Tagged with fusion - Personal View Talks

Diary of a Yak Shaver - Skill Building

andyharris — Fri, 06 Jul 2018 06:05:02 +0000

The reality of an independent film maker is -- 'it's always harder than it looks'!

How many times do we watch a scene and think - they're lazy - I can do that, it's just package/tool/software/technique.

I find myself thinking the same thing, then I try to get the same results (of course with a lot less resources). Then I find this stuff is hard!

It's not the same as photography, where getting professional results is so much easier. With video it's a case of the weakest link is the one that stands out most. For example you get a great chroma key and you're really proud of the blend on the hair line - then you notice that yellow logo has become a brown logo.

I thought I'd use this post to document some the processes that I'm going through in order to build skills, sometimes a video on PV just unlocks an idea - other times it's a five hundred hour journey. This is where Yak shaving comes in, you set out to do a specific thing, but along the way you end up going down so many sub-tasks that one of them is bound to be shaving a yak.

I'll start with Camera Tracking. So far I've put about 20 hours in, including grabbing various clips to experiment on. Of course it's not just the tracking but the integration of the new objects afterwards.

Anyway, here's the very first attempt:

It's 12 seconds and it's rubbish, but it's enough for me to learn about:

setting up the tracking points
what a point cloud is and why some points are pointless
setting the camera parameters to give the tracker a lock onto the physical measurements
setting up and moving the ground plane
making the ground plane invisible (and later making just the shadow of the object visible)
adding an object in the 3D space
solving, re-solving (*N) and exporting the rigs

But perhaps mostly, so far it has taught me that long clips are a double extra triple piggy to track.

Low cost VFX tool chain with examples

andyharris — Mon, 05 Dec 2016 02:26:40 +0000

Good morning PV!

Here's a PV report on how to create 3D composites at 4K quality using a tool chain consisting of 'free to use' or low cost tools:

Work In Progress

andyharris — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 13:00:55 +0000

Work in Progress

I've made myself a goal of creating a short worthy of presentation at a film festival. Basically because creatively it is the next step up from corporate videos. It's actually very hard to do, I've put more than 1000 hours in an have virtually nothing to show for it. However this long weekend has allowed me to get a whole pile of tests done and even have the 3D printer running for a few hours.

I've built this 'studio' in a spare room and I'm going about dealing with the challenges of video is a small space. Audio has been a bit of a challenge, I've been adding tiles to the ceiling in blocks of £90, and that doesn't get you many tiles!. Ikea has been my friend in terms of cheap deep pile rugs.

I've purchased Fusion Studio so that I can get access to the proper version of Primatte (Keying). I'm just getting my head around keep-out mattes which you can see connected to the garbage matte below (two Primattes, one to key the other to build the keep-out).

Here's a few seconds of bringing a pile of stuff together, It's a Fusion composition where the background is created in Cheetah3D. The interfaces are procedurally generated:

DMX Control of Cinematic Lighting

andyharris — Thu, 08 Oct 2015 05:43:08 +0000

Recently I've been experimenting with scene compositing in Fusion. In particular having moving objects affecting the lighting in the composited scene. This led me to think about using DMX to control the lighting for a green screen session so that it would better match the final composited scene.

So I arranged a set of DMX Scenes to flow from one to another.

Mostly it turn out to be more complex than I expected. I written up my findings here:

http://wbavproductions.co.uk/resources/DMXControl.html

Fusion for Grading

clyde_t — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 08:05:46 +0000

Now that connection offers easy access to the Eyeon Fusion toolset using Avid as a host app, has anyone tried grading with it? i did a little bit. i know the Fusion toolset well and it seems like a decent solution. just wondering what others think about this. i know a lot of people don't own Fusion because AE is so affordable in comparison, but I have used it for years and love it.

Different times at one location: Extended dynamic range solution for 1080p Videos

tida — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:41:57 +0000

MARCH-09-2012 - I did put an update of TimelapseVid.py, ExposureFusionVid.py and SlowMoVid.py (new) in the attatched Macros v2 file.

Below you will find a user friendly freeware solution where you can extend the dynamic range for AVCHD timelapses, slow motions and freeze frame videos. This solution invites your creativity to work with different time measures at one location.

Don't worry that it's based on Avisynth scripts as they were created automatically and in most cases you even don't need to modify them. You also need AvsPMod which is the basis of this user friendly method.

Install the TimelapseVid.py and ExposureFusionVid.py files into the \AvsPMod\macros folder or subfolder. You will find then as soon as you freshly start the AvsPMod application and enter the menu "macros". For the ExposureFusionVid script you need to download a fuse/fusemask plugin which you will find at http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=152109. Save the fusion.dll file into the Avisynth\plugins folder.

In my opinion this macro method has a lot of potential to be optimized by this community. I hope you will have a lot of suggestions to improve it. Maybe you have ideas for other procedures....

The following video should demonstrate how it works.

==== TimelapseVid.py ====

This procedure is focused on a simple 360 degree shutter angle timelapse workflow. It has similarities with the methods used by @GH13Timelapser discussed by http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/595/mjpeg-fps-setting-for-timelapse-on-gh2/p1 but can run now with AVCHD files like *.MTS. Also @balazer described AviSynth Overlay methods in http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/1559/avchd-1080p-time-lapse/p1. The resulting script of this macro is based on Avisynth TemporalSoften.

First you will be asked for the video file which should be converted into a timelapse or averaged frame video.

The second dialog box (see attatched picture) will ask you to enter used shutter speed, the frame rate of the resulting video, the timelapse rate and GOP. The generated script will take care about the correct GOP at given Shutterspeed. Usage of Group of Pictures (GOP) at different shutter speeds with 24p and Panasonic GH2 was discussed by @duartix at http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/39686#Comment_39686 and http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/2396/gh2-motion-fluidity-360%C2%BA-shutter-test-on-slow-shutter-speeds./p1.

Put in the third dialog box the name of your script. It is recommended to save the *avs scipt under similar name of the video that in future you can trace back what you have done.

In AvsPMod you can check what you have done. Please also read the comments in the script to learn how to optimize your results.

Now you can use this *avs script in Virtualdub, MeGUI or whatever to create the final timelapse video file.

Comment: You can create an "averaged frame video" by just set TimelapseRate to Framecount. You end up in a video with just one frame. It could help for example to clean up a market place with moving people. This averaged frame should be over- or underexposed and can be used for subsequent Exposure Fusion procedure. In the Exposure Fusion procedure it would be converted into a freeze frame video with exactly same number of frames of the reverse exposed timelapse.

==== ExposureFusionVid.py ====

ExposureFusionVid is a user friendly solution to improve the dynamic range of the timelapse. You can even work with different time units at one location. You can combine timelapse, slow motion or freeze frame videos with each other. Important is that one video has to be overexposed and the other should be underexposed.

First you will be asked for the first video and subsequently for the second. If you have created an "averaged frame video" you have to open it by the first dialog box.

Then you will be asked for the name of the *.avs script which should be saved.

In AvsPMod you need to check the script for further optimization. Read the comments. You will see that there are two different mask methods which can be applied for the fuse method. Play whith them until your reach the best result.

Again, now you can use this *avs script in Virtualdub, MeGUI or whatever to create the final video file.

==== SlowMoVid.py ====

SlowMoVid.py can be used for progessive as well as for interlaced videos. If the base is progressive motion estimation will be derived by mvtools. If the video is interlaced QTGMC or Yadif will at the first step take care about deinterlacing. Subsequent motion estimation will be carried out by mvtools.