Spirit Editing is on YOUTUBE now

Spirit Editing

Finally a title video uploaded to youtube. May be later on i will change the animation to look more professional services.

Filed under: Video Editing

Compositing Software/Tutorial/Info Links

***Compositing Software/Tutorial/Info Links***

People are asking questions about what software should I use and stuff like that so I’m making a permanant info page to help out everone so this kind of information is more readily available.

This is a works in progress. I’m still working on it now but I thought I would post what I have so far. I will be periodically adding things to this. I also have a thread were I want people to give me additional links to add to this document.

 

-deke

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Credits – Thanks to Beaker for his lovely post.

• Compositing Software:
  • Adobe After Effects: (Win, OSX)
  • Discreet Combustion: (Win, OSX)
  • Eyeon DFX: (Win)
  • Eyeon Digital Fusion: (Win)
  • Apple Shake: (OSX, Linux, Sgi)
  • Houdini Halo: (Win, Linux, Sgi, Sun)
  • Nuke: (Win, Linux)
  • Softimage XSI FXTree: (built in compositor)(Win, Linux, Sgi)
  • Matrix Compositor: (Win)
  • Jahshaka: (Win, OSX, Linux, Sgi) (Free!)
  • Chromanator/AlamDV: (Win, OSX)
  • Roach: (Win)
  • Sofimage Eddie: DOA (Sgi)
  • 5D Cyborg: DOA (Win, Linux, Sgi) No site anymore, Discreet purchased most of the assets, so it just goes to their site.
  • Cineon: DOA (Sgi)
• Harware Compositors
  • Discreet Flint: (Sgi)
  • Discreet Flame: (Sgi)
  • Discreet Inferno: (Sgi)
  • Jaleo: (Sgi)
  • Piranah: (Linux, Sgi)
  • Media Illusion: DOA (Sgi)
• Middle of the Road Compositor/Editor/Motion Graphics Software
  • Boris Red: (Win, OSX)
  • RadTime: (Win)
  • Apple Motion: (OSX)
• Digital Paint
  • 2d Paint
    • Adobe Photoshop: (Win, OSX)
    • Corel Painter: (Win, OSX)
    • Gimp: (Win, Linux, Sgi, Sun, Freebsd) (Free!)
    • Amazon Paint: (Linux, Sgi)
    • Photogenics: (Win, Linux, Amiga, Pocktpc)
    • Eclipse Paint: (Win, OSX) Previously owned by Alias many years ago it was a paint package on Sgi only. Now it runs on standard windows/mac hardware.
    • Alias SketchBook Pro: (Win)
    • Alias Studio Paint: DOA (Sgi)2d/3d paint software used alot in the automotive industry and previously in the film industry. Many of it’s features have been integrated into SketchBook Pro and the Alias Studio family of products.
  • Roto/Video Paint
    • Commotion: (Win, OSX)
    • Curious gFX: (Win, OSX)
    • Hammerhead roto: (Sgi, Linux)
    • Cinepaint: (Win, OSX, Linux) (Free!) Opensource painting application based on gimp. Previously was named FilmGimp. Many studios use it for Dustbusting Film.
    • Liberty Twister: (Win, Sgi) A variety of hardware and software based paint packages for film and video.
    • Matador: DOA (Sgi)
• Matchmoving/Tracking
  • Realviz Matchmover: (Win, OSX, Linux)
  • 2d3 Boujou: (Win, OSX, Linux)
  • Science D Visions 3D Equalizer: (Win, OSX, Linux, Sgi)
  • Hammerhead ras_track: (Linux, Sgi)
  • Alias Maya Live: (Win, Linux, Sgi) A tracker that is built into Maya Unlimited. It was licensed technology from a company called Alchemy 3D, that was later bought by Synapix who went belly up a few year ago. Not a very good tracker compared to many of the standalone ones, but it works ok for day to day matchmoves.
  • AFX Scene Genie: (Win)
  • Mamoe: (Win, Sgi)
  • PFTrack/PFMatch: (Win, OSX, Linux, Sgi) Previously called Icarus, and developed at the Victoria University of Manchester.
  • Mokey/Monet: (Win, OSX, Linux, Irix)
  • SynthEyes: (Win)
  • Voodoo Camera Tracker: (Win, Linux)
• Retiming
  • Realviz Retimer: (Win, OSX, Linux)
  • Re:Vision Twixtor: (Win, OSX)
  • Phoenix Tools TimeMaster: (Win)
  • Kronos: (part of Furnace) (Win, OSX, Linux, Irix)
  • PFRetime:
• Editing Software:
  • Software Editors
    • Sony Vegas: (was sonic foundry)(Win)
    • Adobe Premiere Pro: (WinXP only)
    • Apple Final Cut Pro: (OSX)
    • Apple Final Cut Express: (OSX) A slimmed down version of Final Cut Pro for people who don’t need all the extra features. Fills in the gap that Premiere left when it stopped on the mac platform in the under $500 editing software.
    • Avid Xpress DV: (Win, OSX)
    • Avid Xpress DV FREE: (Win, OSX) (Free!) Free version of avid’s editing software with limitations like 2 video and 2 audio tracks.
    • Speed Razor: (Win)
    • Blade2: (Win)
    • Cinerella: (Linux) (Free!)
  • Hardware Editors
    • Discreet Smoke: (Linux, Sgi)
    • Discreet Fire: (Sgi)
    • Avid Xpress Pro: (Win, OSX)
    • Avid Media/Film Composer: (Win, OSX)
    • Avid Symphony: (Win, OSX)
    • Avid/Softimage DS: (Win)http://www2.softimage.com/avidds/
    • Media 100 i: (OSX)
    • Media 100 iFinish: (Win)
    • Media 100 844/X: (Win)
    • Pinnacle Liquid: (blue, silver, chrome, etc…) (Win)
    • Quantel eQ: (Win)
    • Alias Wavefront Zap-it: DOA (Sgi) Really cool editing software from Alias that worked really fast on the O2. Unfortunatly only worked with the I/O capture board on the Sgi O2 and was never upgraded to work with anything else.
• Digital Color Grading/Digital Intermediate
  • Discreet Lustre: (Sgi)
  • Da vinci:
  • Pandora Megadef:
  • Colorstar/Stardust: (Sgi)
  • SpeedGrade RT:
  • Silicon Color Final Touch: (Sgi, OSX)
  • Nucoda Film Master:
  • FilmLight Baselight:
  • Quantel iQ:
• Digital Daily Playback
  • FrameCycler: (Win, OSX, Linux)
  • Nucoda Data Play: (Linux, Sgi)
  • Bluefish 444 Symmetry: (Win)
  • Mflip: (Linux, Sgi) (Free!)
  • i-display: (Linux) (Free!)
• Broadcast Graphics
  • Quantel gQ:
  • Quantel Qpaintbox: (Win)
  • Curious World Maps: (Win, OSX)
  • Globecaster:
  • Lyric:
• Utilities
  • Particles
    • Particle Illusion: (Win, OSX)
    • Matrix 3d Particle System: (Win)
  • Warper/Morphers
    • Elastic Reality: DOA (Win, OSX, Linux, Sgi) A very popular warping software that avid stopped supporting a few years ago. Many companies still use it.
    • RE:Flex: (Win, OSX, Linux, Sgi)
    • Primordial ooze: (Win, OSX, Linux)
    • WinMorph: (Win)
    • Easy Morph: (Win)
    • MorphMan: (Win)
    • Morpheus: (Win)
  • Motion Blur
    • ReelSmart Motion Blur: (Win, OSX, Linux, Sgi)
    • PFBlur: (Win, OSX, Linux, Sgi)
  • Others
    • 2D3 SteadyMove: (Win)
    • Realviz Stitcher: (Win, OSX)
    • Rising Sun Research Cinespace:
    • PFStable/PFPlate: (Win, OSX, Linux, Sgi)

 

 

 

• Compositing Tutorials
• Tutorial/Information Links:Camera Mapping: 

•  
  • 
    Front Projection
    Fixed Front Projection – Faking reality (LW6.5)

Color & Lighting

•  
  • 
    Tips on Shooting Blue Screen and Green Screen
    A few comments on “blue channel noise”
    Visual Effects Lighting With Kino Flo
    Environmental Design(lots of nice information about lighting and how objects absorb light)
    What Wavelength Goes With a Color?
    Lighting Controls for Computer Cinematography

Compositing:

•  
  • 
    1. DV Garage
    2. OUTPOST – exercise in compositing 3D elements in a phototgraph
    3. Working with Particleillusion 3.0 and After Effects
    4. Compositing Backlighting(for AE, but general enough to use for anything)
    5. Compositing Basics in 3d
    6. Fake Camera Movement in Blue Screen Composites
    7. Compositing info and tutorials from the people who made Duality
    8. What the hell is multi-pass rendering?
    9. Jeremy Birn Tutorials (Lighting In Layers & Multi-Pass Rendering)
    10. Shadow Compositing
    11. Rendering and Compositing CG Reflections
    12. SHADOW COLOR MATCH
    13. Intro To Compositing For Vfx:
    14. Compositing a 3D rendered object into Video
    15. MULTIPASS RENDERING USING MENTAL RAY WITH SOFTIMAGE
    16. Darkness Tutorial
    17. Compositing tutorial by Maarten Gribnau
    18. Working with Particleillusion 3.0 and After Effects
    19. Multi-Pass Rendering & Compositing
    20. Multipass Rendering Surface
    21. How-to: Lightsaber – working with CG props

Compression

•  
  • 
    Codec Comparison
    Discreet Codec/Video info page
    OneRiver Media Codec Resource Site

Film

•  
  • 
    Film Technical Docs:Introduction to DI, Shooting HD for DI, Linear vs. Log Digital Capture, Thomson Viper HD Camera, Viper vs. 35mm film, Thoughts on Resolution, Digital Intermediate, Digital Film: Scene-to-Screen, Quantel’s iQ DI system
    The Ultimate Table of Formats– Aspect Ratios
    Film Format Scanning & Recording Resolution Tables from Cinesite
    Cinesite Technical Scanning & Recording Documents

Keying(Blue/Green Screen)

•  
  • 
    Making A Green Screen With Local Materials
    Why using green works better for DV
    Clean DV Bluescreen/Greenscreen Composites
    You Can Do Bluescreen in DV!
    Blue Screen Production Tips
    Green Screen DV Compositing
    The Blue Screen Page

Matte Painting:

•  
  • 
    Matte Painting for Visual Effects/Compositing by Dennis Sedov

Matchmoving:

•  
  • 
    WIP

Photography:

•  
  • 
    Location Photography
    Shooting for Visual Effects
    Filmlook with Magic Bullet

Rotoscoping:

•  
  • 
    WIP

Video:

•  
  • 
    Adam Wilt’s DV
    Los Angeles Final Cut Pro Users group
    A listing of Video Recording Formats
    Wide Screen DV Notes
    Camcorder Info
    A Quick Guide to Digital Video Resolution and Aspect Ratio Conversions
    HD Resource
    What’s an Anamorphic DVD
    Dvd Faq

Other:

 

•  
  • 
    Transitions in Films
    ImageMagick Resize Filters(nice overview of different filtering algorithms)
    Discreet White Papers
    The Quantel Digital Factbook
    Digital Filtering Docs from Alvy Ray

—————————————-
Application Specific Tutorials

AE:

 

•  
  • 
    I’m leaving out AE tuts since there is allready a thread on it in the AE forum
    http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6834

Combustion:

•  
  • 
    MtoC: Maya to Combustion script
    Jam Retimer
    Tips and Tricks from FXguide for Combustion(around 30 of them)
    Introduction to Combustion
    Creative Cow Combustion Tuts
    Cloning with Discreet combustion
    Discreet Combustion 2 tuts
    Creating Clouds with Combustion
    The 3d transition in combustion2
    Mist Effect Tutorial
    Apply motion-blur to a moving object in your keyed footage
    Combustion Hardware Guide: Build the Best computer!
    Digital Producer tuts for C*
    Pulling a Blue Screen with Combustion’s Keyer
    Speeding Up Display Performance in Combustion 2
    Moving to Combustion 2 from After Effects, 5 part series article:
    Part 1: Working with Illustrator files
    Part 2: Working with Photoshop files
    Part 3: A birds-eye view of the C2 interface, volume one
    Part 4: A birds-eye view of the C2 interface, volume two
    Part 5: A birds-eye view of the C2 interface, volume three

Digital Fusion:

•  
  • 
    Tips and Tricks from Fxguide for DF(around 11 of them)
    Technical FAQs on Eyeon’s site
    Techniques on Eyeon’s site(lots of tutorials, macros, scripts and courseware)
    DFX+/Fusion Tutorial Videos on Newtek’s site
    Just for fun(requires flash)
    Basic Poly mask in 30 seconds(requires flash)
    Grid Warp
    VFXTalk DF Tutorials
    Fireworks Extravaganza
    Color Matching

•  
  •  
    • CMI Studios Video Tuts:
      Faking smoke trails
      Fusion Color Correct 1&2
      Shiny Text
      Additional text tuts at the bottom of the page at the link above:
      #11 Simulating Microthermal Turbulence in Digital Fusion 4.02
      #12 Fluid simulation with displacements and grid warp in Digital Fusion 4.02
      #13 Displacement of clouds text effect DF 4.0
      #14 Simulating fluid reflections in DF 4.02
    • Digital Producer tuts for DF:
      Simple and Stuttered Strobes in Digital Fusion
      Using DVE for a Motion Graphics Background in Digital Fusion
      Using a Reference Frame for Color Matching in Digital Fusion
      Grid Warp in Digital Fusion 4
      Color Suppression in Digital Fusion 3.1
      Creating a Fireworks Display Using Digital Fusion’s Particle System
      The Art of Rotoscoping with Multiple Splines
      Post-Multiplication in Digital Fusion
      Bitmap Particles in Digital Fusion
      Simple Overhead Text in Digital Fusion

FFI:

•  
  • 
    Flame Tips and Tricks with Kuban Altan
    CMI Studios Video Tuts: Displacements
    Tips and Tricks from Fxguide for FFI(flame/inferno)
    Flame/Fire

Houdini Halo:

•  
  • 
    Sidefx Compositing Lessons
    Oddforce tutorials
    Visual Paradigms Houdini Page (temporarily down)
    CMI Studios Video Tuts: Houdini Halo Image Based Glow Session

Nuke:

•  
  • 
    Throb’s page
    Nuke Central
    CMI Studios Video Tuts: Channels Inhouse Tutorial, 3d Compositing, Changing Seasons
    Tips and Tricks from FXguide for Nuke(4 of them so far)

Shake:

•  
  • 
    Aneks tutorials on Multipass Keying and Multipass Comping(hosted on vfxtalk)
    Building Sapphire Sparks Edge Ray in Shake 2.5.1
    TV Scanline text tutorial for closeup animation
    CMI Studios Video Tuts: Blurry Reflections, Shadow Displacements, Random Highlighting, Alternative GUI, Expression Linking, Simulating 3d in Shake, Smoking Text
    Shake Support Documents(Bugs, Incompatibilities, etc…)
    Compositing Tutorial by John Moores
    Tips and Tricks from Fxguide for Shake
    Shake Benchmarking Site

Additional Compositing Apps:

•  
  • 
    Wondertouch.com Tutorials, hints and Tips for Illusion
    Tips and Tricks from Fxguide

Listserves and Forums for Compositing

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Listserves

:
Digital Fusion: http://www.pigsfly.com/
Shake: http://www.highend2d.com/shake/listserver/

Forums:
http://www.cgtalk.com/
http://www.vfxtalk.com/
http://www.sidefx.com/forum/
http://www.postforum.com
http://www.creativecow.net/
http://www.cgchannel.com/forum/index
http://www.highend2d.com
http://www.shakeforum.com
http://www.mograph.net/board/
http://www.mgla.org/forum.html
http://www.wwug.com/
http://www.uemforums.com/

Combustion Exchange FTP:
by Alex Udell
ftp://combustionexchange.no-ip.com
login: combustion_user
pw: learn

 

__________________

 

Compositing Books

The Art and Science of Digital Compositing
by Ron Brinkmann
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t…=glance&s=books

Digital Compositing In Depth: The Only Guide to Post Production for Visual Effects in Film
by Doug Kelly
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t…=glance&s=books

Digital Compositing for Film and Video with CDROM
by Steve Wright
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t…=glance&s=books

Apple Pro Training Series: Shake 3
by Marco Paolini
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A…7497765-9064829

Inspired 3D Lighting & Compositing
by David A. Parrish
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t…=glance&s=books

The Invisible Art
by Mark Cotta Vaz, Craig Barron
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t…=glance&s=books

Combustion v2: The On-Line WebWarriors Guide
by Jack Pfeiffer
http://www.creativecow.net/dairy_st…eb_warrior.html

Combustion Ground Rules
by Todd Peterson
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t…=glance&s=books

Focal Easy Guide to Discreet combustion 3 : For new users and professionals
by Gary M. Davis
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A…4316010-7789739

Reference Books:
American Cinematographer Video Manual
by Frank Beacham
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t…=books&n=507846

American Cinematographer Video Manual 3RD Edition
by Michael Grotticelli
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t…=books&n=507846

Photoshop CS for Nonlinear Editors (DV Expert Series)
by Richard Harrington
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t…=books&n=507846

Film Into Video: A Guide to Merging the Technologies, Second Edition
by Stuart Blake Jones, Richard H. Kallenberger, George D. Cvjetnicanin
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t…=glance&s=books

Film Technology in Post Production, Second Edition
by Dominic Case
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t…=glance&s=books

American Cinematographer Manual (8th Edition)
by Rob Hummel
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A…2902326-1251166

Color:

The Art of Color
by Johannes Itten
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A…2902326-1251166

Pantone Guide to Communicating with Color
by Leatrice Eiseman
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A…2902326-1251166

Color Correction for Digital Video: Using Desktop Tools to Perfect Your Image
by Steve Hullfish, Jaime Fowler
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t…=glance&s=books

Video Color Correction for Non-Linear Editors: A Step-by-Step Guide
by Stuart Blake-Jones
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t…=glance&s=books

Typography:

The Elements of Typographic Style
by Robert Bringhurst
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A…2902326-1251166

 

Compositing Videos
http://www.videoblurb.com/hello.html
http://www.thestreetproductions.com/
http://www.techanim.com/
http://www.cmistudios.com
http://www.runawaytraining.com/

 

 

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Filed under: Video Editing

Cinema Look Video

I have been always looking for the ways i can make my home made video look like cinema. Here is another try. This scene shot with CANON ZR150 miniDV camcorder, in a Bright Day light at Kings Island Cincinnati with my family. Take a look at first clip – Original Video

And Take a look at the below clip in which i have set following properties to make it look like cinetiq.

This clip is edited in Adobe Premiere Pro CS2. I have used followings.

Color Balance RGB (r95,g101,b101),Tint,ProcAMP,Gamma Correction 12

Filed under: Video Editing , Cinema Look Video