h264 rocks

Wow. Today I was preparing files to take to a sound engineer who has agreed to critique my sound mix. He recommended that I bring the film as a QuickTime H264 movie and the final mix on a data CD. When I first exported the H264 movie using the default settings, the file size was huge, so I reduced the bit rate in half, thinking there would be a reduction in quality. and being a bit apprehensive because of the amount of time it takes to export the movie. Well I was wrong about the quality and it was certainly worth the 2 hour export time. I now have a 1280x720 QuickTime H264 that weighs in at 265 mb, that looks beautiful (and the mix sounds pretty good too -- but that is really for my sound engineer to judge ;o).

I've also been preparing the documentation and promo stuff for festivals and looking at the various festivals in which to enter the film. It feels like an uphill battle because it will be rejected from most -- in fact this is the statistic -- most films only make it into 25% of festivals they are submitted to. Knowing that it was rejected 5 times from funding agencies isn't helping my motivation right now. Reading all the rules and figuring out the deadlines and whether I can afford the projection format requirement they want and the publicity materials ... ughh it's a bit overwhelming. I'm hoping that once I get a complete package done, it will only be a matter of duplicating it. Next up is to create media screeners and a poster.

Anyhow, I have lovely DVD covers and labels waiting to be affixed to the DVDs. Here is a postcard that I'm working on:









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testing the DVD

I made a first test DVD last night and made fixes to the DVD menus today. I've tested the sound mix on a few different systems in house, but still need to go to a sound studio and have a professional check my levels. Then I can go to the video house and have the digiBeta and betaSP tapes made. I'm only going to make NTSC tapes for now (unless the Video house convinces me that it would be more cost effective to do PAL at the same time -- we'll see).

The Festival de Nouveau Cinema requires subtitles in French and I'm not sure what the best way is to do that. I started to add them in Final Cut Pro, but I stopped myself and got back on my priorities (the FNC deadline is June 15th so I have time to decide what to do). An option other than subtitles in FCP might be to record a French dialogue track and have the Video house make a digiBeta with the French sound track, of course then they might want English subtitles. I'll need to check the rules again. In the meantime, I can always translate the dialogue into French.

I had wanted to animate the end credits, but I've left them with still images. I think it'll be ok. I've just gotta get this thing out the door.

Here are a few screen shots to wet your appetite:

every day I get a bit closer

The cough is done and is better. I have a test version of the sound mix that I'm burning to CD to double check on my stereo -- I'll still need to double check the final on "real" studio monitors, but this should tell me how close I am. I encountered a software crash in SoundTrack Pro exporting the "real" mix. I can work around it by not using the mixer but just animating (they call it "automating") the levels in the individual tracks rather than through busses -- it'll be a bit more finicky work but that's ok -- hopefully only one more day of "mixing".

So tonight I'm encoding a test MPEG 2/AC-3 to see what it will look and sound like on DVD.

To top it off, I noticed a color pop on the window -- I couldn't believe it -- I was sure I had fixed all the window issues. Anyhow, not to worry, I've rendered a few more window "frames" ;o) to fix it and am re-compositing the 400 frames now ... I had considered just ignoring it, but I spent so much time trying to get it right, I would have been sad. I hope it's really fixed this time.

I'm also working on the DVD menu (background image) and it's looking pretty good -- I just need to get the buttons done.

Sound and more sound

I've re-recorded the dialogue and am hoping that it is a bit funnier. I've added a bit at the end, that I don't want to be too specific about (I don't want to give it away), but I'm having difficultly deciding which take to use -- there are 2 that could be funny to different people. I may need to get a second opinion on it.

The only other sound track that I'm really not satisfied with yet is the moose's cough. So I've just ruined my voice by recording the cough and am now about to splice it up and slip it in and see if it works better. In order to get a good cough I did the number one thing singers are not supposed to do -- I ate dairy products. I'm amazed but it really worked. I suppose I could have taken up smoking ... hmm, if these takes don't work, maybe I'll go buy a pack of smokes.

On another note, Rick May has finished his short animated film. I can't wait to see it. He has gone through pretty much everything I have -- he even has a recent post about aspect ratios ;o) He did the smart thing and used a render farm service.

moosic is done, well ...

Ok, the music has been finalized, recorded and sent over to SoundTrackPro. It all fits nicely with the picture. I'm not 100% satisfied with one instrument on one track, but I don't have any bright ideas right now of what would make it better. It is possible that in the mix it won't bother me so much. If it does, I can play with different instruments later, as long as the timing doesn't change (and it won't)!

Now I'm finalizing the sound edit and getting ready for the mix.

It still feels strange not to be rendering.

I've also started to prepare the DVD assets. I had forgotten how much fun making DVDs is. I'm being a bit sarcastic here -- Although I love making the menus and buttons, especially making unique/fun buttons -- what I don't like is standard definition video and non-square pixels and aspect ratios stuff. I have only seen HD listed as a possible DVD submission type in the requirements of one film festival .. all the rest are NTSC or PAL, so I'm stuck with dealing with that. I can only burn SD DVDs here anyway.

Sound edit and music

Currently (still) working on the sound edit and music. I've been using SoundTrack Pro for the edit, but I am seriously considering switching to ProTools. The limitation of SoundTrack Pro that is driving me nuts is that I can't edit all the tracks simulataneously, so if I make a tweak to the picture edit,I need to adjust all the tracks individually, rather than being able to select them all and insert or cut out time. This is one of those times where I think "I can't believe the software doesn't do this". Of course I'd have the same problem if I were editing magnetic tape on a Steenbeck, but this is computer software for goodness sake.

It is strange not to be rendering or compositing. For the first time in more than a year, I actually turned my PC off for a while. It's nice to work on my laptop, partly because I can take it downstairs where it is not so hot and I don't have to run the air conditioning.

Relief

"On the 29th April Moscow was washed clean by a thunderstorm. The air was delightful: it mellowed the heart and made one want to start living again."
-- Mikhail Bulgakov, Black Snow. Translated by Michael Glenny.

Black Snow is a wonderful novel about the process of writing a play and having a theatre produce it. I've just re-read it and have enjoyed it more this time as I can relate the main character's thoughts about writing a play to the process of making and releasing an animated film ;o)

The smoking moose film is now composited. There are a few small compositing glitches, but I've gone ahead and created the uncompressed QuickTime movies and have started the "final" edit in Final Cut. I've also made a backup of the "final" scene files and rendered pictures, which is a relief because I was worried about losing months of rendered files if the disk had crashed.

so close and yet so far and where's Batty?

There are only a few more frames rendering and a few more to composite ... in the meantime the soundtrack is coming along. The moose's cough is better (using Sound Track Pro's EQ channel editor gives a much better result that trying to match pitch using the pitch editor) and I've added a bunch more subtle sound effects that add to the general atmosphere. I'll need to make a few adjustments for synchronization purposes to the music but I need to wait until after I've finished compositing because the compositor takes over the PC's CPU.

In anticipation of finishing the film, I've downloaded XSI 6.01! But I'm not installing it until I've finished the renders and composites. In theory you can run previous versions with the latest version on the same system, but I'm not taking any chances. I'm excited about using some of the new animation features to animate a few teasers for the film.

The title/credit design is still worrying me. Right now it is very basic and in the past I've always created much more creative titles. Hopefully I'll come up with something by the time I'm finished with everything else.

On another note, I went to the Red Bird Studio tonight where Stickey Hickee was showing off their artwork - they are a wonderful bunch of artists who draw comics. Really, really nice, heartwarming, art, even if Batty wasn't there.

ah zoot alors

My test composites missed some errors and there was a transform problem on the fire in scene 3 -- I'm making the corrections now and will need to relaunch the composites. One of the errors (which I've encountered before as well) is caused by having different maximum sampling values on different passes -- I'm guessing that I didn't remember to boost the max sampling back up to 2 (luckily not all frames are affected, so I'm only re-rendering the frames that are affected).

Still the end is near ;o)

Rendering is DONE! Compositing NOW!

Whoo hoo. my smoking moose film is now compositing! Meanwhile I'm working on the soundtrack and credits.

I'm only wishing the animals I liked weren't so big. Here's a girl who turned a stuffed beaver into a computer ... hmm maybe I should say she re-stuffed a stuffed beaver with a computer.

window

ok "stupid" window is more like it. I lost the highlight for the second part of scene 3 -- if I get it to work, I lose the highlight on the canary OR the matte that's cutting out the sofa on the window highlight comes back. I'm not sure how I've done it, but I think I've gotten around it... although I had to add another canary highlight to make it work and I had to adjust the tiger highlight.

The other thing I fixed today was the Raccoon's cigarette smoke (exhale and rising) which looked strange in some frames when it appeared on top of the pizza box. At first I tried to use a painted vector shape to matte it out, and although I proudly got this working correctly (animated shapes and all), for some reason it messed up the smoke when it did appear outside the pizzabox -- it messed it up in a strange way -- it was darker and had black streaks in it. So I went back to my regular method of rendering a matte pass -- it didn't take too long and it's done.

I think this is it!

I have just launched what I hope is the last test composite of scene 3, the mega multi frame multi passes craziness. The window caused me the most problems. Interestly enough, the window was was inspired by the Polish 1982 Oscar winning short film called Tango by Zbigniew Rybczynski, where everything happened in one room and started with a ball coming through the window, followed by a boy. The film continued to show multiple layers and stories in that one room. Much like the moose film and yet so different too. I doubt anyone will see the inspiration. Anyhow I think I've got compositing of the window and the characters who go out of it working. There are still rendering and compositing "mistakes" but I am leaving them, I don't think there is anything drastic that will kill the film.

For the compositing tests, I am rendering every 24th frame at 1/4 of the resolution, so I suppose there could be a surprise when I render every frame at full resolution, but hopefully those surprises can be corrected in photoshop or fixed with a second composite.

In the meantime, I've also made good progress on a redesign of the smokingmoose website, it will go live when the film is finished and available on DVD. I will release a DVD containing only the moose film as soon as possible, but the idea has always been to release a DVD of a compilation of most of my animated films (I'll leave the bad ones off ;o). The compilation will take a little longer to produce, as I need to get the previous films digitized to uncompressed QuickTime movies.

Fxtree: Composite node: Output Size Mode

After transforming effects to use through a composite node (over or math), you can easily crop to the background by setting the Output size node to Use Default Image on the Output tab.

I had been using the psd blend addon but have stopped using it as the "Place Output Image at Origin" is not working consistently and my attempts to use the Output Size Node parameter don't work with the psd blend node. This is unfortunate since the psd blend addon has more compositing options than the math composite (or perhaps they are just easier for me to use as I am used to photoshop).

As promised here is snapshot of the current state of scene 3's fxtree. It is crazy, but it is almost working! I'm having trouble matting some things, I've been attempting to reuse passes into the matte connection of composite nodes and while this is working in most cases, its not working for the fire. I'll need to render a matte for the tiger and canary for the frames when they are in front of the fire.

promo image of the moose

Ok, so the film isn't available on DVD yet, but it will be soooooo soooooon ;o)

recentering audio to 0 in SoundTrackPro

Sometimes an audio recording is not centered at 0. To fix this in SoundTrack Pro, switch from Actions to Analysis, expand Analysis type, check DC_Offset and click Analyse. Then select the item on the list below and press Fix.

Smoke and Fire

Everything is rendered and composited and unless there are some hidden compositing issues I am almost ready to press the final composite button ;o) The last thing that I'm tweaking is the smoke and fire on the sofa. The start of it is great, but it's not working when the emitter on the sofa is scaled. I've just switched from having 1 emitter on the sofa to having 3 and it looks good in the render region. I also removed the collision that I had set up to the sofa geometry, I'm hoping that this is what was causing the fire to take so long to render.

Anyway, here goes to launching the smoke and fire renders and hoping that will be it!

Fire crashing

hmm this is the second time I've had trouble rendering a fire particle pass (using sprites). Rendering from the command line would render 2 or 3 frames and then the window would close. Rendering interactively would crash XSI. The first time this happened a few months ago I changed the sprite (just by duplicating it and changing its name). Today changing the sprite didn't solve the issue. Today's solution was to duplicate the entire PType (I have 2 emitters that were using the same Ptype). I saved the PType preset and applied it to the second emitter. The color animation on the Ptype didn't get saved :o( so I copied the animation from the original ptype to the duplicate. The pass is now rendering more than 2 frames again from the command line.

rendering and compositing

Yes the smoking moose film is still in progress. I'm still rendering and compositing however I have started to finalize the sound track because I believe the picture is locked. I needed to add a few highlights and shadows -- these are rendering now. Next I need to render a few tweaks to the fire and smoke (but these are quite close to final). I'm not 100% happy with the water so that is next on my list of fixes.

I will post a picture of scene 3's fxtree soon. It is completely insane and although I'm sure there would be a better way to composite it, I am just making it work to get the film done ;o)

creating QuickTime movies for Flash Video

The sync of the FLash Video of my Eyedoll video is much better. After struggling with the Raccoon animation I did for Strut your Reel (and blaming it on Flash video ;o) I did a bit more research on Flash Video encoding and found this article on the Adobe site which helped a lot. Although it recommends using a frame rate of 15 or 12 fps, I stuck with 30 fps (the original animation was at 24fps and I used the retime linear tool in the fxtree to retime the rendered pics). The big piece of the puzzle though is the data rate, which for some reason I had ignored when encoding the raccoon. Big mistake, I'm pretty certain that is what is causing the bad sync.

I might try 15 or 12 fps next time I do one of these things. Especially since that will mean fewer frames to render ;o)

Just a Little Bug

Here's something I did for the AniBOOM's Eyedoll contest. If you like it, head on over to AniBOOM to vote for it!