ABOUT ME

I live in a camper van with a West Highland Terrier for company.
My passion is creating images but it is a work in progress.
I am always willing to share what knowledge I have and can be contacted through the comments on this post or e-mail ADRIAN
ALL IMAGES WILL ENLARGE WITH A LEFT CLICK

Saturday 16 August 2014

NEW HEAD. (16/08/14)

A better title might have been “NERDY AGAIN” but I’m not nerdy. Nerds know what they are doing and I keep getting all muddled up.

I’m still struggling to produce my opening video animation. I want a globe hovering in a ring made up of the letters that spell Adrian’s Images. Optimistically I’m halfway there; pessimistically about 30% from the bottom. Animations tend to go belly up right at the end. It’s possible that Blender would auto save but I do it every now and again. I write on a bit of paper where I have got to.

image     This is a Blender 3D screen grab whilst it is rendering. It does the animation one frame at a time and the black squares are the bits it was processing at the moment of the screen grab. It takes 100 samples in this case which is about the minimum. What the minimum of and what it does with them I’m not sure; in fact I have not got a clue. If I wanted sparkling quality then I would sample at 300. It would take all night to do 300 frames. It’s okay though because once it starts I can go for a walk, read a book, cook a meal. It’s like doing laundry in a washing machine. You don’t have to sit and watch it.

Someone, a misguided fool, asked what the video editor looks like. I used CS6 for todays video. Blender also has a video and audio editor. I sometimes use Lightworks which is a free version of PS After Effects or Video Pro. Lightworks I must start using more often but it makes my head spin.image This is a screen grab of two screens. I load everything on to separate layers. The time line is on my laptop screen and the video is on the monitor to the right. Also bottom right you will see a big list of other things. The only thing missing from this is the last audio track. They are the green bits. I have to render the video. Then turn off the sound and record commentary whilst watching the rendered video. There must be an easier way.image  This is what the time line looks like when I have trimmed clips popped fades on almost perfectly. I missed a fade on the title. I’m not a nerd; I’m a Muppet. I did hit the four minute target length though. If there is sod all going on then four minutes is more than enough. Photoshop make life easy. They make audio green, video blue and if you modify the video they convert it to a purple smart object. I am getting to grips with this job.

All audio on the following video was recorded on the Zoom H1. It is brilliant for the money but unfortunately doesn’t make me sound like a thespian.

The gales are here so I will delay my departure to Ullapool by a couple of days. I only stop at Ullapool for the supermarket and it breaks the journey to Inverness where they have another supermarket for what I forgot the day before.

Have fun.

17 comments:

  1. Great sound on this one, too, Adrian - exactly what I was missing in my video clips of the sea. with just the camera. I would expect the short ones would have a go at various languages from time to time, spirited travellers they are.
    Cheers, McGregor

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    1. Mr McGregor. like most things in life it could be better. Do you have a blog? I don't see it if you do.
      The sound is fine for a seventy pound sterling recorder. I'll have to practise speaking. I sound like a demented bee.

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  2. Adriaan Well I think your movie with the sound of the sea beautiful it's like I'm with myself, I would bring nothing of it.

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    1. Bas, video is an art form on it's own. The sound works better through the Zoom recorder. I will have to wait a while and live on porridge but a good independent microphone would not go amiss.

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  3. A noticeable improvement Adrian, well done. Your dog's and the Italians made me chuckle.

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  4. Just found this that might interest you http://vimeo.com/videoschool/lesson/110/tripod-tricks

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    1. Douglas, well over twelve hours to produce this.
      The dogs always steal it she was saying something like "SEDERSI". They couldn't usually care less, unless it has my urgency prefix. They know I mean it if I say come the fuck here and NOW but they got the message with her finger. Amazing animals are dogs.
      So everyone has trouble panning. Great.....I'll get an elastic band. Thanks I thought it was just me.

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  5. Well, that was a cool video. Now the waves at the beginning were coming in at a good clip! Now I understand why you've been looking for a storm and swells. Nicely done.

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  6. Red, that is down to time lapse. two hours activity compressed into 80s.

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  7. Congrats Adrian, I envy you, let me know how it works for you!

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    1. Maria, it is a beautiful bit of kit. As you suggested the ball base would make life easier. I record video at 1080 so even if I'm not quite level I can straighten up with the free transform tool.
      I'll keep on using it and will eventually become better.

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  8. This place is simply gorgeous!

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    1. Maria, I was going to leave today but it's pouring with rain and blowing half a gale so I'll stop a couple more days.

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  9. Not that I have done it, but I have recently learned that if you convert a clip to a smart object in PS, you can edit it in Camera RAW. I guess this only applies to the creative cloud version, but it is an interesting development.

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    1. John, if you convert the video to frames then you can export to Bridge and edit in RAW. When you have all the frames in the RAW editor I scan through for any bad ones and discard them. Then I select one in about the middle and do what I want to it. Press select all and synchronise. You can then go back to CS6 but before you do batch rename as any gaps in numbering leave a clear frame which can be the very devil to find. It's how I do the time lapse sequences. They auto convert to smart objects if you use free transform to fine tune horizons. There is a way of converting them back but I have forgotten what it is.
      I don't have CC. I only got CS6 as it was the last chance to get a hard copy of the software.
      I have a middling monster graphics card, a very expensive intel processor and 16GB of RAM. I find if I don't load stuff into new video groups it slows things down. Also if I use adjustment layers on the clips and don't close them the job can get very tedious.

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  10. Well that's me bang up to date with all your posts. I understood most of the pictures and I even understood some of the words. The sound quality with your new thingy is superb.

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    1. Graham, I am pleased with the sound. It makes a big difference to record without out all the wind noise and clattering and banging that I get with the camera microphone.

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