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Set Construction
 Making the frame for the mid deck is done by laying the pieces out on the cut-out pieces of plywood to make sure they all line up. Then I add glue and hope for the best.
Owner : The_Noid
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Shop: Help Keep Our Project Going
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All Shots Re-Composited |
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Posted by: The_Noid
on Monday, June 22, 2009 - 06:20 AM |
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All animated shots are now re-composited within Vegas. I can't believe how well it looks. Each shot looks twice as sharp and has no more jagged areas around the outlines of the ship or the puppets. Even tiny details, like the lamp on the rear of the ship look as though green screen wasn't even used at all.
Another amazing thing is that the two shots I originally animated using solid pink screen were saved! What I did after realizing After Effects couldn't handle the chroma keying of those shots without major problems was to animate each layer of water and the ships as separate elements.
It never looked good. In fact in my mind, the chroma key was the weakest link visually in the entire film. Now I'm super happy with the way things look, and I know the audience will think it looks nice as well. There simply isn't any issue now with chroma key in any shot.
So what's next? I talked with my mom about the film and she offered to watch my son once a week so that I can get back into animating the shots. Of course I still need to take care of business and family matters first, but it opens up the chances for me to get back on track once and for all.
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All Set Up! |
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Posted by: The_Noid
on Wednesday, June 17, 2009 - 04:25 AM |
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I purchased Sony Vegas through Amazon.com yesterday and it should arrive in about a week. Since I'm always trying to save money I used the free shipping method which takes a bit longer, but that's ok. I'm able to edit Zombie Pirates on the demo version of the program, and all I need to do is put in the serial code to make it unlimited.
A nice thing about buying Sony Vegas is it comes with Sound Forge, a very nice audio editing program. It's just an added bonus, but since I was using Audacity which is free and very limited - it gives me that many more possibilities.
There's another good thing about Sony Vegas. It's chroma key green screen capabilities are way better than After Effects as far as I can tell. Once you plop your raw AVI into the timeline and add the effect it sets things up where you really don't have to tweak it much at all.
In my last setup I would create AVI files from after effects to be edited in premiere. Now I can plop all the shots direct into Vegas which means there is less loss of quality to the final product. I can also animate the background layer in Vegas, so there's no need to use AE any more, except for titles.
Another area that I had to work on was getting Stop Motion Pro to work on Vista 64. After sending an e-mail to Paul, the owner - he said maybe I tried installing an older version. He was right, I tried to install version 6 instead of 6.5 from an old .exe file I transferred over to the new machine. Once I installed the correct version, everything started up without any errors.
On other words, I am all set up and can get back to work - and the final product will be even nicer than with my old machine!
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Sony Vegas Demo Testing |
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Posted by: The_Noid
on Saturday, June 13, 2009 - 07:06 AM |
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Great news, I found a demo version of Sony Vegas Studio Platinum 9.0 and installed it on my Vista 64 Business computer. So far it is working great. It opened all the old files that I edited with Premiere on Windows XP 32 bit.
It's definitely an impressive program with features that are similar to Premiere. It's not exactly the most intuitive program, but easy enough for me to get around with just a day of playing with it.
You can see in the image I posted that it works perfect with a two-monitor setup. I have my old monitor set up as the preview window and the wide screen HD monitor set up as the editing screen. It's great that my friend Andy made such a great offer on the new computer so that this is possible.
So far I've edited a lot, but need to drop in a lot of Photoshop images into the storyboarded parts that haven't been animated. Amazingly you can just drop .PSD files into the track, but sadly you can't drop After Effects documents into it. Not that it matters too much, but in the end the opening titles won't be as nice once it's rendered.
So what's next? Well since Geoff Clark donated money towards the program and I've tested it, I'll be buying it soon. I will be watching Amazon.com to see if the price drops before the demo runs out within 30 days. This could save me 10-20 bucks if someone makes an offer for either a used copy or a lower new package.
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Re-Doing All Editing? |
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Posted by: The_Noid
on Thursday, June 11, 2009 - 11:07 PM |
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Vista 64 bit is a nice operating system, but when it comes to getting editing programs to work it's definitely not something I recommend.
I've tried to see if my work flow could be matched to the previous computer setup I had. Mainly that I would use Stop Motion Pro to compile my still images into a raw .AVI file for editing.
I told Paul at Stop Motion Pro that I switched computers and would need a new key. A discussion broke out between us through e-mails about the HD version of their program, and Paul gave me a license key to unlock the HD features.
This is great! But there is one problem, I can't get a computer ID to unlock the program. I've sent them an e-mail but unfortunately their mailbox was full and so I can't get this fixed just yet. However if I do, I can re-edit most of the film to create an even higher quality image.
A simple green screen test of the opening shot by outputting to Windows Media 9 for editing in Pinnacle Studio Ultimate was much better than what I could do in Adobe After Effects.....at least until I play with AE later on. I'm not sure AE can edit Windows Media 9 files yet. But the results are very promising so far. I just need to get Stop Motion Pro to unlock to get rid of the time limit and water mark.
So with Stop Motion Pro out of commission and Adobe Premier as well, everything is at a stand still with regards to editing. But if I can get Stop Motion Pro working, there's a chance I can re-edit most of the film in Pinnacle Studio Ultimate.
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Video Editing Nightmare? |
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Posted by: The_Noid
on Friday, May 29, 2009 - 04:57 AM |
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It looks like I hit a snag in video editing of Zombie Pirates. Thanks to Andy, our server guru - he built an excellent computer system for me. Since my computer was approaching near 6 years old, it just couldn't keep up with the newer technology. Specifically HD video editing. It was impossible on my last Pentium 4 machine. Even after upgrading the memory to 4 gigs, the operating system could only utilize 3.5 because it was a 32 bit XP operating system. I was cheated!
I thought about buying a new computer from Dell, but couldn't afford it. Then I thought I could build one which is cheaper to do. When I told Andy to help me find various parts, like the mother board, chipset, memory and power supply - the total came out to over 1000 bucks. Still out of range of my budget.
Andy had another solution. He offered me a system that he owned and that he would upgrade for me - as well aslet me make monthly payments to him. It was a compromise between buying the latest and fastest for the most, for getting something pretty darn fast for less. I agreed and now have a quad core 6 gig system with a 1 terabyte hard drive. I tried editing the HD files from the Canon Vixia HD camcorder and it works great.
While transferring all my past programs so I could give editing Zombie Pirates a try I hit a snag. Adobe Premiere simply does not work on the new 64 Vista operating system. Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate which does work for editing doesn't edit the old raw AVI files that Zombie Pirates is made of.
I've set out on a search and Don Carlson told me about Sony Vegas 9 Platinum. It's one of the only programs able to edit on the new 64 Vista systems for the best price. It runs about $74.99 USD. I don't have the cash for it, but will definitely need this to get Zombie Pirates back on track. Since I can work on editing and take care of AJ at the same time - now is the best time to complete the editing of what I completed so far.
If you are able to make a donation, now is the time we need it. You can check out Sony Vegas on Amazon here for the latest price here. Anyone who is nice enough to give us a hand will get your name in the credits and a free DVD copy of the film once it's completed. Any help is highly appreciated!
UPDATE: As one of our visitors mentioned, we might be able to convert the avi files to HD files - but are looking for the proper software that can work on Vista. So far no luck, but that will be my next job on Zombie Pirates before we decide to go with Vegas!
UPDATE #2: Thank you Geoff Clark for your very generous donation towards Sony Vegas! We most likely will end up buying it because I still haven't found a way to convert the AVI's for editing.
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