Picking up AM after years of being away

[stewartfilm]

Hello everyone,

 

I hope I can get some help here.

 

I bought AM 2005 in 2005 for my Macintosh and had nothing but problems with bugs in the software and unfortunately had very poor results at the time.

 

Fast forward to 2009. Aside from my Mac, I now have a quad core PC with 8 GB of RAM in it. Since AM 2005 had both the Mac & PC software on the DVD, I've been able to load it into the PC and I'm getting some very good results.

 

But, I've got some questions, since I've been away for so long. Maybe you can help me out.

 

#1 - I shoot alot of HDV 1440x1080i footage. When I try to pull this video into AM, the software shuts down completely, even though it says it can work in HD. One of my goals is to merge 3d animation with live action video, so this is frustrating.

 

#2 - I've also tried to drop in hi-rez jpegs for backgrounds and have had trouble. In fact, I'm not even sure if I'm doing it correctly. If I'm not mistaken, I load the image into the images folder, then drop the image onto the camera, which should become a rotoscope. Right? Maybe???

Kinda lost here. Don't know if I should click a setting or something to get the image set as a background. As it is, hi-rez pics cause the software to crash.

 

#3 - Money is very tight right now. I'm one of the 9% unemployed, so what can I do to get better performance out of this version that I have right now? Is it even still supported by Hash?

 

 

Thanks for your help.

 

Looking forward to hearing from you!

 

-Randy

[photoman]

Welcome Back!

 

I use A:M (v13 2006) on a Mac and it works quite well....

 

1. When you import your 1080i footage is the frame rate 23.967? If you can try changing it to 24fps. Also Targa sequences are the best way to import video footage.

 

2. Make sure it is set to rotoscope (There is a popup menu). I try to keep my roto's around 2-3k resolution. There is no need to go above that. Also if its a 10mb+ compress it to around 2-3mb

 

3. To get better performance, you can run multiple instances of A:M. You can use 1 instance for every core, but make sure you leave one core open for your OS.

 

Photoman

[robcat2075]

#1 - I shoot alot of HDV 1440x1080i footage. When I try to pull this video into AM, the software shuts down completely, even though it says it can work in HD. One of my goals is to merge 3d animation with live action video, so this is frustrating.

 

long standing practice.... convert your video to a targa series and use as an image sequence. Most video codecs aren't good for the scrubbing you need to do.

 

You may need to have serious Hard drive performance to reliably scrub 1080 footage. the i is interesting. Is your footage really interlaced? are there interlacing artifacts on single frames when you pan?

 

And 1440 x 1080? that's a 4:3 ratio. really?

 

#2 - I've also tried to drop in hi-rez jpegs for backgrounds and have had trouble. In fact, I'm not even sure if I'm doing it correctly. If I'm not mistaken, I load the image into the images folder, then drop the image onto the camera, which should become a rotoscope. Right? Maybe???

Kinda lost here. Don't know if I should click a setting or something to get the image set as a background. As it is, hi-rez pics cause the software to crash.

 

post one. maybe someone can try it to see if it's weird. It's POSSIBLE this is a video card limitation/issue. Diagnosing computer problems by text is hard.

 

 

#3 - Money is very tight right now. I'm one of the 9% unemployed, so what can I do to get better performance out of this version that I have right now? Is it even still supported by Hash?

 

Hash "supports" current versions. Right now it's V15. But you can still ask questions here. What do you have V13? 12? 11? anything before that is scary. Generally A:M has been more solid on PC. Video card/driver things are probably #1 reason for odd results with A:M and graphics apps in general. I have another app that wont' work with the "right" drivers for my video card. I had to go back to old drivers. But I don't know your situation.

[HomeSlice]

#1 - What video compression are you using? TGA sequence or Animation (quicktime) codec seem to work best. It will probably be much more efficient all around if you import a low-rez version of your video frames into AM. Set up your scene and render with Alpha Channel on. Then import your rendered TGA image sequence into your video editor along with your hi-def video and composite in the editor.

 

#2 - I just made a 1920x1080 TGA image in Photoshop and applied it as a camera rotoscope in AM with no problem. (I'm using v15f - 2009 on Win XP) Import the image into the container in AM. Then drag the image and drop it on the camera shortcut in the choreography. If you are in Shaded or Shaded/wireframe mode, the rotoscope should show up when you are looking through the camera. make sure the ground plane or some other model isn't hiding it. A camera rotoscope always renders behind everything else.

 

#3 - Hash no longer supports AM 2005. Your best bet is to ask questions on the forum.

[stewartfilm]

#1 - What video compression are you using? TGA sequence or Animation (quicktime) codec seem to work best. It will probably be much more efficient all around if you import a low-rez version of your video frames into AM. Set up your scene and render with Alpha Channel on. Then import your rendered TGA image sequence into your video editor along with your hi-def video and composite in the editor.

 

#2 - I just made a 1920x1080 TGA image in Photoshop and applied it as a camera rotoscope in AM with no problem. (I'm using v15f - 2009 on Win XP) Import the image into the <Images> container in AM. Then drag the image and drop it on the camera shortcut in the choreography. If you are in Shaded or Shaded/wireframe mode, the rotoscope should show up when you are looking through the camera. make sure the ground plane or some other model isn't hiding it. A camera rotoscope always renders behind everything else.

 

#3 - Hash no longer supports AM 2005. Your best bet is to ask questions on the forum.

 

Thanks for the input!

 

My previous experiences with AM were very disappointing, so hopefully, this time around will be more successful. Hell, on my new PC, I'm already making progress compared to 3 years ago. So, hopefully the learning curve will be a bit easier!

[John Bigboote]

Hell, on my new PC, I'm already making progress compared to 3 years ago.

 

 

The folks at Apple came-up with a great way to sell your experience... they call it 'BETTER'. Sales are up! Marketing geniuses! The next Mac OS should be called 'Snake Oil'...

 

I'm sorry to hear your employment is 'UN'... here in MI we have counties with 25% or more UN... If you can swing it, the latest V15 on a fast PC is the cats-pajamas. ALSO- I find sometimes after dropping an image on the camera that I need to turn it's 'eyeball' OFF and ON to get it to show up... video card issue. If the image is 'mega' hi-res, try lowering it's dimensions in Photoshop, or using more jpeg compression. Welcome back!