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lol, took me like half an hourish all in final cut express, i present the crappy, not well cropped, outsides showing, not knowing what im doing, lightsaber vid- Click HERE!

ps- u might have to wait 4 it to process
 
I'm surprised you are having trouble w/AE as it's widely used for pulling keys.


Lethal

It's an old version of AE because the company that I an working for is still using a Windows NT workstation and we are in the process of upgrading to a Combustion with a new workstation (a Mac Pro hopefully)....

The other thing is that AE isn't designed to do chroma on the fly and that's what we need (well the version I have to use).
 
It's an old version of AE because the company that I an working for is still using a Windows NT workstation and we are in the process of upgrading to a Combustion with a new workstation (a Mac Pro hopefully)....

The other thing is that AE isn't designed to do chroma on the fly and that's what we need (well the version I have to use).

AE can key fine, but I'm pretty sure comes with neither primatte nor keylight, the most commonly used keying plug-ins, and so they would cost extra... Shake comes with both included. Dunno about combustion. The stock keyers like "colour difference key" are fairly useless.
 
AE can key fine, but I'm pretty sure comes with neither primatte nor keylight, the most commonly used keying plug-ins, and so they would cost extra... Shake comes with both included. Dunno about combustion. The stock keyers like "colour difference key" are fairly useless.

I prefer Combustion because that was the first compositing software I learnt during my time at University, I just feel more familiar with it. I like the keyer in Combustion, I feel that it has the better support and features interms of getting a quality Chroma key without the dreaded blue halo.

Shake I just can't see the point in learning in any great depth until Apple releases a similar product (besides Motion), it seems kind of useless until it's not abandonware. But I do think for the price of Shake it is perfect for the "pro-sumer" and student to learn on to get a great quality product and a very professional output, for the professional I think it's a bit of a waste of money for the moment.

I have always felt Adobe editing and video compostiting (not Photoshop) has always been behind the Apple, Eyeon and Discreet (now Autodesk) products in refernce to innovating newer ways of doing things. I know there are people out there who don't feel like this but I think a lot of editing, compositing and 3D applications come down to personal preference.
 
I prefer Combustion because that was the first compositing software I learnt during my time at University, I just feel more familiar with it. I like the keyer in Combustion, I feel that it has the better support and features interms of getting a quality Chroma key without the dreaded blue halo.

Shake I just can't see the point in learning in any great depth until Apple releases a similar product (besides Motion), it seems kind of useless until it's not abandonware. But I do think for the price of Shake it is perfect for the "pro-sumer" and student to learn on to get a great quality product and a very professional output, for the professional I think it's a bit of a waste of money for the moment.

I have always felt Adobe editing and video compostiting (not Photoshop) has always been behind the Apple, Eyeon and Discreet (now Autodesk) products in refernce to innovating newer ways of doing things. I know there are people out there who don't feel like this but I think a lot of editing, compositing and 3D applications come down to personal preference.

Woah, wow, thanks for the long response. It's like an essay. :D No offense to you but combustion doesn't seem to be as common, so i'm gonna go with shake or after effects. I think i'll download each demo and see which i like. (which is easier for me :p :D ) Thx for all the help guys!
 
apologies for the blunder about keylight, thought i paid extra for it in ae 7.0, guess not. haven't used ae in almost a year.

Woah, wow, thanks for the long response. It's like an essay. :D No offense to you but combustion doesn't seem to be as common, so i'm gonna go with shake or after effects. I think i'll download each demo and see which i like. (which is easier for me :p :D ) Thx for all the help guys!

That would make most sense, since Digital Fusion/Combustion may be considered better by some, but they're not as widespread, certainly not within the industry. Ezekielrage has a point about these packages being down to personal preference. They're just tools after all, and most plug-ins can be had for all of them. But if you're thinking of trying your hand at some comping once you've left school, it'd be smarter to learn a more popular package.

The professional compositor may find Shake a waste of money now that its a quarter of the price it used to be (?), but he'd struggle to find work at all those professional film post-production houses, a great deal of which use nothing else, whilst the best part of the remainder simply use it most of the time. Not because its cheap, mind, as when Apple slashed prices, they also dropped support and offered anyone who already had over a hundred licenses to buy the source code for 10s of $1000s, so they could solve problems in-house. Most of the big houses did just that. Ezekielrage, you seem to be assuming that just because Apple made Shake "abandonware" (just as well, its bug city and isn't a typically intuitive piece of software for apple), it won't remain the industry standard for the year leading up to Phenomenon's arrival. Your post is otherwise very well-informed, but on that point you're completely wrong. At least, I hope you are, because, I, for one, can't be bothered to learn anything else knowing phenomenon is just around the corner. Besides, phenomenon will probably not deviate as much from shake as much as ppl think, since shake is already so popular. It'll probably just look, feel and function more like motion/fcp etc.

Depending on how ambitious your project is, ae is probably easier to understand as a beginner. smaller comps make more sense in ae, bigger comps make more sense in shake, as the otherwise counter-intuitive node tree (looks like a flowchart) becomes more helpful the more complicated your composite gets, rather than having comps pre-composed as layers in other comps (which are, in turn, layers in other comps, which are, in turn... etc.) which AE does to keep the focus on the timeline but in doing so you can easily lose sight of the project as a whole. But it sounds like AE will suit the lightsabre project fine as it shouldn't need that many precomps. it should be noted though that most other packages are node-based, its only AE that tries to be photoshop with an added timeline and if you want to learn another one later, it'll probably seem very different to AE.
 
It's tough if you're pulling from poor DV source material...gets chunky pretty quickly.

Get DV Matte Pro for AE. It's $200, and because it was made specifically for keying DV footage, it pulls really dang good keys considering the source material. It uses luminence information in conjunction with chroma to smooth edges and overcome the problems of 4:1:1. It saved me on a university project where the faculty insisted on using miniDV.

That should tie you over until you get that $25000.
 
Don't hold your breath waiting for "Phenomenon." Buzz around NAB was that most of the Shake team has moved on, mostly to The Foundry and Nuke.

http://blog.flowseeker.com/?p=19

I'm not entirely surprised about that. I could be wrong as I don't keep my finger on the pulse of the VFX world, but it seemed like Apple bought Shake to get their name associated on bigger budget items ("Hey, our software was used on LotR!") and not really because they were interested in bring a FCP equivalent to the compositing masses.


Lethal
 
Woah, wow, thanks for the long response. It's like an essay. :D No offense to you but combustion doesn't seem to be as common, so i'm gonna go with shake or after effects. I think i'll download each demo and see which i like. (which is easier for me :p :D ) Thx for all the help guys!

Every broadcast production company I have dealt with over the last few years usually has a choice of either Shake or Combustion amd currently I have found it hard to find any high level production company who actually uses After Effects. After effect I personally think is more of a "pro-sumer" product than a pure professional application, with that said I' not have a shot at After Effect it can do plenty.

I develop broadcast weather graphics for televsion Borealis, LIVE, Combustion, Photoshop and Cleaner is all we use.
 
Ezekielrage, you seem to be assuming that just because Apple made Shake "abandonware" (just as well, its bug city and isn't a typically intuitive piece of software for apple), it won't remain the industry standard for the year leading up to Phenomenon's arrival. Your post is otherwise very well-informed, but on that point you're completely wrong. At least, I hope you are, because, I, for one, can't be bothered to learn anything else knowing phenomenon is just around the corner. Besides, phenomenon will probably not deviate as much from shake as much as ppl think, since shake is already so popular. It'll probably just look, feel and function more like motion/fcp etc.

My point was that if Apple stops developing a product it hardly seems worth in the long term to invest time, effort and equipement in learning a product that in all probabilty you wont be seing another version ever.
I wasn't saying that Shake is a terrible application either Shake is still to be considered industry standard, it's just Shake has a steep learning curve and is in the position of being mothballed by Apple..... (prove me wrong Apple).

I have stuck with Motion and Combution becuase of personal preference and because both companies who make these products are still developing (and very well). After all I need an application that I can get support on.
 
I have found it hard to find any high level production company who actually uses After Effects. After effect I personally think is more of a "pro-sumer" product than a pure professional application, with that said I' not have a shot at After Effect it can do plenty.

My experience is to the contrary. After Effects has overwhelming market share, especially in the broadcast design and motion graphics business.
 
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