Still

Still testing.  Now the video is the aspect ratio I want now (16.9.)  Just a simple setting to change in Premiere Pro 1.0.  Tried to convert to Microsoft AVI (not DV AVI this time) and it still will not play in Media Player Classic.  Perhaps I need another codec?  Oh well, we will see what happens.

Rendering (exporting) from Premiere Pro 1.0 - testing export to Microsoft AVI

Working on some film thoughts.  Listening to Kate Rusby music.

I may try out Converio (http://pagesperso-orange.fr/gilles.bihan/converio_095.htm,) try some more with Squared 5 MPEG Streamclip, and perhaps other video converters.  What NLE will I use?  For now, Premiere Pro 1.0.  No HD for now.  Use what you have to the best of your ability.  Will most likely test CBR1140 recording with the Everio to see if another method to get my files to a usable format (in this case, mpeg) will work.

Thanks for listening,

We will see what the wind brings,

God bless,

-b

P.S. Praise God!  I have been planting this blog address around in various comment boxes – YouTube, BlenderNation, Vimeo, e-mails… it may be paying off.  Here is an image of some view stats for the blog:

Minosa Films blog stats reach 80 views on 08-04-08

Praise God for everything.

P.P.S. I need to tell you what MIG (Miracle In Gansu play to DVD) is, and some more info about this blog.  We’ll leave that till later.  Till our next meeting, may God keep you.

May I grow still

First successful alpha in Blender!

Yahoo!  Praise God!  I have made my first successful alpha texture in Blender!

What is alpha?  It is the “invisible”, the transparency per se.  Whatever is set as alpha, you can’t see.  Whatever is a normal color, like red, green, or blue (RGB) displays in it’s normal color.  With alpha you can have a complicated image (say, of a leaf,) applied to a plane.  The area around the leaf will be turned to alpha.  Loading the image (PNG or TGA) into Blender, you then apply it to a plane, and go through a series of steps.  Finally, rendering it, you get a wonderful result:

First successful alpha leaf in Blender

Well, maybe not all that wonderful, but the possibilities sure are astounding!

Imagine a cutout animation, set in a 3D world!  Or a tree with twenty thousand leaves – imagine it, you don’t have to model a complicated leaf, duplicate it twenty thousand times, and make your polygon count 4,000,000,000, causing your render time to go bonkers!  Instead, just apply the alpha image to all your leaves (a simple plane,) and kapow!  Your render time is lightning fast compared to what it could have been!

Go ahead and find out how to do alpha texturing in Blender. Carefully follow the steps.  One important step that I didn’t get right is this: for any objects that you want to recieve the shadow of your alpha image, make sure you turn on TraShadow in the Shaders Panel (for the objects that are recieving the shadow.)

Here’s an image of the GIMP and Blender, and what some of it looks like.

Making the leaf transparent with alpha - using GIMP and Blender

God bless,

Thanks for listening!

-b

P.S. I have run into a problem editing the interview of Dr. Narendra Singh.  When I get to a certain place in the video, the video gets stuck and he is frozen saying part of the same word.  This is an error, and some fault with the program or video file.  The video file plays fine, so my guess is it is Premiere.  Now is the question of “Now what?!”

Progress made – editing

Well, the conversion of the .tod worked.  Praise the Lord!  I have converted it through Power Director Express, to the resolution of 720×480 (.avi).  Adobe Premiere Pro 1.0 can’t handle HD, so with this lower DV resolution I can edit my interview of Dr. Singh!

Dr. Singh Interview 08 - in Adobe Premiere Pro 1.0

This is great news, because it means I can start working on video with what I have now, even though I’m not doing HD yet.

I hope to learn more on how to use Blender (www.blender.org,) the open source 3d content creation suite.  I may work on something in Blender soon.  If mastered, I would be able to do title effects, 3D animations, compositing, and CG FX for my films.  But until then, my options are somewhat limited, at least in the area of 3D animations and beautiful CG FX.

Once again, any film ideas are very welcome.  We’ll see what comes…

Ciao,

Thanks for listening,

-b

P.S. I have also found out how to handwrite subtitles for Adobe Encore.  Now I can work on the subtitles for MIG (Miracle In Gansu play to DVD,) and work to complete the project.  (Previously I had tried to write the subtitles in Encore, which caused the Encore file to get corrupted.  I recommend writing subtitles in a third-party app (like Notepad,) by hand, and then import them.)