The slight of hand we, as video editors, have to accomplish on a daily basis gets a little maddening at times. It's considered an easy day when all you have to do is blur out a copyrighted logo on someone's shirt who is moving in place slightly. No biggie. Then a couple of days before the deadline, the client calls and says legal can't clear a billboard and it needs to be removed. You know, that one behind his head... and a clump of trees... while the camera pans around them. That's when a good planar tracker comes in.

To handle that billboard, I typically go into After Effects, manually place the insert for the billboard and create and animate a mask for the object that is in front of said trees and talent. At least that’s how I used to do it. Then I found Mocha, from Imagineer Systems.

Imagineer Systems Mocha Pro

With a few quick splines, we were able to insert footage of the most updated versions of the app using the same original shot and create a clean roto for out talent's hands (the results are seen below). Without Mocha we would have had to re-shoot again just to show a slightly different menu in use.

Feature Sets

In addition to its existing planar tracker and rotoscoping tools, Mocha Pro adds a number of other features that help get the job done swiftly and efficiently. Mocha Pro's "Insert" feature tackles even tough movement situations, such as motion blur, with great results, and includes the ability to render out inserts with alphas so they are usable in other scenes. For further refinement, the mesh warp tool lets you distort the insert and make them “bend” around objects with more difficult angles. The 3D offset means you can further tweak tracking data, such as depth and rotation, making even subtle changes to the perspective of the surface easy to compensate for.

With Mocha Pro's removal tools, tracked layers are analyzed, taking lighting and shifts in luminance into consideration. With this tool, you can accurately remove objects behind other objects by “predicting” what is behind it; the calculations are based on what it found elsewhere in the footage. Removing simple things like boom mikes or even entire objects takes much less time than it did in the previous version. You can even get granular and use the software to remove blemishes and do digital makeup retouching.

All of your planar tracking and roto data can be exported to After Effects, Flame, Fusion, Nuke and a bunch of other important hosts.

A Very Easy Learning Curve

I found Mocha Pro much easier to use and learn than point tracking, where you draw a little box around a few pixels that have a high contrast and a bigger box around the area that you want to search. Point tracking works as long as you have a clear point to track. However, as the light in your scene changes, the perspective changes or the point is inevitably blocked by something else and the track will get lost and wander off.

Mocha Pro is a separate program and opens on your system onto one large window, which can be re-sized and moved around. The controls are laid out very well and once you figure out what the icons mean, it is pretty straightforward.

The tutorials on the Imagineer web site are really well done and offer in-depth lessons on almost every one of Mocha Pro's many parts. The online manual is also really good, with step-by-step instructions with pictures.

Performance

Mocha Pro is fast and we've found that it moves pretty quickly through HD files, producing amazing results. It takes a few minutes to make the tracks, depending on how complex and long they are. The way the software makes roto-masks and tracks them is where it really shines, however. The speed with which it does this means you'll blaze through most of your rotoscoping tasks. I'm talking about cutting times in half and, sometimes, even cutting the time down to 10% of the original. We've saved hours on each rotoscope job.

Nino Del Padre launched his Del Padre Digital in 1991. Today he oversees a business that now encompasses digital cinematography services, animation and interactive design solutions to ad agencies, corporate clients, broadcast networks and the entertainment industry, as well as partnerships with institutions as diverse as LEGO, Hasbro and NASA.

The 32nd Annual Telly Awards competition, which honors the nation's best in local and regional television, video, Web and film production, will soon present Del Padre with a statuette for a six minute music video montage of famed director Mark Romanek's music video work. This is the fifth such award for the creative marketing agency, the second one in 2011. Del Padre will receive a Bronze Telly for outstanding editing. The video features 25 of Romanek's music videos of some of the greatest artists of a generation from Nine Inch Nails, Michael & Janet Jackson to Johnny Cash.

“In the early 1990's my career was inspired and motivated by the music video's Romanek” said Nino Del Padre.

“This montage is very well done and I am very flattered by it.” Romanek commented on the winning entry.

About Mark Romanek

Award-winning director Mark Romanek crosses adeptly between commercials, music videos and feature films. His artistically poignant work has gained critical and commercial acclaim across the advertising and entertainment worlds.

Romanek worked alongside David Fincher, Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry – the next generation of filmmakers who crossed over from 30-second spots and three-minute promos into the fertile feature ground of Hollywood.

Romanek’s music videos have received numerous awards, including over two-dozen MTV awards, three Grammys, a Country Music Association Award, and three Billboard Music awards. Two of Romanek’s music videos have become part of the permanent collection of New York's museum of modern art.

He has three films to his name so far: Static with Keith Gordan, One Hour Photo starring a dark and twisted Robin Williams and recent release Never Let Me Go with young actors Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield. He has got to work with some of the greatest artists of a generation including Iggy Pop (‘Beside You’), Madonna (‘Rain’) and Jonny Cash (‘Hurt’) to name just a few; of course his most famous music video is ‘Scream’ with Michael and Janet Jackson, which the Guinness Book of World Records has as the most expensive music video ever made.

Set Consistent Looks and Match Your Cameras As You Shoot Source: Studio Monthly

Modern cameras make great pictures right out of the box, right? That's often true, but accurate alignment to a precision Color Calibration Chart is essential to achieve a consistent "look" and quality standard.

In our professional life as videoraphers and filmmakers, we need to be able to agree on color. To do this we need a point of reference and to have a series of colors laid out in a consistent fashion to be able to determine colors and assign a name and value to a representation of that color. In the business of creating images, color is everything.

Making grading decisions with the naked eye is risky business, requiring both a perfectly calibrated monitor and the proverbial golden eyeball. This should rule out eye-balling color correction and scene-to-scene matching on your laptop. However, with a DSC chart, and color and waveform data to complement your NLE, you can make intelligent grading decisions even on a laptop.

Using a Color Calibration Chart also helps you make a number of other time-saving choices, including the following.

Matching Multiple Cameras
Camera matching becomes impossible without an accurate test pattern or analytical tools. No two cameras are identical, which makes it unreliable to upload the settings from one camera to another. The only way to match cameras effectively is to adjust the matrix settings of each camera using the same precision test chart under the identical lighting condition.

Adjusting Cameras During Production
Check and adjust cameras on the fly, and immediately see the effect of any hue changes on surrounding colors. When producing greenscreen and other digital special effects, Color Calibration charts provide precise information about how camera hue adjustments are affecting the full gamut of color reproduction. Image quality and consistency can be enhanced by recording chart information to tape or film, and using it in post as a baseline production reference. For scene-to-scene consistency, record a few chart frames with every lighting change. You'll expedite any color-correcting, matching footage, and digital/special effects you need to do in post.

Keep in mind that every time you recalibrate or re-time your shot in post, you're decreasing your signal's inherent quality. You're throwing away data that it needs. Today's DPs and digital/special effects technicians increasingly view DSC charts as necessities for optimizing their high performance cameras, and the production value of their images.

I had the pleasure of testing DSC Labs CamAlign CDM 28R Chroma DuMonde Color Calibration Chart, the latest addition to DSC's family of production-friendly CamAligns. These are high-performance charts with at least 12 precise colors and are made to the latest SMPTE 274M international colorimetry. Whether used in production or in post, these charts generate precise hexagonal-shaped displays for HD, SD and NTSC television images.

While every DP has his/her own technique for aligning a camera, they will typically use the procedure I tested. Testing with a Panasonic AG-AF100, I focused and framed it on the evenly lit CamAlign CDM 28R. I set the Iris mid-scale; the exposure/iris is adjusted to set the white chip of the DSC grayscale to 700mv. You should also check the tracking of RGB channels to ensure neutral reproduction across the grayscale. White and black balances are then set. Because all DSC colors combine to produce a neutral color balance, most cameras will white balance on a DSC color chart as accurately as it will on a TrueWhite card.

The Chart I was sent included pattern with the DSC Labs Cavity Black, for the ultimate black reference tool. Attached to the back of any CDM pattern, the CaviBlack folds out for use and then folds flat for convenient storage.

The charts from DSC Labs are manufactured to stringent color fidelity standards. Sometimes only one in 16 charts they print meet the rigid technical specifications they set for color. The narrow tolerances of DSC charts give users a higher level of confidence in knowing that placing color signals in the boxes should result in accurate color reproduction.

Recording a few seconds of a DSC test pattern on the set, at the head or tail of a scene, captures virtually everything a colorist needs to know to color correct or match scenes. Secondary colors from a DSC ChromaDuMonde pattern are especially useful when shot on set as they enable changes in lighting or exposure to be corrected in post with speed and efficiency.

In my opinion, CamAlign is the perfect accessory for the serious videographer. Careful adherence to a common set of calibrated references is critical for maintaining image quality on any HD project.

Ever since the introduction of the modern day video camera, digital filmmakers and producers of every genre have been striving for that elusive "film look." The advent of affordable high-definition camcorders like the Panasonic HVX200, with its cinema gamma and 24p recording, has brought us much closer to this. But no matter how good the lighting, composition and subjects are, one thing screams video from a mile away: the lack of cinema-style, shallow depth of field.

DOF, for the neophyte, is a distance range in which objects appear to be in focus. Deep DOF means more of the scene will appear in focus, shallow DOF means the range will be smaller and objects closer or further will appear blurred. Also known as selective focus, it’s artfully used by DPs to naturally draw the viewers’ attentions to the primary subject.

Here at Del Padre Digital, we have had great film-like results in the past with our Redrock M2 Cinema Lens Adapter mounted on our Panasonic HVX200 and, more recently, the RED ONE. In 2009 Canon released the 5D Mark II, primarily a digital SLR still camera, but also with the ability to capture 1080p HD video. This was the first affordable camera capable of mounting still camera lenses with an adapter. With its larger 35mm-sized CMOS sensor, the 5D offered groundbreaking control of depth of field.

Canon enjoyed—and still enjoys—tremendous success with the 5D, launching a huge DSLR video revolution. The one major drawback: the cameras were designed primarily as still cameras and are thus much more difficult to control ergonomically compared to already existing camcorders in terms of operation, handling and monitoring. You need to purchase so many extra accessories just to make it feel more like a video camera.

From lens adapters for cameras like the HVX200 to the pricey and rather large and heavy RED ONE there has been a need for 35mm-like depth of field in the form factor of a traditional video camera that accepts 35mm still or PL mount lenses. And if it’s going to sell, it’s got to be priced like an HDSLR.

The venerable plug-in suite gets a power boost—and many more features—in this 64-bit version

November 23, 2010 Source: Studio Monthly
Originally developed in 1999, Digieffects' award-winning Delirium is used by tens of thousands of video professionals worldwide. This is the plug-in collection that established the standard for essential visual effects and motion graphics capabilities. I have been a huge fan of the Digieffects plug-ins for more than a decade. The first one I fell in love with was CineLook. Back when I was shooting DV or even S-VHS, this tool worked so well at making video look like film that when I used it in projects I was always asked what the footage was shot on. When told there was S-VHS or DV in the mix, they where often shocked.

I was also fond of Aurorix, Berserk and Earthquake, which creates the infamous “shaky-cam” look. VideoLook was another favorite and came in handy when I needed to make something look like a bad TV signal.

When I used Delirium back then, to be honest, I was not impressed with the slow render times or with the quality of Natural Forces, including Fire and Rainfall. For one reason or another, I stopped using the plug-ins much—until this week. Wow, has Delirium changed for the better! I was pleasantly surprised, not only at how much more realistic the effects are but at the suite’s blazing speed in CS5 on my 64-bit Boxx workstation. This is not the Delirium I knew 10 years ago; it’s a completely new animal.

Plenty of Effects

Delirium v2 offers 45 different effects spread across six categories. Natural Forces, Special Effects, Elements, Color & Style Filters, Patterns & Distortions, Lighting & Glow Effects and Compositing Tools.

I found the impressive Snowstorm effect to be very flexible, especially when using the Pile Up Mode to cause the snow to pile up on top of certain layers. You can get an extremely high-end look and degree of realism if you use some of the many presets included. The same goes for Rainfall.

Since the Fire effect uses a particle-based algorithm, it looks very good, with a much more organic and realistic appearance than other simulations. In the past, creating effects like snow and fire that look and move realistically would take hours or days to perfect in a 3D package like Maya and a composting program. Now it’s simple and immediate.

I used the Haze effect on the intro of my new demo reel to give it a moving cloud look that greatly improved on the solid black background I started with. I didn't want something over-the-top, either, but thanks to the many parameters, I could tweak it until I got the desired subtle effect.

The NightBloom, Glower and Glow plug-ins are used for generating beautiful blooms and glowing regions and simulating a depth-of-field effect I found useful for many applications. In fact, I wish I had some of these effects a week earlier to use in the new RED ONE demo I just completed. Many of the presets are animated, making it simple to click on one and end up with something that would normally take several plug-ins and key-framing to create.

The Light Wrap plug-in helps to integrate composite elements by glowing background light around foreground objects. In the real world, concentrated light tends to scatter, creating a blooming effect that is particularly noticeable at the edges of objects. Light Wrap simulates this effect digitally, providing advanced features for precisely controlling how and where the light is applied. I haven't found a similar plug-in that performs this simulation.

The Fireworks effect is also of very high quality. I became particularly addicted to using effects like Smoke, Sparks and Fairy Dust, which I never considered using in the past, as I experimented with unique combinations of effects.

You'll also have fun experimenting with effects like Visual Harmonizer, Hyper Harmonizer, Schematic Grids, Stargate and Nexus that let you create your own limitless abstract motion backgrounds.

Compositing Upgrades

I was very impressed by the suite's Compositing Tools, which I found very useful inside of Premiere. The editor's stock tools are limiting, but Delirium's tools let me speed up my workflows by letting me remain in the app without jumping back and forth between AE and Premiere as I normally do.

This is a very stable product, and I found Delirium to perform solidly with the same speed in both After Effects and Premiere. The installation took only a few seconds and I didn't experience a single crash.

I could go on and on. I've discussed only a small sample of the many great new effects available in Delirium v2. The Delirium User Manual is well written and easy to understand and there are many video tutorials out there to bring you up to speed. I am now sipping the Digieffects Kool-Aid again and I will be trying out Damage 2.0 and Aged Film; they look just as impressive.

New Delirium presets, projects, tutorials and a trial version are available on Digieffects' website, www.digieffects.com