Was playing a bit with XL2 footage.

Here's the result ...

http://home.comcast.net/~chalbers/ghostbros.wmvx
Take out the x at the end before playing.

I had fun with this one ! :-)

Frank

I really liked it!
What programs did you use?

like it frank nice idea!! BTW how are you guys getting such clean images for such a small file size, I've been trying all week to compress to either MOV, mpeg, wmv files for my website, all i can get is poor compressions for the MB size of files...????

Help......

I'm sure frank will tell you how he encoded it but I thought I'd add that the camera is stationary and therefore very little of the frames are changing. This greatly helps with getting a clean compressed smaller file. The encoder simply has to work with the "changing" parts of the frame. Since most of the frame is the same all the way through, a very small ammount of the bits allocated for the files are used for that. This allows the areas that are changing to get the "lions share" of the bits and therefore very little compression is evident.

If this was outside and there were trees swaying in the wind or traffic in the background there would be more pixelation and compression artifacts in the video.

FWIW.

By the way it looks very cool!

Frank,

I love the fact that you were just complaining about 'ghosting' in your XL-2 images in another thread. I didn't realize when I responded that the problem was that bad. :-)

Guess I wasn't looking close enough at that first still image you posted.

Anyway, that's pretty cool what you did. Opacity with glow effect? Neat idea!

-gb-

What am I doing wrong? I took off the x at the end but I'm getting a screen from comcast saying incorrect URL.

Me, to. Mac OSX 10.2.8, Safari 1.0.3, TimeWarner cable. (Merrills, size 13.)

I wanna see the spooks!

<<<-- Originally posted by Kevin Kocak : What am I doing wrong? I took off the x at the end but I'm getting a screen from comcast saying incorrect URL. -->>>

Download the file with the x on it. Then when you have it saved to your harddrive, then remove the x and play!

Works like a charm.

Frank, nice effect. Do tell how you did it.

Kewl. I knew Michael Moore had to do some freelancing in his earlier career....

Do you have to pay extra to hire twins for a shoot? :-J

I was kinda hoping the second guy would try to fool with the thermostat on the wall and the first guy would bushwhack him and slap his hand.

Outstanding effect; do tell how you composited.

Thanks for all the great replies ! ;-)

It was actually easy.

I took Michael Moore and his twin brother, shot them on a greenscreen and comped them on a plate.

But I also did it this way ...

1. Shot 2 seperate plates with me in it making sure all settings where locked, no auto-nothing.
2. I mixed the first plate with the second plate making Layer A
3. I took the difference between both plates and added blur to the result. Does creating Layer B
4. Then I added Layer B to Layer A creating a glow effect around the characters.

That's it.

Why the file was small ? Because as explained there was very little in the shot that moved, does making compression very efficient.

Thanks again !

Frank

>>>Download the file with the x on it. Then when you have it saved to your harddrive, then remove the x and play!

I guess am not too bright. How do I download it? When I put in wth the X I get a page with a bunch of random symbols... Not sure how to download from there. The only thing I can think of is its not MAC friendly.

Kevin, never fear.

1. put your cursor on the hyperlink in Frank's first post to this thread

2. hold down the control key and click with your mouse

3. a small menu appears: choose "Download Link to Disk"

4. when your Mac's finished downloading Frank's video file, go to the desktop and highlight the filename

5. delete the "x" at the end of the filename

6. your Mac will ask "Are you sure you want to change the extension from '.wmvx' to '.wmv'?"

7. click the "use .wmv" button; you'll see the file icon change from a generic "document page" to a Windows Movie icon

8. Voila! You've magically turned the file into a playable video

Double click & enjoy.

Finally! Thanx... Geez you gotta be a rocket surgeon to figure all that out.
Pretty cool clip.

Rocket ... surgeon ? :-)

It's basic compositing tricks . Nothing advanced really.

Frank