Hi,
I'm working on my reel, and I'm not sure which program to use to achieve the end result, and how I should go about it. I hope someone can help!
I've attached a jpg to give you an idea of the look I'm trying to achieve. Basically, I want to give the impression that you are looking through the eyes of someone sitting in a loungeroom, watching TV. As the person flicks through the channels, snippets of my work come up on the TV screen.
I've started modelling the loungeroom in Max (see attached file). Originally, I was going to import the individual avi's of my work into max and render from there, but I can see that it's going to be too demanding on my computer, and an out of control file size. I've just had a go importing a jpeg of the scene into Director, and then placed the resized avi's over the "screen" of my TV. That worked if I exported as a Projector file, but I'm not sure that I could get a film editing company to put that on VHS for me? I tried exporting as an avi, but I lost all of my sound.
I'm in a bit of a muddle and would really appreciate some help if someone can figure out what I'm talking about!
I'm not sure I understand.
If you're exporting to VHS you'll be losing the interactivity anyway, no?
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy [i]-Tom Waits
[/i]
Hi Dave. You're sure paying attention! Right you are. I was going to have a level of interaction, (ie the user "pressing" the remote control's buttons) but after some kind advice received from this forum, I've discovered that prospective employer's prefer just a VHS of work in snippets. So I went back to the drawing board and decided to include a hand and a remote in the view, that is clicking on the buttons. I haven't modelled and animated the hand yet (a daunting task ahead of me!), but the plan is, to have that animation looping as the background, and then have layers of avis playing on the "TV screen". I'll be synching the "flicking" between the avis on the TV screen with the hand pressing the button. Does that make sense?
Okay I get it :)
The simplest way I could think of would be to do it in an editing software like Premiere. You could have the tv-screen as a top layer and the screen itself as an alpha-channel that you could make transparent. The layer below it would have your avi's (as a sidenote, and maybe you're doing this already, try rendering to jpeg or tga instead of avi, that way you don't have to re-render the whole thing when your comp crashes, and there's lots of free software that'll let you make avi's from image-sequences; and you'll always have the uncompressed frames as your originals).
That said, if I were you I'd keep the tv-screen for CD-Roms only. On VHS most people will want to see your stuff fullscreen without any distractions. It's fine for CD-Roms since fullscreen movies simply aren't possible, but with VHS most people will prefer a straight-up edit.
The big shops will prefer VHS, but some smaller shops might prefer CD's. They'll usually put their preference in their job offer. If they don't say, you could always send them a package with both. Or ask them before you send your stuff out.
cheers,
~D
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy [i]-Tom Waits
[/i]
Bummer. My brain's hurting. I'm thinking maybe abandoning this concept is the best idea! (What ever happened to me keeping with the KISS principle?!) I've got lots more questions for you now! I hope you're extremely patient!
Hanging in there for a minute with my concept: I'll need to refresh my memory with alpha channels if I go down this path- haven't used them for a while. When you talk about layers in Premiere, are you referring to the Video 1 and Video 2 channels? If so, and say I put my avi's into Video 2, how do I make the avi's dimensions the size of the TV screen? I've done this relatively easily in Director, but not sure how to achieve it in Premiere.
On the subject of rendering to jpg or tga, I can't do that with all of my animations, because STUPIDLY, I've lost some of my working files! I have wondered about doing it with my other animations though. Can you tell me how I go about it? Correct me if I'm wrong, but do I start out (say for example) in Flash and when I export, choose "jpg sequence"? If that's right, then what's the free software you mentioned to bring it all together?
Re your final point about full screen animations, one of my animations contains lip synching, another is synched to music, the remainder have no sound. What's the best way to go about creating a reel that just shows snippets of my work? I've seen other people use one piece of music, and then they've synched their snippets to that. I'm worried that I might lose impact with the first two animations I mentioned if I do that. That's why I came up with the channel flicking idea. Do you think maybe I shouldn't be worried about the sound part of my animations for a reel- ie the employer could only be interested in my animation skills, not necessarily the sound effects that go with it?
Thanks for your help :)
Hang in there, first time's always 10 times harder then it should be ;)
Seriously, I'd keep the tv-screen for the CD-rom. It looks like you've figured out how to do that, and I wouldn't waste too much time figuring out a way to do it in Premiere. Make a simple edit for the VHS and keep the UI for the CD.
As for the lipsync and stuff synced to music, the way I used to do it is have a general soundtrack that fades down when there's lipsync or other music and fades up again when there's no sound on the actual animation (one reel I did started with an animation synced to 'Voodoo Chile' and ended with clips edited to 'Kungfu Fighting', fading down whenever there was lipsync). Mix the sound to whatever is important. The sound probably won't matter too much to a potential employer, but I would suggest keeping the techno to a minimum. Even if they love techno, they won't want to hear it on a reel.
I'm not familiar with Flash, someone else can probably answer that question, but if it says 'export to jpeg' I'd guess that'll do it. I wonder what it'll do to your framerate. Can't help ya much there I'm afraid.
This is a great free program to split and create avi's : http://www.virtualdub.com/download
You can load up your avi's and save them out as a tga- or bitmap-sequence, or vice versa (drop in the first frame and it will add the rest); and you can load a wav file to add sound. Dead easy and works like a charm (remember to set your framerate and compression when you spit out avi's). Any editing software will let you do the same, although it might be a bit harder to figure out. For this kinda basic stuff nothing beats Virtualdub.
cheers,
~D
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy [i]-Tom Waits
[/i]
Thanks Dave! I've downloaded Virtualdub, and it looks like it might be able to help me out in some other areas I was having trouble. I think your idea of fading the music in and out is the answer to my video reel. Thanks for your advice!
Try this site if you havent allready.Its a pretty informative place.
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/director/
swankaman
Hi guys. Back again on this topic.
I've managed to sort out the issues I was having before. At the moment I'm working to a rather tight deadline to get some CDs (just staying with that at the moment, 'coz in my area that's what they want) burnt off to give to some employers for work experience. I've run into a new problem and I'm hoping you might be able to help me out.... :confused:
Swankaman: I'm currently scanning through that website as fast as I can to try and find a solution.
Dave Swankaman or anyone else: In the meantime, just in case I can't find anything, I'm hoping one of you guys might know the answer to this problem with file paths:
I've "published" my file from Director as a Director Player file. It contains avis, which I've put into a special resource file, which I then also burnt onto the CD. The problem I have, is that when I go to play the CD on another PC, the Director player then looks for the avi files in the wrong place- ie the F Drive. Is there some way I can embed the files into the player itself or something, so that it doesn't go hunting for them when someone plays the CD? I thought I could publish again from Director with the file paths actually coming from my CD drive, but then if someone's CD drive is labeled differently, they'll still have the same problem. I hope that makes sense.
Thanks in advance :D
Sorry guys, just pushing this up just in case it was missed earlier. Hopefully someone can help me.
Hey Keenasmustard,
Ive never worked with avis within Director (personally..)but Ive never had problems when publishing the file as a Projector which basically makes the file its own executable and imbeds all the materials into the package.Also remember what ever platform you create the projector from is the the same you should "view" it from or it will just fail.I hope Im not mis-diagnosing what you said previously but its a stumper?As far as transferring to video, Im a noob, no knowledge whatso ever on that front..Good luck,
swankaman
Also Flash MX can import certain video formats now too so if you have it, see if that can maybe suffice for the present time.Its pretty capable actually form the examples Ive seen on the web and such..
swankman
http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/images_video/flash_video/flmx_video03.html
It's been a while since I've used Director; can't say I remember having that problem though.
I do remember using an Xtra to import the avi (you can include the Xtra in the projector), and putting the avi's in the root of the CD.
If that doesn't work, or if you want to avoid problems with codecs and such, you could convert your avi to flash using SwishVideo (http://www.swishzone.com/ has a 30 day trial) and drop the swf in your Director file. The quality is pretty decent, everyone will be able to view it, and it'll embed in your projector.
cheers,
~D
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy [i]-Tom Waits
[/i]
much easier i s to use Video to Flash Converter 4.1.
the quality is better///
http://www.geovid.com/Video_to_Flash_Converter/
may be this website will give a new idea! Try!
http://www.geovid.com/Video_to_Flash_Converter/
Sounds like you're using absolute paths instead of relative paths in your Director file. Look for something like: "F:\movies\blahblah.avi" and change it to "movies\blahblah.avi" (or whatever the path on your CD rom is without the drive letter).
But consider this: FOR PETE'S SAKE! DON'T USE DIRECTOR FOR DEMO REELS! Sorry to yell, but the only exception to this would be if you're applying for a multimedia spot. Otherwise, it's been my experience that getting Director to work consistantly on all platforms is nearly impossible. You're already finding that yourself. If a reel screener can't view your stuff on the first try they probably aren't going to try again, especially if they have to install something.
This is the order in priority of media for creating a reel for broadcast/film:
-VHS - almost everybody has a VHS deck
-DVD - this is slowly replacing VHS as the preferred delivery method for reels, and it looks alot better than VHS
-Online/CD - a few places will accept online or CD reels. They still only want to see the video of your work though. No fancy interfaces that distract from the video like overlays and such unless it's absolutely brilliant. It should be easy to watch and re-watch.
Either CD or online require a very simple setup (simple HTML or Flash, with a common video codec). Simple doesn't mean poor design though. If they need to install a player or video codec (and DIVX is NOT a common codec for most non-computer users, which most screeners are), they'll probably move on to the next applicant, unless you're the genius everyone has been telling them about (and then you'll probably have a site that works easily anyway).
Keep in mind to that compression can bog down a slow computer and they don't necessarily give producers or screeners the high end workstations it might take to play back your masterpiece. I'd recommend a simple Quicktime Codec like Motion Jpeg or Sorenson. They can look decent and play back on most computers, and most people will have Quicktime installed on their computer.
Either way I'd recommend avoiding the online/cd option unless they specifically request it that way. Compression dumbs down your work and it's has the chance to not work for some unkown reason on someone else's computer. VHS/DVD have a much lower fail rate.
Don't make it complicated. It will just distract them from why they're looking at your stuff.
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That is some good advice kdiddy13. Something we all should keep in mind.