resulted in endless takes and logging if I had put the rapper in front and dancers one by one behind him.
- Just overall giving me better control in post, playing around with adding layers, adding colors in the background etc. Yes, it was alot of work, but it turned out better.

As for the clothing, I'm not sure what you mean by better. The type of clothing for the dancers were urban/hiphop in addition to type of clothes girls would wear at a club. The budget didn't cover buying/renting outfits, so the girls (and boys) brought a little bag of different clothes they owned to the shoot... I guess it depends on what you mean by "better".

Thanks again for the comments!

Jack there are many ways you can export footage from Liquid to After Effects.

1. Like Nima said you can export as quicktime to pretty much any codec on your system covering uncompressed or photojpeg.

2. Set you timeline for RGB AVI and fuse a RGB AVI file.

3. Set your timeline as 2vuy HD and fuse to a 2vuy file. In After effects when the import footage window opens up you need to select (All Files) under the "files of type". Then select the 2vuy file. Finally under format make you select quicktime movie. This tells After effects to import the 2vuy file as a quicktime file which Avid supplies special codecs for.

4. Image sequence in any image format you would like such as TGA, BMP, jpeg.

5. Set your timeline for the mpeg2 I frame only codec. The codec is only 50 mbits/s but it works great for 720p 24p or 25p. In After Effects again select the (All Files) under "files of type". Then select the m2v file. Finally make sure format is set to "Video for Windows". This tells After Effects to use mpeg2 directshow codecs to import the m2v file. Note: This only seems to work well for I frame only based m2v files. IPB based m2v files import but the frames seem to jump around and are not frame accurate. Some times a single frame will stick for multiple frames making it pretty much useless. Perhaps different mpeg2 decoders in your system may make this work better.



To go from After Effect back to Liquid you can use pretty much all the same steps listed above.

1. Quicktime. Will not import Liquid as a realtime format and will automatically render to a supported format after import. I do not recomend unless you have files already as quicktime files.

2. RGB AVI files import into Liquid and will work as a realtime format. The files are pretty large however.

3. After Effects can export Avid 2vuy files. The only way to do that however is to go to file: export: Avid 2vuy or Avid 2vuy HD. A save as window pops up and you will need to change the file extension from "2VU" to "2VUY". After Effects doesn't know how to deal will file extensions longer then 3 characters so you need to type in the 4 digit file extension. These files will import and work in Liquid in realtime. Some formats such as SD are a little limited in terms of format options. The exporter seems to only export 25 or 29.97 framerates even if your project is set to 24p. 720p and 1080 seem to export 24p just fine.

4. Image sequence. Work great but are not realtime formats. They will be converted by Liquid to another format set by your timeline after import.

5. After Effects has a mpeg render format when you render a comp. You can choose the Main Concept mpeg2 render option and adjust the settings to match the m2v format you are working with in Liquid. I have used it and it sometimes seems a little buggy but it does work. The settings are very very sensitive so you will need to get them just right. m2v formats are my favorite format to work with in Liquid. They are a realtime format and Liquid will import and work with up to 300 mbits/s 4:2:2 I frame only m2v files. Liquids 50 mbit limit is for the timeline format only but pretty much any level of m2v will import back into Liquid will no problems at all.


Hope this helps.

hey nima

great, i love it! i like the clothing, street look, no gimmiks, good mix and contrast with the clean studio surrounding.
i also like the song a lot, hey i think i understood some of the words (;-), seem to be some english and german words in your language.
is this behind the scene part really part of the final clip or is it just for us? it got me out of the clip totally.

if i understood right, you captured this to hdv, did it key well or did you spend hours to key for each shot? the keys looks very clean, im surprised.
what shutter speed did you use? was bluespill a problem or did the backlights kill all of it?

thomas

...wow....

Thomas:

Appreciate the feedback!

There are some english words in the lyrics, and Norwegian is close to German aswell.

The behind the scene is a part of the final clip. In pre-production I decided I just wanted a twist in the video, to show what it looks like behind all these clean studio videos, specially since this was a low-budget video, and it was far from glamorous. It was also nice to have some moving shots in the video, I thought.

yes, I did capture this to hdv, and it worked better than expected. In aftereffects I had created a different key for the major type shots, Total, Half Total and close-up, just made sure the key was good before copy-pasting to all the shots. After that I had to go to each clip and tweak the settings, but didn't have to tweak that much though. It did take alot of time though, I had over 800 layers in after effects (including lights, blurs, masks etc)...

I guess my lighting crew did a good job, because I didn't really have any big issues with spill. We were using mostly kinos and some fresnells. There were some shots with minor spills, but with Keylight and Spill Supressor, I was able to tweak and fix them.

I believe the shutter was set at 1/50.

The shots where we shot half-siluettes, or in the shades, became too grainy/artifactsy, specially after CC. So I would say if you want to key hdv, make sure there is sufficient lighting...

I will never again do a whole video in blue screen if I am going to edit and key it!!! :)

hope that answered your questions

hey nima

hehe, until you do it again, cause everybody runs down your door asking for it (;-).

amazing a clean key with all those dance scenes with motion blur, thats encouraging! i have to test it someday, i believe someone on the board has written camera scene for greenscreen, have to check.
did you use one of the internal AE Keyers or a Plug? the last time i tryed to use the internal keyers from AE with DV-Material i ended up using Edius to key (;-).

and the light on the characters look good in the final picture.

thomas

Smet:

When I do this, I get a scewed image split in half in Liquid, do you know how to fix this?

What resolution and framerate are you using?

What is happening is that the fields are getting split into halves instead of weaved together.

What version of Liquid are you using? I used to see this problem with certain 2vuy exporters but I have not seen it in awhile. If you are using PAL SD what framerate is it? From your first post I thought your timeline was 576p 50p. I'm not sure if this format is supported with the AVID 2vuy exporter. That is why I find the SD 2vuy exporter to only work well with certain formats.

Awesome
 

Nima

Great job on the video. I think to celebrate you should go and have the inside of your lip tattoed!