Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Adobe After Effect woes!

Hello!

It has been a hectic month and I have not progressed as far as I'd like to have with a lot of my pending projects! :( I did manage to fix the Broom Stick Dog by using a lazy susan to mount the head, so that is working excellent now, but I've been pulling out what is left of my hair trying to get started on our Slideshow!

I've never used a video editing program before in my life, but I figured because I've used Photoshop, Illustrator and Abobe Flash to some extent that I would be able to manage. Wrong. After Effects` interface is pleasant enough, but holy cow the options. Lets not even get into trying to burn said movie to a DVD due to all the codec and whatnot not cooperating! My computer is showing its age and it definately was not the time to get into programs that demand a ton of CPU towards rendering! My room has been about ten degrees hotter on average.. haha..

Anyway.. I finally got a decent copy onto a DVD using (windows dvd maker.. don't laugh its free!! but does not play nice with ANYTHING.. grr!) I have a ton of touching up to do and I'm debating on purchasing a different slide show portion because the one only holds eighteen pictures and it is streamlined to let newbies add pictures easily, but to add more image slots looks nigh impossible. We shall see.

I found an awesome tutorial on youtube on how to make a Walt Disney intro by the author Bollyweg. I wanted the original Disney intro I grew up on, yet I couldn't find a good enough resolution. I did like the Pirate of the Caribbean themed intro, but I will save that for another project.. haha!

I also remember seeing Walt introduce Alice in Wonderland on the Disneyland show during a Christmas special, so having our wedding in December and an Alice in Wonderland theme could not be complete without a proper introduction!

I'm still debating on having alice look down at the page and then it zooms in and our slideshow starts, or just fade into the book as the video shows. The sound is a little off as well, but I won't even begin to tell you the problems I had trying to get that footage off of a DVD I own much less the sound being synched!!

I'm glad I started this project now because I've played around for about twenty hours and I don't have much to show.. haha!

4 comments:

  1. Coming along nicely! Way to go!

    I used to watch "The Wonderful World of Disney" every Sunday night with the whole family. It's great to see and hear Walt again.

    Keep us posted!

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    1. Thanks, Jim!

      I love hearing Walt's voice as well! Very distinct! I've been finding a lot of cool Disneyland episodes on YouTube believe it or not... very cool to be able to find stuff that you can't just turn the TV on and catch every day!

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  2. You mention that you're using After Effects to edit your footage, but AE is more of a special effects program, albeit a fantastic one. If you're looking to do straight editing, Adobe Premiere is the program to use (if you have the entire Adobe Creative Suite). You'll also find Media Encoder which will compress your video and Encore which builds and burns your DVD. Yet, in a pinch, I know lots of people who have used Movie Maker. And it's free.

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    1. Thanks for the tips! :)

      I ended up using After Effects because I found a cool template for an animated book of sorts that I thought I could add pictures to and go from there! I ended up remembering the Disney intro that Walt did in December for Alice in Wonderland, and I decided to work that into the slideshow! I found out the hard way After Effects is a superb special effects program, but not very friendly in regards to editing footage!!

      I didn't have access to Premiere, so I found a free program called Avidemux which is archaic at best, but finally got the job done!

      I was trying to use Windows Movie Maker, but a lot of the videos from Youtube which I found the Walt Clip are in a format Movie Maker doesn't like for whatever reason, so after spending an hour figuring out what I had to encode it into I remember I had a copy of Nero studio I had laying around that came with my computer, but had never used! That solved a lot of the problems in regards to encoding, etc!

      I should have stuck with a Power Point presentation! haha!

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