The Genesis Project

Last night's AENY meeting set another new record.  We believe we had over 200 people at one.  The feedback is tremendous, if you take out the fact that everyone is so cramped!  If you're a part of AENY, thanks for making our one year anniversary so kickin'!  Don't let the crowding stop you from coming to the next meeting.  Vist AENY to get all the details on our next meeting.  While you're there, please sign up for the mailing list - we won't spam you.  However, it will give us an overview of the total size of our group as it stands right now.

Also, we're still working on finding a new, larger space.  If you find something or know someone, please get in touch with Aharon or Jim (group leaders)

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This one started out as a continuation of my Strange Planet series which you can find here: Planet Earth, The Power of the Sun, Strange Planets revisited, Solar System. I got the idea of doing the clouds from watching Discovery Channel.  The more I noodled with the project, the more it looked like Discovery Channel, so I just gave in and recreated something similar to what their current look.

This tutorial definitely is a bit more advanced but beginners do not be afraid - it's still easy!  That's an oxymoron I know, but it is still true.

However, I have made some assumptions in how I wrote this tutorial. With this one, I was less likely to get into all of the fine details on exactly how to do everything.  I am assuming that you're reasonably sure of figuring out certain basic things within After Effects.  This keeps the length of the tutorial to a moderate length (3 pages with graphics.)

This tutorial teaches you a bit about some Channel Effects, Null Objects and nesting compositions and how they can help you.  I like this tutorial because it takes a lot of different elements and puts them all together to create something compelling.

One last thing - if anyone can tell me how to make YouTube look less like SoCrude, I would greatly appreciate it! These animations look much better than what YouTube is showing!

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 09:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 02:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe put our AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) out there for the world this Monday.  It combines HTML, PDF, and Flash in one environment. It allows a whole community of Flash developers to not only design cool web pages but now, cool applications.

On Adobe's home page, you now download the AIR runtime.  Coincidently, it's next to the buttons for downloading Flash Player and the Acrobat reader.  To me this is an indication of how impactful AIR could be. 

If you're about to click away from this post - WAIT!  Click the link below and you'll begin to understand what AIR can do for you as a consumer.  My example is that I use ebay personally. To say that the ebay interface is less than perfect would be an understatement.  Well, ebay created their own AIR app that you can download and oh - what a difference!

There are other apps that are in our spotlight section as well that might be worth a look depending on what you're interested in.

Adobe AIR

If you're looking for a little additional reading on the story behind AIR, check out the NY Times article published on Monday: Adobe Blurs Line Between PC and Web

I can't say that I'm a Flash programmer, but the potential of this environment makes me want to pick up a book and start learning!

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 06:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Part of the reason for me to name my blog "The Genesis Project" is to emphasize the idea of beginner type tutorials and information to content creators.  I firmly believe that there is an audience out there that is wanting someone to help them get the basics and then from there they move on to training and tutorials that are beyond the scope of mine.

However, another part of the name for "The Genesis Project" has to do with who I am and that leads me to the point of this entry.  If you are involved in ministry, whether it is a volunteer or as an employee and are considering attending NRB: the National Religous Broadcasters show, I hope that you will stop by and say hello.  Adobe will be there and in addition to having a booth, we'll have several sessions on Adobe products, designed to help people create content efficiently and with high quality.

We have some exciting sessions and you can get some of the details here

I look forward to meeting many of you there.

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dean sent out a message to me telling me about some new animations that he makes available to everyone.  Here's what he said:

"Hello Video, Film and Web folks,
I was messing around with some ideas for St Patrick's Day and came up with twelve different animations. There are Gold Coins, Rainbows, Clovers and even a Pot of Gold ready for download!
All 12 are free up until March 17th...and as usual they are royalty free and fully customizable."

Who doesn't like free? ;-)

Motion Graphics Lab

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 02:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our one year anniversary AENY (After Effects New York) event is happening next Thursday (February 28th) at 6PM at Pratt.  There will be a ton of prizes including a copy of Production Premium CS3 (your choice of platform) to celebrate our past year.  The group is growing and we're still looking for a new home that will easily accomodate 200 people per meeting.  If you know of such a place, please let me know here.

To get all of the details, visit the AENY.org site

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 01:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am just giddy with the new look.  I mean I open up the blog just to stare at it.  Sad, I know, but hey - confession is good for the soul!  Also, with the help of an internal email out to my fellow Adobe employees, yesterday hit a new one day high in total traffic.  No, I'm not above using every trick in the book to boost my stats; I am a baseball fan and stats are important to people like me!

So, I wanted to thank my friend Eric and Visual Media Online, for working with me to design a terrific website.  He is awesome, easy to work with and patient with noobs like me.  Check out his portfolio the next time you're looking for a design.  Thanks Eric!

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 07:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Audition shipped in the fall, but it is only recently that I started to truly sit down and spend some time with the new features. My impetus for doing this is that I am doing two sessions at the NRB show in early March and while I know the features of Audition 2 well, until recently I hadn't had put Audition 3 through its paces.

So what follows below is my short list in no particular order of what I found nice about this latest version of Audition:

1. Fade handles - this is a feature from Soundbooth that I really, REALLY like.  It's so simple, so elegant, so profound, that a lot of average audio people will totally blow it off saying, "so what?"  But for the video person, an intuitive, click and drag kind of implementation with visual feedback is an absolute must when it comes to fading in and out
2. Automatic fades between files - I'm tempted to do an all caps on this entire bit.  This was one thing that I as an audio person lamented that Audition didn't have.  Everyone else had it and we didn't.  It wasn't a deal killer, but it certainly hurt!  Now if I want to create a fade between two files, I can simply drag one over the other and an automatic fade happens.  You can control both sides of the fade as well - its long overdue but thank goodness its finally here.
3. CD Track names import - I haven't actually configured this yet, but I will...you can hit a CD database and draw track names for the CD you've got in your computer. Hart Shafer from the Audition team mentioned that even SoundFX CDs have track names in these CD databases and so its a terrific time saver.
4. Spot Healing Brush - I love how the audio team continually thinks about how we can edit audio like Photoshop. Adobe edits audio visually, and that is actually a profound concept. In any demo I do, I show the spectral editing tools of Soundbooth and Audition because they're just too cool not to.  The Audition team had the marquee tool, then the lasso tool and now the spot healing brush tool.  It allows users to select sounds that are can't be selected easily any other way and isolate them.  What you do with it then is completely up to you, but the point is that no other audio program has these very practical features.
5. Adaptive Noise Reduction - The inner geek in me just loves this feature and the demo file that I've been given is a really great example of how to use this new feature.  Basically, it's great for beat up, old recordings from vinyl or tape that have phase problems. We solve the problem with a visual approach, but what you hear is dramatic.
6. MIDI too! - We've avoided the whole midi and VSTi thing for a while because many of our users simply don't deal with that stuff.  However, we have added it this go around and its very good.  If you're an music production person who also needs a little sequencing, well Adobe's got game now. 
7. Speed, Performance, Power - I take the engineers words on this one, but they say the new version is 5x faster and provide 3x more tracks than before.  That's some serious coding magic.  Bravo.

Obviously I could go on, but suffice it to say that my first real experience with Audition has been a real good one.  I've included the basic product page and 30 day trial download page for you to check out.  Happy mixing!  

Audition product page

Audition Trial download

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 04:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We first heard rumblings from CES, then some of the big boys like Warner Bros, WalMart, NetFlix and others said they were choosing sides and then two days ago, we got the official announcement from Toshiba, "We're done."  So, HD-DVD rides off into the sunset and Blu-ray is our official HD format for next generation DVD.

I'm glad we picked the winning side for Encore because early on, we were getting the questions about supporting HD-DVD.  I'm glad its over fairly quickly as well because it is good news for consumers and for the industry.  Now instead of deciding whether to support HD-DVD, the Encore team can focus on some of the deeper user experience features that are posisble with Blu-ray.

What's nice about Encore today is that to my knowledge, it is the only affordable solution to do Blu-ray DVDs on both Mac and PC solutions.  Throw in the fact that we can also take your content and throw it up on the web as a SWF file and you've got a very versatile solution.

I'm all about win-win situations and this one is perfect for both the industry and consumers.

Toshiba Press Release

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 08:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's another basic tutorial that tries to bring some new concepts and ideas together in a real world project.  I got this idea from two sources: First from an internal Adobe call that was demonstrating some new features on an upcoming product and secondly from a Creative Cow AE podcast that did a nice job on creating a fictitious movie title called, "The Smoke."

This tutorial introduces you to a new effect, called Turbulent Displace which has been around for a while and is a nice little distortion effect.  It also gives the most basic idea of nesting compositions, which is a core concept with professional animators. 

One thing that I got out of this particular composition is the importance of Sound!  I thought that the end animation was much more convincing simply because I added some sound to the comp.  As a result, I hope to add music or sound to many more of my short animation tutorials as a means of making it more complete. 

As always, I'd love to hear your comments, critiques or if these tutorials are helping you.  I see more people visiting this blog all the time and I thank you!  However, I'd love to get some more feedback on what you'd like to see as long as it fits the mission of this blog.  So, after you take the time to go through the tutorial, come back and let me know what you think!

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 08:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The animation continues on the idea of simple, though I do use some 3D layers, a camera and a light for this. Still, it is pretty basic and easy.  I created the heart in Photoshop and after bringing it into After Effects applied a few simple effects to create the look.

• The background layer gets a CC tiler effect and then scaled up to provide the floor.
• The heart gets a CC light sweep and then a bulge to make it beat with LOVE!
• The text uses the Foggy text animation preset and then I throw some more blur on it for good measure

Take a look at the project file and deconstruct. I apologize for not labeling and making everything just so, but there is no time these days...Oh, and less you think that I came up with this by my lonesome, visit Dean's Motion Graphic Lab for a better version than I have time to create... A Better Valentine

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'll be the last person to say that I know it all when it comes to After Effects.  I mean really...does anyone???

Anyway, someone showed me a simple check box in AE's preferences that remove an obstacle that many casual AE users don't realize.

You see, with After Effect's RAM preview, the resolution is tied to the comp window size.  What this means is that if you change the preview resolution to half but omit to change the size of the comp window to 50%, you have not saved any time. Sounds complicated I know, but believe me that if you change the resolution to half, you want the size to be 50%.  Quarter = 25% and so on...

If you go Preferences>Display and check the box that I show below, it will lock the resolution and size together, which guarantees faster previews!

Two other quick keyboard shortcuts.  If you have a full size keyboard, the number zero (0) is the keyboard shortcut to engage the RAM preview.  On my Mac it is Function-M.  Either way, if you hold down the shift key while engaging the RAM preview, you will create a preview of every other frame and again have a faster preview.  Play with some comps and experiment on how you can improve your preview time. 

Lastly, don't forget to engage OpenGL if you've got a system to utilize it! Here's an entry on it from a ways back.... AE and OpenGL

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 08:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A quick hit here - Adobe has published a total of four updates for Device Central so far and if you haven't updated yet, you might check the following link which will give you access to new device libraries for the latest phones and devices.

Device Central Updates

You'll have to log on with your Adobe ID, but if you're developing content for mobile phones and need to see how it will look on multiple devices, this is a great place to start.

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Anyway, I just had a comment on that earlier entry asking me to post the project file and so I dug it up and collected the files for you to download. This project is based on my earlier Strange Planet series (Planet Earth, The Power of the Sun, Earth and Moon) but takes it another step further.  I also added some music that I put together with Digital Juice and edited with Soundbooth or Audition.  I've brought the original .wav file down to .mp3 so the download isn't too crazy.  I hope you enjoy it and learn something from it.

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 08:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So, first off, hats off to the Detroit airport for having a truly innovative airport and to the Westin (my favorite hotel!) for making my lost weekend, slightly less depressing.  If you travel a lot and you see either location, you'll immediately know what I mean.

So, in my frustration, I created the following 5 second animation.  You can download the project file and dissect it.  What it uses is 3D text animation (3d per character), the Wiggle function, shatter effects and a strobe effect on me.  The little sound effect at the end is pulled down from Resource Central in Soundbooth.  All in all, this stuff (like all my stuff) is pretty simple and not too creative.  Nevertheless, I hope that it will give you some insight and teach you some new things!  Now if we can only get the airlines to work consistently....

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 02:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not much more to see here other than the graphic below, but I like the look of it. Resource Central is also one of those features that I think a lot of people don't see.  So, if that is you, take the time to launch it.  Go to Window>Resource Central.

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 04:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Whether it's New York, Los Angeles or anywhere in between, Adobe's CS3 Production Premium has been a hit with broadcasters for a lot of reasons.  All told, we regularly meet with BBC, Viacom, NBC, ABC, HBO, Warner Brothers and on and on. 

During my travels, I've gotten a lot of input from customers both large and small about what Production Premium offers them and I've put them down here for you to consider for yourself.  There's no doubt that these points are valid, but I also put my personal disclaimer that I may sound like a sales person.  Hey, it's not easy separating the evangelist from the sales person!

1. "It's all about workflow":  The idea of getting from point A to B is an overused truism but the gigantic realization of the importance of this is relatively new to broadcasters.  Production Premium makes moving from task to task and program to program much less painful in most cases.
2. Integration: If you hear me speak, my message will always focus around integration and how we do it better than anyone else.  Within the contents of the suite, we have more useful integration points than just about anyone else.  It speaks to the point above as well, but I passionately believe in it. Photoshop from Premiere Pro, Premiere Pro into After Effects, After Effects into Encore, Photoshop from Encore, Sounbooth from Premiere...get the point? ;-)
3. It's not Adobe vs..... Apple and Avid are there and I'm not about to dismiss them or ignore them or pretend they don't exist.  Far from it.  They are good companies that have passionate people and products just like Adobe.  However, while the competitive side of me would like to say how my product is better because of points A, B and C, it is easier and more important to point out that the Adobe bundle is an indispensable part of any Apple or Avid solution.  Can you imagine a $100k Avid without a copy of Photoshop and After Effects on it?  No, of course not.  Ditto for Apple solutions. What I am finding is that as people on other NLE's embrace the Adobe suite, they start using more of the applications and start realizing the first two points as time goes on.
4. Unique solutions to problems: I can't begin to describe how proud I am of Adobe's engineering team for developing some unique solutions to common problems.  The two shining examples of this is Clip Notes and Dynamic Link.  If you're not familiar with them, dig on the Adobe site and learn but if you are familiar with them, you know how truly 'out of the box' they are.
5. "We're back on the Mac baby!": I still have to sometimes defend the idea that Adobe is more of a PC focused company but a lot less since we created several new products for the Mac and brought Production Premium to the Mac.  We are a committed cross platform company - period.  Mac lovers, take notice.  If you consider the competition, there is no company with the breadth of products that we have that are on both the PC and Mac platforms. Many media companies are struggling on which (or both) platforms to embrace and I expect that decision won't be resolved any time soon.  We're making that question irrelevant and that is a good thing.
6. File based workflows and tapeless editing: We came to the party late on supporting Panasonic's P2 - same with multicam editing.  However, we also have the best solution because we learned what our customers wanted and how we can learn from the mistakes of other implementations of P2 workflows.  We natively import and edit Panasonic P2/MXF files - there is no transcoding or rewrapping. 
7. Where Adobe is going:  When you consider that Adobe encompasses Photoshop, Acrobat and Flash, you're feeling pretty good.  When you add in After Effects, Illustrator and others, you get giddy.  However, what intrigues me most and gets me most excited is AIR - Adobe Integrated Runtime. As I've said in other posts, I believe this will be the next Photoshop, Flash or fill in the blank... When talking to broadcasters and media giants about this technology, they get it and they are getting excited.  If you haven't checked it out yet, go to the Adobe Labs site and read up.

Broadcasters have crushing deadlines, a mandate to move to HD, less resources and a drive to create more compelling content, with fiercer competition and less time.  Ouch.  In talking to them and presenting Production Premium, these points I've written are what is driving them to adopt Production Premium as part of their overall direction.

Of course there is more, but I've rambled on enough.  I would quickly mention that we have leadership positions on many products and one lesser known example would be Encore.  Encore now gives the ability to author a DVD, a Blu-ray and a interactive SWF all in one program.  You can cover SD, HD and online in one program. No other authoring program I know of offers that kind of flexibility at that price.

All right, I admit most of what I have penned here can come off as biased, but this an Adobe blog after all! ;-)  Despite that, I think the points are relevant and important to broadcasters and to all content creators in general.

So, with all of that, is there anything holding you up?  What's going to make the difference for you?  As always, download the trials and give the products a spin.  Find your old Adobe licenses and get an upgrade to the suite.

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 08:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In case you didn't hear, Adobe has decided to discontinue the Stock Photos aspect of Bridge CS3. With iStockphoto, I'm not surprised. So if you'd like to uninstall it, you might check out the following links:

Adobe Stock Photos Mac:

Adobe Stock Photos Win:

I don't think this is something you have to run out and do immediately, but if you're like me who likes to keep his computer as tidy as is reasonably possible, then you'll run it sometime when it's convenient.

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 05:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Everyone wants to know how to do photo retouching or 'beautifying' of portraits.  I did one this past fall and you can get it here.

However, I'd be the first to say that I'm not the ultimate at anything - my goal is more to make people aware of what's possible and to make you dangerous with the tools.

Below is a link from the good people at NAPP and Layers Magazine and in viewing some Saturday browsing, I came across a really nice example on photo retouching along with some ideas I have never tried before.  Needless to say, I will!  Here's the tutorial via Flash: Tutorial

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 06:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A quick hit blog entry here:

That Microsoft is trying to purchase Yahoo will greatly extend their reach into hosted services and provide an expanded revenue source with ad revenue.  In addition, they've made a push this year with Silverlight and their Expressions products.  They're taking on Apple, Adobe, and Google all at the same time.  It's fascinating stuff to be sure and hey...how many companies can pony up $44B?  Here's one take on it from MSNBC

Also, Avid announced earnings today and they continue to take a beating.  While they seemed to do okay for the quarter, their year ended up on a down note and so as of now, their stock is down about 30% in one day...OUCH.

Here's the Avid Press Release

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)