Stuck with Rotoscope in AE/PS

[uhrgl]

Took a short .avi from Vegas and opened it in AE 6.5.

Rendered out a .flm

Opened .flm in Photoshop 7

Rotoscoped my frames on a separate layer

Tried to save as .flm, but not available -- WTF?

I searched PS help and found this:

Filmstrip


Filmstrip format is used for RGB animation or movie files created by Adobe Premiere®. If you resize, resample, remove alpha channels, or change the color mode or file format of a Filmstrip file in Photoshop, you won't be able to save it back to Filmstrip format. For further guidelines, see the Adobe Premiere User Guide.



What's my next step? All replies are greatly appreciated.

[Matt Grunau]

Firstly, what are you rotoscoping? Secondly, can you save yourself time, effort, hair pulling, and having a cleaner & smoother final using animated masks (rotosplines) in After Effects?

As to your filmstrip question, no, you can not save natively from Photoshop as a .flm. Why you can't is beyond me, but you can't. What you can do ( and I do so dearly hope you have your original .flm file in tact) is do all your rotoscoping, save that as a seperate .psd file, minus the background layer which was your original .flm file. Then, open the .flm file, copy the entire rotoscoped .psd, flattened first if needs be, (ctrl+a, ctrl+c) and paste (ctrl+v) into the .flm file which will create a new layer above the background layer. Then Flatten the image and hit Save. That will do it. But, to be safe, make more than one .flm file in case you get results you don't want during flattening. That way you can try again.

Moving masks in AE would be the best, as you can put a motion blur on them and they look wicked cool. Not to mention that since they are keyframed, they will be smoother between frames and jerkyness will be GREATLY reduced.

Oh, and if you are doing Lightsabers (and I do so hope you are) there are some really great tutorials out there I can point you to to help. If not lightsabers, than shame on you :evil: , but good luck anyway.

Hope that helps.

[Scottdvx100]

if you have it as a layer try reloading the original and duplicating or replacing (select all, copy, paste) into the original. Make sure all your modes are the same as noted in the help text. Resave to a different name in filmstrip format.

Better yet:
Use the animating masks in After Effects. Not particularly good for real rotoscoping but better than doing frame by frame work in Photoshop.

[uhrgl]

Haha. I was working off a (bad) light saber tutorial, but I'm actually rotoscoping a logo out of about 3 seconds of footage (using a little polygon with an gaussian blur) -- this is my first run at it.

I've never heard of rotosplines in AE. You know of any good tutorials?

I think I understand your filmstrip explanation. I'll give that a shot, but I'm open to better ways to do this.

[Scottdvx100]

Search for Masks in the AE Help menu.

[Matt Grunau]

Haha. I was working off a (bad) light saber tutorial, but I'm actually rotoscoping a logo out of about 3 seconds of footage (using a little polygon with an gaussian blur) -- this is my first run at it.

I've never heard of rotosplines in AE. You know of any good tutorials?

I think I understand your filmstrip explanation. I'll give that a shot, but I'm open to better ways to do this.


If you have ever worked with masks (the pen tool) in AE, then you know what I am meaning. all you do is keyframe the position of the mask points, an BOOM, you have rotosplines. Kind of a fancy word for animated masks, but in essence, thats what they are. (sure sounds cool neh?)

http://theforce.net/fanfilms/postproduction/sabres/sabertutorials.asp

And one just with Photoshop

http://www.alienryderflex.com/rotoscope/

[uhrgl]

Thanks, Rapier. I was able to save my .FLM with after I merged my rotoscoped layer, as you explained.

I took the .flm back into AE and saved as an .avi and then brought that avi into Vegas. The mask works okay, a little shimmer.

My problem now is that new .avi looks squished. I'm not sure where/how I introduced that or what settings I need to tweak. I'll post some grabs when I get home.

[Matt Grunau]

The problem is 99% pixel aspect ratio. Photshop works with primarily square pixels, DV footage has pa pixel aspect ratio of .9. Right click on your footage in the timeline, and look around for its properties. Find out how it is interpretting the footage (and I am sure it will say either 1 or square) and simply change that to .9.

[Joey Render]

Depends on what version of Photoshop you are using. Later versions are a little more savy for DV and other film standards. As far as the .flm you are better off using the pen tool and mask out your subject.