Adobe Video World 2016 Day 5
Highlights from Day 5 of Adobe Video World 2016:
- Secondary Color Correction in After Effects CC
- Mocha AE Essentials
- VR Workflows: Stitching and Effects
- After Effects Expressions
- Premiere Pro Driven After Effects Expressions
Premiere Pro World officially ended yesterday. And that's sad. Luckily, After Effects World still provides lots of opportunities for editors to learn about Premiere Pro CC, and it's integration with After Effects CC.
Morning
Secondary Color Correction with Moving Subjects: Using Tracking for Superior Color Correction
As an editor who spends most of his time color grading in Premiere Pro CC, it was really cool to be reminded of the color capabilities inside After Effects CC. Jessica Weiss Thomas demonstrated how she used After Effects CC to make secondary color corrections on several moving shots.
The first step in Jessica's After Effects CC workflow was running the 3D camera tracker. Then, she created null objects to parent her masked color adjustments within the scene. It's the same process for tracking an object or graphic to the shot, only it's a color adjustment.
Jessica highlighted some of the advantages that Lumetri Color in Premiere Pro CC has over After Effects CC.
Jessica made a plug for Sapphire plugins by GenArts. In one example, Jessica used the Sapphire BleachBypass effect to create a finishing look on her footage. Jessica is also recommended the Sapphire Sharpen effect; she used it in her finishing look as well.
Planar Tracking Essentials with Mocha AE
Ian Robinson did an excellent job explaining the essential uses and tools of Mocha AE. It's amazing that this powerful tracker comes built-in to After Effects CC. Editors would do themselves a huge favor by learning the basics of Mocha AE for things like environmental text and logo blurs.
Screen replacement is another practical use for Mocha AE. One distinction I learned from Ian was that the x-spline path (the masked area being tracked) is not sent to After Effects CC, it's the planar surface that gets sent over. For example: the x-spline can be loosely drawn around the TV, but the planar surface points need to fit the screen exactly because that data will be pasted in After Effects CC.
Once tracking is complete in Mocha AE, the tracking data gets copied and pasted back into After Effects CC. Ian recommended MochaImport+ V5, an After Effects plugin developed by Mathias Möhl that lets you animate the tracking data without having to mess around with all the keyframes.
Just an example of the power of Mocha AE.
Unlike point trackers, Mocha AE is able to track planes (not airplanes) in a scene even when objects cross in front of the them. Ian showed how to track interfering objects, and subtract them from the background plane. In other words, you can track the object crossing the plane, and tell Mocha AE to ignore those pixels.
Afternoon
Virtual Reality Workflows in After Effects
This session with Nick Harauz was one of two VR sessions that were Premiere Bro highlights to look forward to at Adobe Video World 2016. And for good reason!
Nick began with a list of tips to get attendees to think a little differently about VR/360° video production.
Nick demonstrated a camera stitching workflow using Autopano Video by Kolor, a GoPro company. Syncing and stitching can be a very intensive process, especially with 6 or more cameras, but Autopano Video seemed to be an intuitive tool. Most of the attendees I've met who are shooting VR/360° are using Autopano Video to do their stitching.
Stitching is kind of like the rotoscoping of the VR/360° video workflow.
Once again, Mettle plugins were highly recommended for VR/360° effects and transitions in Premiere Pro CC. In fact, Nick's session could have easily been a case study on Mettle plugins. As a bonus, Chris Bobotis, founding partner of Mettle, sat in on the class, and provided additional information about Mettle VR/360° plugins.
No, Expressions Are Not Scary!
I wish I could tell you more about this session. But it was too difficult to share tips for After Effects expressions in 140 characters. I can say that Mathias Möhl has an incredible mind for After Effects expressions, and he did an incredible job explaining the concept of expressions in a way that even I could understand. I highly recommend After Effects artists check out Mathias's products iExpressions and ExpressionTimeline over at Mamoworld.
Creating Animations for Video Editors: Premiere Pro Driven After Effects Templates
Another session involving After Effects expressions! Only this time, the expressions are controlled in Premiere Pro CC using Live Text Templates. This is an incredible and incredibly complex workflow that Jarle Leirpoll, and a few others, have pioneered.
With the new Save to Text Template feature coming in the next version of After Effects CC, there's little doubt that Adobe will be making this expression-driven workflow more streamlined. So this technique of coding After Effects expressions to be controlled by Live Text Templates, is extremely awesome to learn — you have to wonder if it isn't worth waiting for Adobe to catch up, and add an interface with controls that automate this workflow. Just postulating!
Premiere Bro's attendance at Adobe Video World is sponsored by Adobe, Future Media Concepts and JK Design.
