Tuesday, 11 November 2014
Linking Audio to Visuals and Applying effects P4 (d)
Importing Footage and replacing the audio:
When I first imported my footage the audio from the footage would play over my music track, to remove this error I initially did the following;
1. Find the clip that had an audio track and select the audio.
However this method consumed too much time and I found an alternative which was to place the music track in audio layer 2 and then mute layer 1 which contained the footage audio.
Audio 1 on:
Audio 1 Muted:
Editing the visuals to link with the beat:
One of the most important aspects of creating a music video is ensuring that the visuals link well with audio as this can improve the feel of the video and make montages far more dramatic, one way of achieving this is using jump cuts on the beat of the audio. This method is much more professional than just placing clips randomly over a music track.
When I first imported my footage the audio from the footage would play over my music track, to remove this error I initially did the following;
1. Find the clip that had an audio track and select the audio.
2. Right click the footage and click unlink, this splits the audio from the video allowing you to edit them individually.
3. This then allowed me to select the audio track on its own and delete it.
However this method consumed too much time and I found an alternative which was to place the music track in audio layer 2 and then mute layer 1 which contained the footage audio.
Audio 1 on:
Audio 1 Muted:
Editing the visuals to link with the beat:
One of the most important aspects of creating a music video is ensuring that the visuals link well with audio as this can improve the feel of the video and make montages far more dramatic, one way of achieving this is using jump cuts on the beat of the audio. This method is much more professional than just placing clips randomly over a music track.
Audio Mixer:
In Adobe Premiere Pro, you can edit audio, add effects to it, and mix as many tracks of audio in a sequence as your computer system can handle.
In the Audio Track Mixer, you can adjust settings while listening to audio tracks and viewing video tracks. Each Audio Track Mixer track corresponds to a track in the timeline of the active sequence and displays the Timeline audio tracks in an audio console layout. You can rename a track by double-clicking its name. You can also use the Audio Track Mixer to record audio directly into a sequence’s tracks.
Sound Effects:
Another one of premieres features is the effects controls panel that allow you to make adjustments to the audio tracks volume, this can be used to create fade in and out effects by key framing
Applying Visual Effects P4 (c)
Editing in Premiere Pro
The first step of the editing process required importing all of my final pieces of footage into Adobe's editing program, Premiere Pro CS5. As I had already renamed my footage in finder the shots where already in the correct order, this allowed me to quickly get on with cutting my footage down to the correct lengths. Ensuring that my video matched the same time as the music.
In order for these effects to make an impact on the footage I had to adjust the parameters. Using the curves editor graph I could adjust the individual colour channels of the clips, however I chose to edit the RGB channel as a whole to increase the contrast of the colours.
Shown below are the effects I used to create my vignette, once again I used curves to adjust its colour and also certain blur effects I used to distort the edge of the frame.
To ensure that these effects did not effect the whole frame I had to apply a subtract mask to the layer, what this mask does is remove the effect anywhere within the area applied as shown below.
Anywhere within the yellow semicircle is then cut out leaving a black vignette around the edge of the image.
Below shows the final edit with no Adjustment Layer Effects:
Below is the final result with the Effects Applied:
In order to create interesting scenes that would tie into the plot I created, modified and then animated shape layers to represent a futuristic HUD style animation that could be used in the video. Below shows the shape tool menu which I used to select the type of shape I wanted, in this case I used the rectangle tool to create the boxes.
However these default shapes were sometimes not sufficient for what I wanted to achieve so by using the mask tool I created custom shapes that had more style, and related to the content.
By default keyframes have no velocity in AE, this means that any movement looks unrealistic as the speed at which the object moves is constant as opposed to gradually speeding up and then gradually slowing down.
In order to quickly adjust this I used the Easy Ease feature on both keyframes that result in a smoother movement.
This graph shows how the velocity of the shape is effected by the easy ease effect.
Once having recreated the shooting conditions of the day I could progress to the matchmoving section of the edit - this involved aligning the camera in the 3D space to match the camera of the real clip, this means that the object in this case the robot looks like its accurately placed in the footage.
In order to do this I required a still frame from the shot which I exported from After Effects, I then imported it into the camera viewport in 3DS Max to use as a reference.
Once I had completed the previous tasks I sometimes had to animate parts of the robot, this process is similar to that found in after effects as you define the position of the object in the start frame, press the keyframe button move to the last frame of movement and adjust the objects position or rotation and then stop recording the keyframes.
Before exporting I checked my render settings choosing the format 'quicktime'
Once I had achieved this I had two main steps to achieve;
- Colour Correction
- Implementing 3D elements e.g Robot
- Other Misc. Graphics e.g 2D Space Scene.
In order to achieve this I required 3 programs;
- Boujou, for advanced motion tracking.
- 3DS Max for camera matchmoving and robot animation.
-Adobe After Effects CS6 for Colour grading, Rotoscoping, 2D graphics and any final adjustments.
In order to do this used the Dynamic Link this means After Effects compositions can “live” in a Premiere Pro sequence. Changes made in Premiere pro are immediately reflected in After Effects using Dynamic Link. This technology gives users a render-free editing and graphics workflow quickly reducing the time it took me to adjust any editing I had to change during the 2nd stage of editing.
To do this I used After Effects;
1) Selected File - Import - Adobe Premiere Pro Project
Colour Correction
Once having imported my footage into AE it was important to apply the correct effects to the footage to get the feel that I wanted, ensuring that I matched my themes.
To apply the effects I wanted I selected my adjustment layer and then went to effects>Colour Correction>[specific effect]
In total I applied 4 various effects that made changes to lighting, colour and contrast, I also added a grain effect.
In order for these effects to make an impact on the footage I had to adjust the parameters. Using the curves editor graph I could adjust the individual colour channels of the clips, however I chose to edit the RGB channel as a whole to increase the contrast of the colours.
I also used the brightness and contrast effect to directly influence the contrast without editing the colour channels. I also used the hue saturation effect to reduce the overall colour of the footage.
Below is the layer structure used to composite the effects I applied, at the very top I had a vignette that covered everything, below that are two small stock footage clips I used above certain shots (the film reel footage) and below this was the main effects layer and the black and white fade effect I used in the beginning of the film, at the very bottom is the premiere pro sequence itself, this shows that anything above this layer is effecting it.
Shown below are the effects I used to create my vignette, once again I used curves to adjust its colour and also certain blur effects I used to distort the edge of the frame.
To ensure that these effects did not effect the whole frame I had to apply a subtract mask to the layer, what this mask does is remove the effect anywhere within the area applied as shown below.
Below shows the final edit with no Adjustment Layer Effects:
Below is the final result with the Effects Applied:
Motion Graphics
In order to create interesting scenes that would tie into the plot I created, modified and then animated shape layers to represent a futuristic HUD style animation that could be used in the video. Below shows the shape tool menu which I used to select the type of shape I wanted, in this case I used the rectangle tool to create the boxes.
However these default shapes were sometimes not sufficient for what I wanted to achieve so by using the mask tool I created custom shapes that had more style, and related to the content.
The next stage involved was animating the shapes so they would fly in from the edge of the screen, this involved key-framing the position parameter of each shape and clicking the stopwatch icon to activate the keyframing ensuring that I was at the correct starting frame, the next step was to move to the point at which I wanted the movement to stop and move the shape to where I wanted it, AE then automatically inserts a keyframe and the shape moves.
By default keyframes have no velocity in AE, this means that any movement looks unrealistic as the speed at which the object moves is constant as opposed to gradually speeding up and then gradually slowing down.
In order to quickly adjust this I used the Easy Ease feature on both keyframes that result in a smoother movement.
This graph shows how the velocity of the shape is effected by the easy ease effect.
3DS MAX
One of the final steps to creating the video was the integration of the 3D robot. Before I cold insert the object into the footage the 3D scene had to be setup, this involved matching the lighting of the shot with the 3D environment, ensuring that the texture of the model was suitable, setting up the floor and ensuring shadows were cast in the correct direction.
This meant that on the day of the shoot I had to record the time at which I was filming. I also had to note the focal length of the lense I was shooting with so I could recreate the camera in 3DS max as other I would be unable to match the perspective due to an incorrect field of view.
Once having recreated the shooting conditions of the day I could progress to the matchmoving section of the edit - this involved aligning the camera in the 3D space to match the camera of the real clip, this means that the object in this case the robot looks like its accurately placed in the footage.
In order to do this I required a still frame from the shot which I exported from After Effects, I then imported it into the camera viewport in 3DS Max to use as a reference.
I then used the front viewport to align the camera at the correct height and distance from the robot.
Below shows 3DS Max's material editor, this was used to setup the lighting portrayed in the shot to give a more accurate result of the scene.
Once I had completed the previous tasks I sometimes had to animate parts of the robot, this process is similar to that found in after effects as you define the position of the object in the start frame, press the keyframe button move to the last frame of movement and adjust the objects position or rotation and then stop recording the keyframes.
After this was done I was ready to export my footage into After effects, to do this I open the render setup window and ensured that my settings matched the AE composition e.g resolution 1080x1920 and then ticked save file and choose the directory.
Due to the risk of crashes while rendering I choose to export my footage as a png sequence, this is because PNG includes and Alpha channel and if the render crashed I could start the render again from the point at which it crashed.
The only disadvantage of this was that I had to import the sequence into AE and then render it was a .MOV file to then insert into premiere pro.
The reason I required an alpha channel was it allowed me to insert my robot sequence and then place the footage below it without having to make any changes to make it visible.
To export this footage I pressed ctrl + M to add the composition to the render queue.
Before exporting I checked my render settings choosing the format 'quicktime'
Boujou
However due to the nature of some shots I had to use the match moving software boujou, this allowed me to track any movement in the footage and apply it to the robot so it looked as if it was moving with the footage.
However due to the nature of some shots I had to use the match moving software boujou, this allowed me to track any movement in the footage and apply it to the robot so it looked as if it was moving with the footage.
To get started I had to import my footage
Boujou prefers image sequences so I exported the required clip into a folder then imported it as a sequence.
Once imported I had to adjust the camera settings range from constant to varying as there is a change in the depth of field in the shot, this allows Boujou to recognise this.
Once ready the next step was to use the 'track features' tool which runs through the clip gathering the track data required.
However before I did this, in this shot I had to create a mask on the left hand side of the footage as the character moves. This mask ensures that the track points do not track this area.
The last stage of this process was transferring the track points into a camera solve, this means that the program uses the track data to establish where the camera is in comparison to the items in the scene to establish its position, this data could have been used to speed up the match moving process in 3DSMAX however I skipped this phase and exported it to AE.
Once on the export menu I changed the format to .ma which is used as track data in AE.
Once this was completed I imported the .ma file into AE aligned it with the footage and parented the robot layer to the position of the track points giving the illusion that the robot was staying in the same place.
Producing and reviewing an off line edit P4 (b)
Editing in Premiere Pro
The first step of the editing process required importing all of my final pieces of footage into Adobe's editing program, Premiere Pro CS5. As I had already renamed my footage in finder the shots where already in the correct order, this allowed me to quickly get on with cutting my footage down to the correct lengths.
Ensuring that my video matched the length of my track was important as I wanted to ensure that my cuts were in sync with the beat of music, the consequence of not having enough footage would be devastating as a large areas of the video would be a blank screen. Having too much footage would not be an issue though as I could cut out unessential scenes. Before inserting any footage I downloaded my track and imported it into Premiere Pro placing it in an audio layer, an advantage of using premiere pro is that it clearly display's the audios waveform this was a huge advantage to me as I had used the waveform in the planning stage to arrange the order of my shots.
Initial import:
This showed me the length of the music, this then allowed me to import the rest of my footage. How I found that completely uncut, the footage was over twice as long as the actual song and contained large periods of unwanted material this meant I had to remove some shots reorganise others and cut some down thus creating an offline edit.
Tools:
To create my offline edit I used the basic tools provided by premiere pro to trim down footage and place it in the correct order.
The most commonly used tool to trim down clips is the razor tool (shortcut C) as this allows you to cut clips in half. The track selection tool (shortcut A) then allows you to move this footage freely along the timeline, allowing you to rearrange clip order.
If you want to extend a clip after cutting it then you can use the ripple edit tool to adjust an edit point and move other clips in the timeline to compensate. An alternative to this is the rolling edit tool which adjusts an edit point between two clips without affecting the rest of the timeline.
Relating to Storyboard and Shot List:
When editing the footage it was important for me to stick to my original plans that I had created in the storyboard and shot list. Thanks to the way I had renamed the clips everything was in exactly the same order as I had planned in the storyboard apart from the 2D Graphic scenes.
Ensuring that my video matched the length of my track was important as I wanted to ensure that my cuts were in sync with the beat of music, the consequence of not having enough footage would be devastating as a large areas of the video would be a blank screen. Having too much footage would not be an issue though as I could cut out unessential scenes. Before inserting any footage I downloaded my track and imported it into Premiere Pro placing it in an audio layer, an advantage of using premiere pro is that it clearly display's the audios waveform this was a huge advantage to me as I had used the waveform in the planning stage to arrange the order of my shots.
Initial import:
This showed me the length of the music, this then allowed me to import the rest of my footage. How I found that completely uncut, the footage was over twice as long as the actual song and contained large periods of unwanted material this meant I had to remove some shots reorganise others and cut some down thus creating an offline edit.
Offline Edit:
as
Tools:
To create my offline edit I used the basic tools provided by premiere pro to trim down footage and place it in the correct order.
The most commonly used tool to trim down clips is the razor tool (shortcut C) as this allows you to cut clips in half. The track selection tool (shortcut A) then allows you to move this footage freely along the timeline, allowing you to rearrange clip order.
If you want to extend a clip after cutting it then you can use the ripple edit tool to adjust an edit point and move other clips in the timeline to compensate. An alternative to this is the rolling edit tool which adjusts an edit point between two clips without affecting the rest of the timeline.
Relating to Storyboard and Shot List:
When editing the footage it was important for me to stick to my original plans that I had created in the storyboard and shot list. Thanks to the way I had renamed the clips everything was in exactly the same order as I had planned in the storyboard apart from the 2D Graphic scenes.
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