Windows 64bit and Quicktime problems

February 14, 2010 by

I recently got a new system for my work, and for the first time I am running a 64bit operating system.  Now I have been using 64bit on many machines at various studios that I have worked at, one thing always annoyed me was QT being broken in firefox.  You may have seen videos playing and no seek bar, or play/pause buttons, only a black strip along the bottom.  You can click in that area still but you will be working blind and could be hitting any button.  I was told from friends that it is just because there is not a version for 64bit Windows, and it is broken.  Well for me running 64bit, it being broken is not good enough :-P.  I had read of alternatives to quicktime, and I do use of players VLC, Mediaplayer classic for example, but when you are watching videos in the browser you really want it working correctly.

I got thinking why not run my browser in compatibility mode, then maybe the QT plugin will think it is in a 32Bit OS and work as I expect.  This work around does indeed work 😀 SUCCESS!!

For those out there who have not seen or adjusted the settings I have spoke about above I recommend that you check out the screencast I have made.  I am thinking that this method would work for any other instances where QT is not playing nicely in 64bit.

Click here to watch the screencast

 

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: ,

Kelloggs – Mr Kelloggs, Vitamins And Iron

January 25, 2010 by

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This was a job completed at Beglan Brothers

Work required
I completed some of the post production on this advert.  We were shooting 4K stop motion stills and grading with the raw camera files.  Some flicker had to be removed from the shots, and also the occasional “clean up” that is required in stop motion ie rigging removed or taking away accidental blemishes.  There was also a lot of rotoscoping required, and keying to introduce the shots outside of the windows.  The shots were lit to feel like a sunny morning in post.  There is also some invisible work in the live action shots.  The kitchen did not have tiles to the very bottom so these were placed in after, as well as the daughter behind the packs being removed and the re positioning of the chalk board to be more title safe.
I also worked on one of the press stills, this involved similar compositing to the advert but more precision and more clean up of the model and his enviroment, as everything was staying at a higher pixel dimension.

Beglan Brothers website, www.beglanbros.com

Filed Under: Advert, AE, Postproduction, Shortform, Work-Journal

Boyles Sports – Sponsorship

January 25, 2010 by

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This was a job completed for Mark Holland

Work required
Mark already had an idea visually as to how this was going to work, and with some stock footage edited the shots together.  I was to take his edit and mood image and produce the final piece, with Mark making final Director decisions.
The footage I was given was not shot for keying, so some rotoscoping was required and some clever keying in sections of the shots.  The original ball was removed and the red one placed in with betting odds.  Extra overlapping details were masked in to help integrate the ball better with the footballer.  This was a quick turnaround initially 2 days, there were some extra comments and changes made and all up we were done with masters in under a working week.

Filed Under: Advert, AE, Postproduction, Shortform, Work-Journal

BBC Comedy – News At Bedtime (short clip)

January 25, 2010 by

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This was a job completed for Kate Sullivan

Work required
Kate Sullivan designed, directed and animated a sketch to accompany Nick Newman and Ian Hislop’s Radio Four series “The News at Bedtime”. You can watch the full version here http://tinyurl.com/newsatbedtime.  The sketches are produced by Simon Nicholls. They star Jack Dee, Peter Capaldi and Vicki Pepperdine.
Martin Davey painted the backgrounds and I did the compositing and some 3d work using Maya.
The 3d that was involved was mostly projection mapping.  I would project Martins drawn artwork onto 3d geometry.  This was used to good effect in the opening scene into the news room.

Kates website, www.katesullivan.co.uk
Martins website, www.martindaveyillustration.co.uk

Filed Under: 3d, AE, Longform, Postproduction, Work-Journal

Wolfblass – Sponsors Rugby

January 25, 2010 by

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This was a job completed for Mark Holland

Work required
I worked on the treatment for the rugby section to match what was supplied from the previous advert.  We also required a new pack shot.  This was put together in After Effects 3d and consisted of photographs that were treated to blend seamlessly.  Lens blurs and gentle light interactions help keep the shot alive.

Filed Under: Advert, AE, Shortform, Work-Journal

Chocapic – Free Falling

July 14, 2009 by

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This was a job completed at Beanimation

Work required
3D Backgrounds where by Arkvfx.  I was involved in the compositing of the characters and color grading.  We supplied a cutdown and various other countries versions of the advert.

Filed Under: Advert, AE, Postproduction, Shortform, Work-Journal

Composite Breakdown – Nesquik “Catapult”

June 18, 2009 by

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We start the scene with the original clean background, next the bunny is placed into position and tracked to keep him in place during the camera move. In the 3rd still the bunny has his tones applied and the photo of the tree branch is placed in, the background has been defocused at this point as it is secondary until later on in the shot. We have the 3d box placed in and the branch has been “relit”. We then see the pack is integrated better some cast shadows applied and some subtle colour bounce from the yellow pack onto the branch has been added also.

Filed Under: Breakdowns

Composite Breakdown – Nesquik “Tents”

June 17, 2009 by

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We start the shot with the clean background of the tent, next we have the animated monster he was matted into the scene using a procedural matte as the shape changed often. In the following image a lamp is placed into the scene (this was shot on green screen). Next we see the clip of the children leaving the tent, you can see the green screen was not lit well and not so much help to me. I found myself keying and treating different areas to try and achieve a matte that I was comfortable with. Unfortunately it was not really giving me the results I wanted in all areas so I dropped back to rotoscoping a lot of this shot where I felt it was necessary. It had much motion blur and feathering which I wished to keep that I was not achieving from keying. Overall though I feel the time spent produced a far more pleasing matte to extract them from the screen. We finish on the final composite.

Filed Under: Breakdowns

The Guardian – Great British Walks

June 17, 2009 by

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This was a job completed at Tandem Films

Work required
There was a small team of us brought in to rotoscope various shoes.  The shoes were animated stop motion style against a blue screen but it was felt that the screen was not going to give a good enough key for our use.  The shoes were rotoscoped from there background and some rigging inside the shoes removed.  Shadows were also masked out to be used in the final composite.  there was some initial colour grading and spill removal on this footage, which was passed onto Chris Gavin who completed the final composite.

Filed Under: Advert, AE, Shortform, Work-Journal

Sky One – Domino’s Pizza Sponsors the Simpsons

June 17, 2009 by

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Here is a compilation of the Domino’s Pizza adverts. I was involved in various parts of this production. The live action was shot with a motion controlled camera and gives a real crisp feel to the backgrounds. The backgrounds were tracked in 3d as we had trouble getting the motion control data into our 3d application. I built and animated the 3d box and made sure it tracked nicely to integrate into the scenes. During linetest stage with the animation we were preparing all the matte runs and roughly tracking the characters into the scenes. I shared the compositing with another compositor for the final touches after linetest stage. These were played during the popular series The Simpsons on Sky One.

Filed Under: 3d, Advert, AE, Postproduction, Shortform, Work-Journal
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