various Magic Bullet questions

[Srinivasa Yerneni]

It a millimeter article.

More Info at http://millimeter.com/ar/video_magic...uite/index.htm

[Rhett Allen]

Hi all you PC users, I just thought I would post that I saw a story over at 2-pop that announced Magic Bullet 1.1 for Windows 2K and XP.
As a Mac user I wasn't even aware it wasn't available for the PC, but now you guys are lucky too. (it says it's even got some optimization for Intel chips)

here's the link
http://www.uemedia.com/CPC/article_4798.shtml

[Rob Lohman]

Bummer... only a Mac demo available. Perhaps they will add a
Windows one later...

[Rhett Allen]

I'm sure they will as it was just announced last night. Patients grasshopper.

[Rob Lohman]

The demo and manual can be downloaded from here

[Kurt Wojda]

Ok, i've got a small question. I just rendered some footage on a friend's computer using magic bullet to 24p. But i need to get it to NTSC (23.976fps) for dvd production. How would i go about doing this? My guess would be to convert with TMPGEnc, but im not sure if slowing it down will affect the audio being on sync with the video (even though it's only slowing it down very slightly). Anybody have an answer for this? thanks

[Adrian van der Park]

check out the demo of magic bullet at redgiantsoftware.com

if you bulleted your footage correctly to 24p, it should have told you to set your afx composition to 23.976 fps, which is what you are asking for.

Generally it's a good idea if you are going to video to cine-expand your edited footage back to 29.976 fps. There are a variety of ways to do this, and I like to do this on a dps perception. But one can do it in AfterFX.

Adrian

[Bram Corstjens]

I'm still fiddling around with Magic Bullet and the progressive mode on my Sony TRV-60. The dilemma consist of the choice between de-interlacing the out-of-cam 16:9 video, or using the 4:3 progressive mode and cutting out a 16:9 image without de-interlacing. (but losing pixels in that mode)

When the image is not moving, the out-of-cam 16:9 looks VERY SLIGHTLY sharper/better than the 16:9 cut-out out of the 4:3 progressive image. This is not a surprise ofcourse since the first image is simply stretched/interpolated by software to matcht the 720x576 resolution again.

A 16:9 image out of 4:3 progressive
http://home.planet.nl/~snuve011/bram/prog-norm.jpg

The original 16:9 out-of-cam image (not de-interlaced!)
http://home.planet.nl/~snuve011/bram/int-wide.jpg

I think there is more than one reason why the two image almost look the same:

-1- The first image is resized bicubically. For most of the time this interpolation is not a problem at all. On some (small) horizontal lines however, a slight decrease in detail can be noticed. (some letters on the upper left for example)

-2- Only the vertical resolution is stretched... The horizontal sharpness stays the same

-3- The human eye is probably not noticing every single detail/pixel that is saved in the AVI file when it's viewed on a monitor/tv. Enlarging the image slightly will expand everything including those details that were previously not seen because they were so small. To be short: The image gets a little larger and thus theoreticaly a little blurrier, but (to a limited extend) details are revealed

But what about moving images where de-interlacing is involved? Still frames are nice, but that's not what camcorders are for right? To find out I shot 2 times the same movie. 1 in progressive mode (and cutting out a 16:9 image) and 1 in interlaced 16:9 mode whitch was de-interlaced by MB afterwards. Both movies were saved as Mpeg2 @ 8000 kbit/sec constant bitrate.

Because of being rather new to After Effects it appeared that quality was set to "medium" in After Effects instead of "High". The de-interlaced image looked like crap as a result - Sorry 'bout that, I will never forget again ;) After setting the quality to high, render times have now multiplied and image quality has been improved (luckely!)

The question that rises (again) is: Does the Magic Bullet de-interlacer degrades the image enough to favor the 16:9 cut-out out of the progressive mode? See below two short example clips (Mpeg2 @ 8000 kbit/sec Constant Bitrate.

Interlaced widescreen de-interlaced by MB
http://home.planet.nl/~snuve011/bram/straat-deinterlaced-short.mpg

A 16:9 cut-out, out of the 4:3 progressive video
http://home.planet.nl/~snuve011/bram/straat-progressive-short.mpg

I don't know how to describe the differences, but if you open the first (de-interlaced) clip and take a look at front of the third car, you'll know what I mean. This effect is not visible in the progressive video.

The sidebumper of the second car seems to "float" in the de-interlaced video... Also this effect is not present in the progressive one.

In the upper left corner the edges of the bricks are just visible in the second (progressive) clip. In the de-interlaced one, the vertical boundaries seem to have faded and the horizontal edges look like to be much thicker

Note that these are NOT Mpeg2 compression artifacts. They also (and only!) show up in the de-interlaced shot.

Perhaps I'm still doing something wrong? Can anyone enlighten me? This way I'd rather go with the progressive mode and drop some pixels to get widescreen instead of using all pixels and getting magic bullet to de-interlace the video.

[Agus Casse]

Hello, i tested recently magic bullet in AE6, but it didnt worked, i get an error message saying .

After Effects error: bad parameter passed to effect callback
(37 :: 57)

... well, that is too bad, and i hope 1.5 works again with it.

[Barend Onneweer]

This will be fixed in v1.5 which is currently in beta :-) I'tll also be a lot faster.

Bar3nd

[Brandt Wilson]

Has anyone heard if there are plans to split the Look Suite and Optical Suite out of the MB package for those who have 24p cameras or other options instead of the MB core module?

[Cane Carrington]

Hi,

starting work on a music promo. dv pal
pretty new to mb - love the look - but this is my problem.

after capturing footage clips into fcp4 - I then save & quit - so I can play around with various different looks , within look suite as well as mb'ing the QT clips as well.
Some Of the clips happen to be of "pov :driving thru motorways & road tunnels / subways etc" this type of material needs to be speeded up for a good look, so, - when I apply the magic bullet followed by the look suite in ae - I then render as dvpal footage at 25fps & import back into fcp - where I then proceed to the motion param's & change the speed of the clip from 100% to 300% & change aspect ratio to -66.66% for a squeezed widescreen look - render is then needed.
Now the problem is that after I render a magic bulleted clip that is speeded up - it brings back that dv interlaced look again - whats the procedure here - am I doing something wrong for speeded up clips ?

Should I speed up the clip beforehand in fcp then export as qt movie un compressed - ?

sorry for the detailed post - just wanted to know if I was using magic bullet correctly also - isit more of a finishing tool rather maybe ?
thanks for any help

[Kevin Maistros]

It would make more sense to speed up the clip, save the sped up clip, and then apply the mb effects.

[Cane Carrington]

Ok - thanks,

But do I then export as : uncompressed 8 bit or dv pal again ?

I already sped up the clip in fcp then exported as self contained QT movie dv pal - is this ok ? then I import into AE & after MB export as uncopressed 8 bit ?

or should it always be exported as uncompressed to get the best quality ?

Cheers again

[Gustavo Godinho]

I did everything the Magic Bullet manual says, but my video was TOO stroboscopic after the rendering. The video was NTSC and I wanted to deinterlace for 24p.

Any suggestion os what might be happening?