There’s been even more news in the last two weeks than was seen in the earlier roundup, which became unwieldy. Here’s additional news items on tutorials, plug-ins, etc. for After Effects, NLEs and other areas of concern.
After Effects
Todd Kopriva has new inexpensive video series, After Effects Motion Tracking and Stabilization Workshop. For a summary on resources on Warp Stabilizer, see Warp Stabilizer for object removal. Here’s Todd’s intro:
Steve Forde noted Vincent Laforet’s RED Epic – 5K and HDRx, a summary of how he used different gear and techniques with his new RED Epic: ”A BIG component he felt was how Warp Stabilizer in AE CS 5.5 changed how he shoots – which is dramatically cool from my perspective.”
Anything You Want by Eran Stern shows you the steps of envisioning an idea, drawing a storyboard, searching out footage, and designing a final piece. This first installment of a two-part series has tips on masking, creating shadows, and using After Effects CS5.5?s new Warp Stabilizer. The project files are available at Artbeats.
Chris and Trish Meyer added another installment of CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 28 – Frame Rate Manipulation.
How to produce a 3D menu for inclusion on a 3D Blu-ray disc on fcp.co shares a half-hour video tutorial on creating 3D Side-by-Side menu content by Glenn Cooney from Promo Scape. This tutorial leverages free Stereo Scripts plug-in written by Christoph Keller. For more on these scripts (including other tutorials), see Stereo-3D Scripts for AE by Chris Keller on AE Portal archive. Here’s Glenn:
Mark Christiansen shared Free Stereo Footage from Artbeats, and an After Effects tutorial showing how to use it in CS5.5, with a video preview of what you’ll find in the After Effects Studio Techniques CS5.5 update, which should be available for download next week. Earlier Todd Kopriva introduced changes in his video Stereoscopic 3D Rig and 3D Glasses Effect and Chris Meyer covered Stereoscopic Tools in After Effects in-depth in his video series on CS5.5. For even more see AE Help and Todd’s blog.
Sebastien Perrier posted 3D: Exporting 2 separate stereo view in AE CS5.5 (Updated), which shares a tip from Amir Stone on how to export the full picture for both eyes when using the automated stereoscopic rig in CS 5.5. As it turns out Sebastien will be releasing a new book in French this fall: Stereoscopy in After Effects.
Trapcode ShareLog is hosting a 3D StereoCam 2 project for Stereoscopic Particular particles and a quickstart screencam by Jochem Drost (seen earlier). See also Jochem’s video tutorial on HDRV, and more on HDRV in Combining Multiple DSLR Exposures in AE and Pixel Bender filter for Screen Space Image Base Lighting.
Laurie Knapp added 2 After Effects tutorials on Vimeo: Easy Workflow For Digital Sign Replacement In 3D Footage With Non-Nodal Camera Move and Using Particle Field to Create Track Matte For Logo Transition.
RampanTV added 8 tutorials on Vimeo, including Quick Sky Replacement using Mocha for After Effects. Rampant has a very busy in the last several months making AE tutorials to promote their stock and template products.
360 Media provides a 22-minute video along with their own nice mini-roundup of camera rig resources in Towards a Storyboard / Animatic Workflow In Adobe After Effects. It refers to another roundup too, Camera Difficulties and Rigs in After Effects at AEtuts+. Here’s 360 Media:
In Shoot Off A 3D Plexus Particle Stream at AEtuts+, Lloyd Alvarez shows us “how to create a ‘pseudo’ particle stream using Plexus. I say pseudo because it’s not really a particle stream, it just appears as one. The tools involved are Cinema 4d and After Effects with these 3rd party plugins: Plexus, Trapcode Particular and VCP Optical Flares although Particular and Optical Flares could be substituted with Particle World and any lens flare.”
Andrew Devis started yet another AE Basics course. For an overview of other resources see AE beginner training resources: Mamoworld and Kevin McAuliffe start additional series. Kevin McAuliffe added videos to his series with Re-Positioning Made Easy and After Effects Mathematics, and Mamoworld added Lesson 2.
Dan Sollis posted projects and renders of Pseudo-volumetric fractal cloud in After Effects and a follow-up 3D Cloud – Particular version. For backround see Volumetric Clouds in After Effects? Here’s the psuedo-stacking example:
NLEs
Todd Kopriva added this video on the Video2Brain website to his summary on RED (R3D) digital cinema and Canon XF improvements in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5. It’s part of the free course What’s New and Changed in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5.
New Premiere users might not know about Audio Time Units for the Timeline, noted by Jay Kinghorn in Really Useful Premiere Pro Tip. It’s better than scrubbing in the audio Viewer with the Shift key down in FCP. For more see Multi-camera synchronization tutorial, although PluralEyes is still easier if you do this a lot.
For those of you with plugin addictions, David Roth Weiss says that, according to Phil Hodgetts, old FCP plug-ins won’t work in the FCP X 64-bit world since they are 32-bit. Of course, a long discussion ensued.
Prolost discussed Dropbox Etiquette (and earlier wrote about how he uses it to monitor After Effects renders). Also, Lifehacker explain how to Free Up Disk Space by Deleting Files in the Hidden Dropbox Cache Folder, since some users report cache files taking up over 40GB.
HD Formats: Color Model & Color Sub-Sampling, posted by Andy Shipsides on AbelCine technical blog, should help clarify a couple more of those words and numbers we see associated with HD video formats. See also the color theory articles on Colorgrader.net. For info on related issues in After Effects, see Todd Kopriva’s video summary and AE Help. Here’s Todd:
As usual, check out the newsletter at Tao Of Color Grading.com for more color resources.
Richard Harrington discusses on getting the most from your DSLR video in DSLR Video: High End Looks on a Middle Class Budget.