Prolost Burns v1.6

After I released Prolost Burns, some folks urged me to rebuild it as a “Custom Effect” preset. This is a feature in After Effects that allows you to use XML to create something that looks exactly like a real plug-in, but with no actual guts of its own.

The XML editing happens in a file hidden within the After Effects application package. It’s not something most users will ever touch. I wouldn’t have regarded this as approachable without help. Batchframe features a wonderful tutorial on creating “Pseudo Effects,” another name for Custom Effects—as well as a rather amazing interactive tool for building them. Just design your interface and then press a button to get the XML code.

Now Featuring Errors

If you save a preset from one of these Custom Effects (presumably with some expressions and/or other effects to perform the actual awesomeness), and then apply that preset on a machine that doesn’t have the edited XML file, another After Effects feature kicks in—the ability to show the UI for a missing effect. Since the UI is all we need, a missing effect is as good as an installed one, with the one exception that the user will see a “missing effect” error when they apply the preset.

At first, I felt that this rather deplorable user experience was a dealbreaker, but I passed the Custom Effect version of Prolost burns to a few willing beta testers, and they unanimously reported that the advantages outweighed the inconvenience of the error message.

Those advantages range from purely aesthetic to quite practical:

  • The preset sure looks nice. Even with a big “Missing:” in front of its name, it’s lovely to have all the controls under one “effect” that looks just like a big-boy effect.

  • This consolidation isn’t just pretty though. It allows you to easily copy/paste settings from one layer to another (if both have the preset applied).

  • You can also reset the preset to the default values I set. In 1.0, you’d have to reset the sliders one at a time, and they’d revert back to the After Effects defaults rather than mine.

  • I can control the functionality of the sliders more, by limiting their ranges and determining whether they can be keyframed or not.

  • I can create groups of controls that can be twirled open and closed individually.

  • I can create a pop-up menu of options. Which I did for Burns, and I really like the results.

While I understand why After Effects is reporting these effects as “missing,” the truth is, there’s nothing missing at all. A missing effect is simply a shell of sliders with no innards, which is all the Custom Effect ever was in the first place. I’ve contacted Adobe about this issue.

Beer

Clearly I’m having fun with this little experiment of packaging up my household presets and selling them (and supporting them) at a fair price—something I only regard as possible thanks to the simplicity and power of the Squarespace 6 e-commerce platform. I’m planning a post about that whole process soon, because part of the experiment is sharing the results with you and maybe even inspiring you to do something similar.

See, I don’t really look at this as me selling you stuff. I see it more like we’re all a community of creative folks, making cool things, sharing them, and buying each other a beer here are there. In a world where we might buy a $2 weather app based on a screenshot and the promise of a slightly prettier way of avoiding sticking our heads out the window, it’s nice to know that so many of you feel comfortable sailing a few bucks off into the ether, with the trust that a useful thing will come zinging back to you in return.

So check out Prolost Burns v1.6. That’s right, it’s now up to 1.6, even though it’s 1.5 that you see in the video. Version 1.5 switched to the Custom Effects model and added the pop-up with four scale options. Version 1.6 adds an option called “Natural Scale.” This uses an exponential scale curve to make the zooming animations more perceptually uniform over time. It defaults to On, because it’s, like, a million times better than a simple linear scale curve.

Free Upgrade

If you bought version 1.0 or 1.5, the upgrade to 1.6 is free. Just reply to your order email and I’ll hook you up, as quickly as I can.

Note: If you’re upgrading from 1.5 to 1.6, don’t use 1.6 in existing projects that feature 1.5. Since the missing effects have the same matchname, you’ll experience conflicts. Maybe in the future I’ll include version numbers in the preset names to avoid this—like I said, it’s all a big experiment.

An experiment that’s successful enough that I already know what the next batch of presets will be, and they are so insanely cool that I can barely contain myself!

Get Prolost Burns v1.6 now on the Prolost Store, and don’t forget to throw the free DV Rebel Tools in your cart while you’re there!

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Prolost Burns for After Effects
$14.00

Cinefex Classic on Kickstarter

Cinefex needs your help to make something great.

The first issue of Cinefex I bought had Robocop on the cover. It was bagged and boarded at Dreamhaven Books in Minneapolis, and I remember thinking it was expensive, and really fancy. I read it cover-to-cover, not understanding much of anything I was reading. When I got to the end, I read it again.

The Robocop article still stands out as one of my favorites. I went back and read it several more times, and with subsequent issues providing context, each new reading brought new understandings. It’s not only where I learned about zirc hits and methylcellulose, but also where I learned about Paul Verhoeven’s philosophy about violence in movies, and how an MPAA-ordered cut-down of the film’s more violent scenes had the unintended effect of transforming satirical, intentionally over-the-top violence into just plain violence. This wasn’t just an article about how some visual effects were accomplished. This was a juicy, practical essay on the filmmaking process.

Cinefex is still great, but nothing they’ve printed in recent years matches the infectious, inspirational glory of the back catalog. Here are some tidbits I remember to this day:

  • The elevator shaft that McClane throws the explosives down in Die Hard is a miniature, built in forced-perspective. This was, in part, to allow the model to be smaller—but the real, ingenious reason for the perspective trick was to make the explosion seem to accelerate up toward the camera.
  • When filming the motion-control miniature of the flying Delorean landing in the rain for Back to the Future II, the model was covered in vaseline, which was smoothed and re-stippled with a toothbrush on every frame, to simulate the wet car being pelted by raindrops.
  • Speaking of crazy stop-motion, in Robocop, ED–209’s machine-gun fire was animated by hand, as an in-camera effect. On each frame with gunfire, Tippet’s crew would shut off the set lighting and the rear projection, insert a tiny light bulb into the miniature gun barrel, hand-sculpt a cotton muzzle flash over the bulb, and re-expose the frame.

The deceptively minimal writing in these articles made these ideas and techniques seem not only understandable, but downright doable. Every issue would light a fire in my brain that could only be doused in my backyard, with a Super 8 camera, a cable release, and probably some unsafe household chemicals.

This was my education in visual effects. Cinefex is the reason I didn’t sound like an idiot when applying for film school, and for my first job.

When I landed my dream job at ILM, I thought maybe I’d “made it.” It was when I was first interviewed for a Cinefex article that I knew it was true.

Cinefex launched a great iPad version of their magazine last year, and each time I launch it, I see that floating wall of covers, and wish that I could have my dog-eared, worn-away back issues in this searchable, slick format.

And that’s exactly what they’re going to do—but they need our help.

Cinefex Classic is a Kickstarter campaign to bring the Cinefex back catalog to the iPad. There are ten days to go in the campaign, and they are close. Let’s get them to their goal so we can all have access to this amazing archive.

Update

on 2013-08-10 16:17 by Stu

They made it!

BulletProof Is Here!

Red Giant BulletProof is live!

Major congrats to the entire team at Red Giant. It’s truly been inspirational to watch them build this amazing app.

We made BulletProof because we needed it. It’s a filmmaker’s tool built by filmmakers. For real.

You’re on set. You’re shooting like crazy. Everyone’s asking you a hundred questions. You need to know that you got the shot. You review it. It’s perfect! But the first half of take one is the best, as is the second half of take three. You make some quick notes. Boost the contrast and warm up the shot. Pop in a few quick in and out points and check continuity instantly in a playlist. Circle that take. Rate it five stars for good measure. Copy/paste that warm, contrasty look to every clip.

All in seconds, all on your laptop, all using an interface that works the way your brain does and gives you confidence that your shots will make it home safe—as will your creative take on them.

The footage is checksum-verified and redundantly backed up. The clips you export drop right into your editor’s NLE with all those keywords, notes, and markers intact.

Where has this been all our lives?

BulletProof is available on its own, or as part of the new Shooter Suite, which also contains PluralEyes. Looks, Colorista, and the other Magic Bullet color correction tools are now bundled together as the Color Suite. If you have questions about how all this works, check out the helpful blog post over at Red Giant.

The Blackmagic Delays Everyone Saw Coming

…except Blackmagic Design themselves.

Blackmagic Design perplexes me.

The made a flawed-but-great camera. An important camera. A very nice, oddly-shaped camera.

And then, before they could ship it in real quantities, they announced two really cool-sounding cameras. And they swore up and down that they’d be on schedule this time. And they promised a very specific delivery of July 2013.

And everyone said, “Those cameras look great! July is really soon though, are you sure you can do it?”

And they assured us that they could.

And we said, “No, really, take your time. These cameras look to be worth the wait.”

And they said “No, seriously, dudes, we got this.”

(I’m obviously paraphrasing the gestalt here.)

Blackmagic even perplexes me with the little things.

  • An important firmware update addressing many of the original BMC’s bizarre shortcomings was casually announced on someone else’s Facebook page.
  • After an hour of talking my way through several representatives at Blackmagic’s NAB2013 booth about the lack of metadata in the BMC’s DNG files, I finally got someone to reveal to me that they keep the metadata in the sidecar .WAV file. Of course.

And now, at the tail end of the month we were promised the new cameras would ship, Blackmagic held an event to confess what everyone but them knew was going to happen: Delays.

And then John Brawley, the kind and generous cinematographer mostly known for being the first to post shots made with the original BMC, had this to say about the delayed 4K BMC Production Camera:

I prefer the greater DR of the BMCC over the increased resolution of the 4K.

It’s often great to let your customers do your marketing for you. But not always. Personally, I’m grateful for Brawley’s candor—but unfortunately for Blackmagic Design, it’s being expended to fill a communications vacuum.

The Elephant Almost In The Room, We Promise

Why is the messaging around the announcements, delays, and updates so inconsistent? Sometimes it’s honest, candid, and authentic. Other times it’s confusing and disconnected. Look how many people on Blackmagic’s own forum’s are saying things like “I’ll believe whatever is said about delivery dates only when it comes from BMD home office directly, not before.”, despite several sites posting “official” statements on the delays. From Televisual (a site I’d not heard of before today):

“The Pocket Cinema Camera is now in full production. We have the final units in test now and expect it to be a matter of days or, at worst, a week or two before we’re ready to shift the camera out to customers. We’re in full product manufacture with the camera and there are no issues with it whatsoever. We have a considerable number of orders for the camera so it will take a period of time to fulfil all these orders.”

That’s “Blackmagic Design’s Director of Sales EMEA Simon Westland,” (what’s EMEA?), with a statement that seems weirdly self-contradictory to me. How can you “have the final units in test” and be “in full product manufacture with the camera” with “no issues with it whatsoever”?

I’ll remove some racism from Westland’s next quote:

“…There are a lot of rumours out there about when these cameras will be available with loads of different dates being given on different websites. Our products get a lot of attention and the rumour mill is churning away at the moment. I’ve even heard people talking about the 4K Production Camera not being available until next year.”

Gosh, if only there was some way of controlling that. Maybe put something about the delays on your own press page?

One last quote:

“We’re a couple of weeks behind. The 4K Production Camera needs another two to three weeks worth of work on it before it can go into the full production process. We hope to have the first units out before the end of August, which is not a vast shift on our original date.”

A couple is two. Three is more than two. Three weeks of work before it can go into the full production process does not sound like shipping in August to me. I don’t know much about making hardware, but I assume it’s harder than making software, and I’d never make a promise like that about software. We’ll see if this is yet another case of the entire world seeing the obvious truth while Blackmagic remains blissfully optimistic.

I’d love to be wrong.

I know this sounds awfully negative. This isn’t meant to be a takedown of Blackmagic Design. It’s the kind of tough love I reserve for companies I like, making products I care about.

Here’s my unsolicited advice for Blackmagic Design:

  • Control your communication. Beat the rumors to the punch with the kind of candid honesty we know you’re capable of.
  • Collaborate with well-known cinematographers to shoot world-class demonstration of your products.
  • Stop being so eager to please us. Under-promise so that you have a chance to over-deliver.

I love what you’re trying to make Blackmagic. It bums me out that there’s so much unnecessary noise around your efforts.

The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera and Blackmagic Production Camera 4K are, of course, still available for pre-order at B&H.

Prolost Burns

When I was creating the demo video for the Prolost Graduated Lightroom Presets, I wanted a quick way to create the classic zooming/dissolving photo montages known as the “Ken Burns effect.” And because sometimes your scaffolding needs scaffolding of its own, I decided to make an Animation Preset to speed the process.

Prolost Burns is an Animation Preset for Adobe After Effects CS6 and greater that automates the process of creating this type of animation. It’s so handy that I thought you might get some use out of it yourself.

  • Set the start and end zoom values, and your layer will smoothly zoom over its entire duration. Changing the layer’s length automatically adjusts the animation.

  • Use any comp size and any layer size.

  • Layers automatically cross-dissolve based on how they overlap in the timeline.

  • Set a custom center point for the zooming animation, to draw the viewer’s focus.

  • Apply the preset to many layers at once for a near instantaneous setup.

  • Works with Adobe After Effects CS6 and CC, Mac and Windows.

Prolost Burns makes it insanely easy to set up gorgeous photo montages. Get it now.

Update 2015-05-17

Burns has been updated to version 1.7 and has a new price and a new home.