after effects

This portion of my three-part catch-up blogs focuses on the audio portion of my music video project.

I have read many tutorials and seen just about every podcast on how to lip-sync animation to audio in After Effects. Alas, after much trial and error, none of those methods worked. It wasn't until I got a response on Adobe's Audition forums, that I was given a somewhat workable solution.

What I wanted to do is have the main beat to the song be the rhythm to the video. And to be over-literal, have a clock ticking to the beat.

As most After Effects users know, After Effects isn't the best audio tool.

What I initially had for source material was a complete demo: room tone, snare drum rattle, and the song recorded in one sitting, including vocals. The band didn't have a click track to play along with, so setting up markers 1 every x frames wasn't feasible.

It wasn't until I got back to getting newer/more versions of the track that I was able to get just a drum and bass version of the song, and I'm not refering to the electronic version of drum and bass. I ended up listening to this version of the track in Audition (Tim, no Audition blog topic?) and hitting the marker hot key every time there was a significant beat.

Original track with the whole band

Drum and bass version of the song.

Next, I switched over to the spectral frequency view in Audition and adjusted each and every marker to where they should be. By the way, there are 368 of them.

With the spectral frequency view, you can actually see the drum beats.

I saved the file and opened it up in CueListTool. It read all the markers I had without a problem. I did have to change the settings so I could get a frame reference.

Time format was changed to "%h:%m:%s:%f" without the quotes.

Then, I noticed a problem: CLT is set up for 75 frames per second. The guy who wrote it is from Germany, so x/3 = PAL frames. But, here, in NTSC land, that's a problem. I exported the cue list to a txt file. Opened it in Excel. Set spaces and colons for tab delimiting .... Made a simple formula to have CLT frames / 2.5 and have no decimals. Then saved it as another txt file.

Why the trouble? Well, when I manually enter the frame I want to go to in After Effects to set a marker, I want to be as exact as possible. Using the above image as a reference, when I click the Go to time thingy in After Effects (I'm still an AE noob), I just have to type 10201 to get to marker 46. Here's how close to the actual beat I can get with this method and stay within SMTPE time:

Thanks to the wonderful work of podcasts and tutorials from Aharon Rabinowitz and Andrew Kramer and Stu Maschwitz's book, I'm not working in 29.97 fps anymore in NTSC DV. I'm now working 23.976 fps at 1280x720. So, I have to tweak the math in order to get proper marker locations ... AGAIN. But, it's all part of the fun.

BTW, if Aharon, Andrew, or Stu actually read my blog, you don't know how much you continually inspire and push me way passed my breaking point. That's a positive comment.

Next blog entry: One version of lots of research applied. It won't have any screenshots, but there will be a link to video.

[Verified for enough clarity] 

When does awesome become a nightmare?

So, there I was. Just over a year left to graduate with a Bachelor's in Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Most of my friends knew that I was really into the film classes and artist video classes I was/had taken. A friend and his bandmates asked me if I'd be willing make a music video for them. Quick background info: at the time, I just turned 29; the youngest guy in the band was in his mid-30s; and, none of them had ever seen my video projects.

The lead singer/drummer said if I wanted to have a shot of a dead squirrel, like the one his 10 year old daughter pointed out to him, for the 4:17 long track (m:ss) would be really cool. I asked for other ideas. Here's the awesome part: I was told I could do whatever I want. And, whenever I get it done, they'd throw me a party.

At first, I thought it was a good deal. I was perfecting my starving artist role in society, so a free party, in payment for something I'd like to do, was pretty cool.

Being the silly person that I am, I forgot Murphy's Laws of Video: whenever you agree on a deadline, add a few more days to that, unless your computer crashes mid-render; then, you're hosed. I was offered the project in Sept, told the band I should have something polished by Feb. Definitely doable. But, I had forgotten about the 14 credits I was enrolled in when I took the "job."

Luckily for me, Adobe Production Studio was coming out. I told the band about it and how I could do this and that and blah blah blah. They bought it. I told them it would take me a while to learn Premiere and After Effects (I was using Vegas before), and I would have to figure out a way convert the stuff I had done from Vegas to Premiere or AE. They were fine with that.

So, I get a pass for the Spring semester. I then enroll full-time for the summer and fall semesters so I can finally graduate. It was getting kinda creepy being 30 and hanging out with 18-20 year olds. The music video was definitely on the back burner, now.

Fast forward (ooh! 3 months!) to a week ago. It turns out my friend in the band is opening up a street art inspired or themed gallery and have a cafe/bar reserved for two or three weeks during Madison's Art Fair on the Square while he still looks for a suitable gallery space. His band is also having a CD release party during this as well. Guess what question I was asked. "So, Sterling. How's that video coming along? What's it going to look like?"

Here's my plan for the look and feel of the video: get a handful of A Scanner Darkly and a handful of Sin City. Toss them in a blender. Empty the contents onto an aluminum pie pan. Microwave the mixture on the pan for the maximum length of time before the microwave explodes.

This is all possible to get done. I hope. I have from now till the beginning of July to get it done. July 13th at the very latest. But, I also work 3rd shift at a large format print production facility, and I'm still trying to figure out a good set of hours to sleep. Why can't the days be 29 hours long? I'd be set!

If you couldn't tell from the title and rambling, I'm making a music video called "Clockwork". I have 3 months to get it done. I have no budget. I'm going to try to make it in HD (suicidal?). Luckily, I don't have to worry about actors. I'm going to animate a lot of it and use myself as the model, for now.

This is just one of two or three blog series I'm starting here. I'll use this blog for a way to document my progress for myself and so others can learn from my mistakes. You should have caught the first one already: when you plate is over-full now, don't immediately ask for seconds and dessert ... you might just get it.

I've re-read this after I've got some sleep to see if it makes more sense.

... at least for this project.

While tweaking the markers I had set up in Audition of the demo version of the song, Audition crashed. Like a first-time user, I just glanced at the screen and thought that my changes before the crash were still there and saved the file instead of "Save As...". I was using the Spectral Display in Audition to see where the kick drum hit in the audio since I want to make my animation sync with the music. When I looked at the Spectral Display of the audio, nothing was there. So, I reinstalled Audition to hope that would fix my problem. It didn't. So, I opened the original WAV, and Spectral Display was working fine. I really didn't feel like redoing the marker process for this track (there are over 350 of them).

I called up Victor, the bassist and sound engineer of the band, and asked if I'd be able to get a copy of just the bass guitar WAV and kick drum WAV files in addition to a finalized version of the track. It turns out they are still tweaking things and need to re-record the guitar track tomorrow night, but I'll be able to get everything I want on Saturday.

Why make a video using a demo track?

That's all I've had for the longest time. It wasn't until the last couple weeks that the band, in their infinite wisdom , decided to fine tune a lot of their tracks and press their first CD.

Once I get the new audio, I'll post screenshots of my process of setting everything up in Audition, exporting the markers to CueListTool, and getting the markers set up in After Effects. I'm hoping to have this stuff posted no later than Monday evening before I have to go to work (hooray for third shift!). Depending on whether the band will allow it or not, I will try to post samples of the track in order to give you an idea of the tone of the song. I might even get ambitious enough to post a video of storyboards and audio.

In the meantime, I'm playing around with Google's SketchUp to storyboard the video. I was introduced to this cool little app by Stu Maschwitz's The DV Rebel's Guide. It's a neat book with lots of fun information. And, the cover is laminated, which makes it coffee-resistant. I accidentally tested this undocumented feature.

I've also been playing with Adobe's kuler to help me decide on a color palette for my soon-to-be redesigned, business/client-friendly website. I'm hoping on having a mock-up done by Monday evening as well. *crosses fingers*