various Magic Bullet questions

[Graeme Nattress]

If you've got true 25p then use it. It will be better than any simulation in post. If you have to use 50i and de-interlace in post then you can, and it works very well. Take a look at my Film Effects package at www.nattress.com

Film Effects has a very nice 25p look with a smart de-interlacer. It also has a great bunch of presets, looks and it renders very much faster than Magic Bullet for Editors, and extremely faster than Magic Bullet on After Effects. There's a free demo and great tech support.

If you want a particular look and can't get it, then send me a shot from your project and give me a reference of what you'd like it to be like and I'll figure out the settings for you. I've done that with a number of customers and it works well - or you can just play with all the wonderful controls and do it yourself.

Graeme

[Brendan Sundry]

Hello again dvinfo community,

I was using magic bullet on my works Computer for some dv i had shot, (Usually use it with Digital Betacam) anyway i was having problems with feint vertical bands on the video and was wondering if anybody else had this problem.

[Frederic Otis]

I experienced something similar some time ago. I think it happens when your video has been recompressed a couple times, like if you exported/imported back(ie: after rendering effects and such) your footage in your NLE. That's what happened to me anyway, it is very noticable when there is bright colors on the screen, especially reds.

To avoid this is to always export to avi uncompressed until the final render.

Anyway, it might not be the same thing we're talking about, but I though I should share just in case.

Fred.

[Glenn Chan]

Post a picture perhaps?

[Matt Lean]

I keep getting an error that reads "magic bullet has encountered an unknown exception error (512) (25::60)." I can deinterlace and render fine from 29.97 to 24fps when the "Quality" is set to "Draft", but when I set the "Quality" to "Best", I get that error message. I have already tried reinstalling. Can someone help me?

[John McManimie]

Try going to Red Giant Software's support site and getting their latest updates:

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/updates.html


They have the 512 error listed (though I don't know if this is the problem you are encountering):

Magic Bullet Suite Look Suite Xeon Crash (Error 512) Description: Fixes a bug with memory allocation where rendering Look Suite caused it to crash mid-render, usually in the middle of a very long render. This was found only on high end Xeon machines, over 3Ghz.

[Matt Lean]

I tried that but it doesn't seem to work. I emailed them. It's weird though. I can convert 29.97 video to 24fps and do all of the other magic bullet effects(deartifact,look suite,etc) and I can also render this but only with the DRAFT mode. For some weird reason, it wont let me render in BEST mode so that I can have better resolution and quality.

[Josh Barker]

I would like to try the demo of Magic Bullet Suite. The only problem being I don't have After Effects. Is there a free (or inexpensive) program that I can buy that will accept After Effects plugins?

Thanks!
Josh

[Josh Barker]

lol Guess not?

[Johan Manders]

You could try the after effects demo:

http://www.adobe.com/products/tryado...jsp#product=13

[Danny Oh]

I'm a student making a film and just recently I found out that one of the labs has a copy of magic bullet we can use!

I did some messing around to get the hang of it - I shot 60i on my VX2000 (with lowered sharpness in the custom settings) and then followed the basic procedure outlined in the magic bullet manual.. I came across some trouble and I just had a couple of questions...

When I rendered the clip and tried to watch it using numerous different players on my computer, it played back extremely choppy and slow. Is this normal?

Also, if i edit at 60i at once in Premier first, then render the whole thing through magic bullet in the end, can I open it again in Premier to bring it back to export it back to DV?

[Luis Caffesse]

"When I rendered the clip and tried to watch it using numerous different players on my computer, it played back extremely choppy and slow. Is this normal?

Without knowing the exact setting you used, it can be difficult to diagnose the problem.

I can tell you that odds are you had your composition setting incorrectly set in After Effects. In order for Magic Bullet to work correctly, the setting in After Effects have to be set correctly as well.

I don't have the manual in front of me, so I can't give you a spefic answer right now. But my first guess would be to check with the manual, and make sure you were importing your footage into the right kind of comp in AE.

"Also, if i edit at 60i at once in Premier first, then render the whole thing through magic bullet in the end, can I open it again in Premier to bring it back to export it back to DV?"

Are you asking if after you render out of AE can you bring that file back into Premiere for layout back to tape? If so, yes that shouldn't be a problem at all, as long as you are rendering out of AE into a codec that Premiere can recognize.

I hope this helps.

[Joshua Provost]

Danny,

If you are using DV source and rendering at Best quality, you're output will be an uncompressed AVI file. Those are pretty large, and limited hard drive speed/throughput or processing power won't be able to play this back smoothly.

If this is your scenario, you'll need to render as DV-AVI (adds a recompression cycle and potential loses quality), or work on a faster system.

Josh

[Brendan Sundry]

Hello Forum,


In the manual for Magic Bullet it says to select no fields in the interpet footage window, and then your on your own after that.

I imported some mjpeg upper field first footage as they stated with no fields and then exported uncompressed mov. upper field first.

The results were very bad strobing and honestly, i have had better results with exporting with no fields.

Has anyone else had problems with this happening? and are there any tweaks to make the bullet even better, aprt from shooting, lighting, lense etc.

B.Sundry

[Rob Lohman]

If the reason (one of) for using MB is to do a de-interlace your
import should be set to upper first and the output to none, I'd
reckon. At least that is how it works on systems like Sony Vegas.
(I haven't used MB myself).

Otherwise it is always wise to keep the same setting throughout
the system. In this case you would maintain the interlacing and
need to set everything to upper first.

For your information, DV is lower field first.