Lots of probs with IMPORT

[MustJee]

Hi,

AS8 has only a few formats to import and even these make a lot of probs - at least to me.

First I was trying to import avis - and it wouldn't work. So I tried different ways of saving my avis since I thought that AS needs a special format. You must know that I'm a German and working with PAL and after hours I found a solution though I doan remember what it was.

Then I tried to import EPS - no solution yet. I tried with Adobes EPS, I tried the (original?) E(ncapsd)PS, I've tried Inkscape to create the EPS - no way ;-{
I did all of this because I wanted to import vectors into AS (the hundreds of CDRs, WMFs etc.) ;-{

Also I found no way to import mp3 so that I'm using wav instead.

Now - has anyone a list of the way the differnet formats should be (hope you understand)?

The manual that comes with AS says nothing about these probs and I'm wasting a lot of time trying instead of creating …


I've been searching the whole forum for hours now … no result ;-{

Please - need your help.

MustJee

[hayasidist]

are you AS Debut or Pro? Windows or Mac? (I'm still on ASP7 - haven't yet done the update to 8 - waiting until the current project is finished - so things might be a bit different now - I know 8 has some new import options!) but ...

Debut (7) won't import EPS; and Mac *might* not import AVI - there's a list of supported file formats at the back of the manual (page 361 in the ASP7 edition)

file names can cause problems if they have non-"british" characters in them and that will give you a "can't import your file" error - so check for umlauts etc in the whole PATH name ... see viewtopic.php?t=19946

(I'm in the UK and on PAL too BTW - Windows / AS Pro - I export AVI with alpha channel no probs)

[jonbo]

To add what Hayasidist said, I believe you need Quicktime to import mp3. into AS. If you have AS8.1, try importing SVG. format.

[rocky53204]

I can really relate to your problem, it frustrated me too early on!

For graphic files I use 'Uniconvertor' to convert archive EPS clipart to SVG format which is readable in Inkscape and 'import' capable in Anime Studio Pro 8.1... (If you have not upgraded from 8.0 to to 8.1 you really should, free at the Smith Micro site.)

Uniconvertor is open source and available at:

http://sk1project.org/modules.php?name= ... p=download

Open source 'Audacity' is good for audio conversion. (MP3/WAV)
Search SourceForge for video conversion programs... Let me know if this helps, Good Luck!

[MustJee]

I really want to give a big thanks to all of you … all you told me was important to me and help to get closer to solutions - remembering Lennon: there's no probs, there's only solutions ;-}

In case I have more needs for solutions: am working with AS8 Pro on Win7/32.

MustJee

P.S.: greatest thank to rocky53204 - needed that converter badly to get my tons of CDRs and WMFs into a useful format …

[MustJee]

I'm in the UK and on PAL too BTW - Windows / AS Pro - I export AVI with alpha channel no probs)

Hi Hayasidist,

if you are working with PAL you might be the perfect one to answer my question. If I use the AS8

PAL D1/DV it has a size of 788x576 in AS, the
PAL D1/ DV regular size is 720x576, the

PAL-wide is 1050x576 in AS, the regular size of
PAL-wide is 1024x576

(accord. to WIKI and div. Video-PRGs).

How do you get this prob solved? Is it aright to just change these sizes from AS handish to the regular or does it make probs? I'm trying this and that and else - and waste a lot of time - that's why I ask you 'coze you might already know the solution ;-}

It's all because of the time: I made a 70 sec. anme - and the export took 14 hours (well, of course it was the compexity of the anme)! Since some things went wrong I had to do that 3 times - and that's why I'd like to know the answers of my questions above. I'm sure you understand that.

Yet I'm working with 720x576 for it's my first try and I fear a little to change to another size. Finally I would like the actuall PAL-wide, or do you think another format to be better?

I export the anme as avi and then combine the different scenes to a movie in a VidPRG - no other way I guess.

By the way: am also working with Win7/AS8 Pro

Thanx in advance.

MustJee

[slowtiger]

Animation programs like AS only render square pixels. The PAL standard, however, uses rectangular pixels. Any video editor knows this and exports it that way, but animation programs don't.

So the production PAL size should be 768 x 576 (recently changed to 788 x 576), which in the video editor is changed to rectangular 720 x 576.

[hayasidist]

yeah! non-square pixels... a problem not unique to PAL ... and, following on from what slowtiger says ...

I use Premiere as compositor which helps here.
>> for inputs: I can either use the pixel aspect ratio that comes in the input video file (uncompressed AVI out from AS is square pixel - I haven't researched the other AS video output formats - but if slowtiger says square, then they're square!) or I can tell Premier to conform to "just about" any standard - for example input from a D1/DV PAL widescreen camera (16:9) has a pixel a/r of 1.422.
>> for output: again as slowtiger says - I can tell Premiere what standard I want my output file to be. Can be anything that's needed! even NTSC if you have to!

you were saying about render time on a 70 sec AS file! yes - this can be a pain the a.. aa.. ask me about it! - especially when you discover the "I wish I'd done <blah> before I rendered it"!

so what I do - and all of this is "often (but not always)":
>> as a habit I try to keep AS scenes short - and I aim where feasible to render fg action separately from bg. (so I plan to segment the whole by both "depth" and time.) Note that I've said render... I'll typically create multiple renders from one AS file: I finalise the action and THEN mess with the camera, in effect "shooting" the AS scene from different positions (obvioulsy limited by the fact that we're in a "2.5d" world ... )
>> If I have a "mostly" static scene I'll use some trickery in Premiere such as frame hold or time stretch to turn "10 secs" of AS output into "30 seconds" of final product ...
>> I'll aim for "smart" re-use: e.g. one character talking and the other listening but in different scenes against different bgs... aim to reuse the (rendered file) "fg action" listener "noddies"... so one render gets multiple uses.
>> in summary: 1 AS file -> lots of AVIs -> each used "as many times as feasible"

oh - and at the risk of (re-)starting the debate over 12/24/25/30 fps - for video I use 25fps throughout. (different question if I'm using PNG sequences as input)

[MustJee]

file names can cause problems if they have non-"british" characters in them and that will give you a "can't import your file" error - so check for umlauts etc in the whole PATH name ... see viewtopic.php?t=19946

thanks for that info … 'thought I had no probs 'til yet with that when I imported into AS8; but it's good to know.
I had that prob importing some MIDI files into LOGIC … and after a while I (and I hope only me ) tend to forget such things.

I'm in the UK and on PAL too BTW - Windows / AS Pro - I export AVI with alpha channel no probs

Got probs with that, too; I've tried different BG colours but am still not satisfied. I used to take blue (pure 255), but had better results in some case using pure white. I guess it depends on the surroundings.

Also, and that's my question of the day: when I use text I have a serious prob - on the working screen I see a beautiful red but rendered it looks kinda blured or rather washed out. Understand what I mean? It seems that this happens only with text but that's bad enough
Know a solution?!?

Thanx

MustJee

[MustJee]

For graphic files I use 'Uniconvertor' to convert archive EPS clipart to SVG format which is readable in Inkscape and 'import' capable in Anime Studio Pro 8.1... (If you have not upgraded from 8.0 to to 8.1 you really should, free at the Smith Micro site.)
Let me know if this helps, Good Luck!

Hi Rocky,

you wanted to know my opinion about Uniconvertor. I told you that I downloaded it and now I can say: great!
It helps me to convert most of the pics I have - specilly those old Corel ones. All I'm missing is that the OK-button is not automatically chosen (am a little lazy, and as I told you: there's really a lot of pics to convert; that "automatic OK" saves me from getting a "tennis hand") and I found no way to change the standard conversion format. But for sure I can live with that

So - read you

MustJee

[MustJee]

To add what Hayasidist said, I believe you need Quicktime to import mp3. into AS. If you have AS8.1, try importing SVG. format.

I uninstalled Quicktime soon after I found out that it has a huge size and wastes MBs of HD-Space only for content that I surely doan need.

But maybe you can tell me if I could use one of the old versions (3,4,5) for I just might need it in AS8. I ask you 'cause I don't like to install and uninstall - that messes up W after a while.

[MustJee]

For graphic files I use 'Uniconvertor' to convert archive EPS clipart to SVG format ...

oops, forgot something: how about that sh… Google *.skp? Is there a way to convert it on my PC without using sides like babel3 (or so …)?

[MustJee]

Animation programs like AS only render square pixels. The PAL standard, however, uses rectangular pixels. Any video editor knows this and exports it that way, but animation programs don't.

So the production PAL size should be 768 x 576 (recently changed to 788 x 576), which in the video editor is changed to rectangular 720 x 576.

well, I thought that but wanted to be sure. It just takes a lousy lot of time trying all the different possibilities … and so it's great to get the answers here from some specialists … and it's nice to find out that my old brain still works fine thinking out the shortest way to a solution.

[MustJee]

I use Premiere as compositor which helps here.

I doan use Premiere yet but this might help for the future … sorry, and all the people who already use P …

>> for inputs: I can either use the pixel aspect ratio that comes in the input video file (uncompressed AVI out from AS is square pixel - I haven't researched the other AS video output formats - but if slowtiger says square, then they're square!) or I can tell Premier to conform to "just about" any standard - for example input from a D1/DV PAL widescreen camera (16:9) has a pixel a/r of 1.422.

I've tried the XVid-encoder (that also uses square pixels) for avi and that works fine with AS8. Actually I use the XVid-encoder to generate avis to import into AS as well as I use XVid for exporting out of AS.

so what I do - and all of this is "often (but not always)":
>> as a habit I try to keep AS scenes short - and I aim where feasible to render fg action separately from bg. (so I plan to segment the whole by both "depth" and time.) Note that I've said render... I'll typically create multiple renders from one AS file: I finalise the action and THEN mess with the camera, in effect "shooting" the AS scene from different positions (obvioulsy limited by the fact that we're in a "2.5d" world ... )
>> If I have a "mostly" static scene I'll use some trickery in Premiere such as frame hold or time stretch to turn "10 secs" of AS output into "30 seconds" of final product ...

here I started using ScreenShots. But you might mean the same calling it frame hold.

>> I'll aim for "smart" re-use: e.g. one character talking and the other listening but in different scenes against different bgs... aim to reuse the (rendered file) "fg action" listener "noddies"... so one render gets multiple uses.
>> in summary: 1 AS file -> lots of AVIs -> each used "as many times as feasible"

that's the way I started working, too. That was my first thought right at the beginning - remember that I started using AS8 just about 2 months ago - but was afraid that I'd have a lotta probs gathering them in the composingPRG, scaling and cutting. But soon I found out that it is in some/many cases the only way; and since I had no probs with the composingPRG I don't think of rendering one big file anymore but many tiny lumps of avi - from 1 (final) AS file as you said.

Well, I wanted to make my first anim in 2 weeks - now it's more than 2 months; I just didn't know that I was confronted with a PRG that I had to learn like a bloody beginner - what turned out to be wrong: making anims is very different.

[hayasidist]

glad you've stuck at it... learning new things can sometimes feel like you have a mountain to climb. hope the view from the top and the thrill of the ascent has made it worthwhile so far.