Ok fair enough.
1.
How did you do the scanner effect with the text? (I think Sue asked me this in another thread).
To do this particular effect, I started with a scanner graphic I made back in September for Glen's
Knightcon video, you can also see it in my earlier banner animations and in the title of that particular video. Having moving footage that was both bright and colorful against a black background, I was able to use that movie file as essentially a lightsource for another image beneath it. Using the scanner movie as my light source, I put another graphic of the KITT car I did for the Saugus poster art over the top of the scanner movie and set it to a layer mode called "overlay" which is common in Adobe programs such as Photoshop or After Effects.
Here's a visual example of how this works.
- scanner_example.jpg (20.92 KiB) Viewed 6679 times
- The original scanner movie file
- KITT_example.jpg (52.59 KiB) Viewed 6679 times
- My original K.I.T.T. art.
- overlay_example.jpg (22.97 KiB) Viewed 6677 times
- The K.I.T.T. art placed over the scanner movie file in "overlay"
Now imagine this effect animated and you get a good idea how this works. Quite simple if you know how to do it.
Then I added in the text on another layer in After Effects and created an animated mask to obscure the letters in rhythm with the scanner sweep so that when it sweeps to the left, no text shows and when it sweeps to the right the letters are revealed.
Here's an example of what that looks like from a still of the video
That's how it's done.
2.
What program did you use to make the video? I used
After Effects and
Photoshop for the graphics and animation. I used
Adobe Premiere to render out the final project.
3.
Why didn't you use the Knight Rider Theme? I didn't use the Knight Rider Theme because my video deals with mostly still imagery and I couldn't get the timing to work out. If it was just still images of the book, it would have been no problem but I had titles to address and so on.
I wanted music that had a very
movie trailer like feeling to it. I decided the best way to make things work was to make Knight Rider references (sound clips) blend with the music I selected to use. This then makes the music gel with my subject matter. I did want to use some form of visual and audial nod to the original Knight Rider series, so I used the ending music (Don Peake) instead and an ending desert shot as my final imagery. I also made sure to give every musician their proper credit for using their wonderful music.
4.
Why is the video fast in some places and slow in others? Due to the high amount of memory I needed to render the different parts of the video, I was forced due to "out of memory" errors to render out each section of the video in parts then render the final video out of Adobe Premiere. Apparently After Effects will only utilize
2GB of RAM and Windows Vista has not yet figured out how to increase it to access more then that, that I could find. I checked the net for suggestions on how to do this but none of the "tricks" worked for me.
Because I did most of my sound syncing in Premiere, I basically had to make the sound fit the clips I was using. This required me to speed up some sections of video and slow down others to keep my timing within the music track and where it blends into the ending theme music.
I think all in all though, the video flows pretty well. There's always room for improvement but in this case it gets the message out I'm trying to convey and it gives a sense of excitement that's both a visual and audial experience. I posted both a quicktime and the youtube (originally) so people have the ability to pause or scrub through the video to see what might capture their attention that may move too quickly for them to really see. Likewise with the end credit info.
If anyone else has any more questions, feel free to ask.
=VK=
now wheres that XP disc gone again????
I think I'd switch those machines over to Linux. I know the hardware in those machines won't handle Vista.
