Thanks for help on lullabies cartoon - progress report ....
2005-02-19 by Charles Lucy
Thanks for advice on syncing Flash. > > You might also try to put the animation and audio in iMovie that > comes with Apple. Once I had got the .mov and the bounced audio, I also made a version using Final Cut Express, but to get decent video quality without "trails" and odd pixel errors, I needed a 30 Meg .mov file. I did produce a 875 KB .mov version, but the images were minute, and neither is really practical as a fast delivered good quality promo on the lullabies.co.uk website for visitors. We had chosen to use Flash as it would enable us to put up a very small file and maintain a fairly good visual appearance. All the characters, backgrounds, and scenes in the animation were drawn by my son inside the Flash application from an eight frame storyboard plan on a sheet of A4 paper. He designed and drew the eight or so characters in the story straight out of the top of his head and into Flash, and has even designed a "dress your baby" game in Flash using the dozens of colourful images he had drawn. Kids are amazing! > > I'd be curious > to know how you scored the various hit points. were you using Logic's > movie track? I haven't used that function so I don't really know if > Logic does some behind-the-scenes conversion of frame rates. > > hope this helps! again, kudos to you and your son for a job well done > :) > > regards, > > b r i a n t u l l y I ran the visuals with Flash Player, and captured them as a QuickTime movie using SnapzProX, at 12 f.p.s. The QuickTime movie had the same duration time as the original visuals (1 min 17 sec) When I opened the movie in Logic Pro 7, at a 120 b.p.m. I had already loaded fourteen music audio tracks into Logic, as that was the total musical content of the two albums for which the cartoon is a promo. I also loaded about fifty sound effects of sea, planes, babies, sheep etc. which I thought I might need as audio files. I realise that this is a strange way to do it, but I am very familiar with Logic and composing music to picture, yet a total newbie to Flash, and this odd way of working. Having the movie, and a couple of hours of audio all in Logic at once, and immediately available to audition, cut and move; I first positioned the sound effects at the obvious positions, e.g. sync actions, cries etc. Then it was a matter of selecting appropriate snatches of music and positioning them in a way that would work dramatically and with the action and continuity. The greatest problem that I had was having to shuffle the floating movie around the screen, to enable me to solo audition effects, select and cut out audio pieces to assemble the whole soundtrack. I forgot about using the movie track, as I could see where I was from the floating movie, and the positions of the sound effects. Having selected the right lengths of music and cut them out of the tracks, it became a move and edit job. Once everything was in the right place on about seven unmuted audio tracks, I then only had to adjust the volumes and pans. Since the music and sfx had already been mastered, no eq, reverb effects etc were required. Not knowing what format to use to bounce the finished stereo audio, I bounced it in 16, 24 bit & mp3, just to be safe. This project took a few weeks to complete, as my 12 year-old has only been using Flash (sometimes over-zealously) between school and homework etc. since Xmas. So if he would do the visuals, I promised to sort the audio for him. This week has been half-term in UK. We shall do some more experiments to get the Flash to "stream" correctly over the weekend, and with your useful advise, we should have it completed in time for him to return to school on Monday morning. One of my friends has been warning me that the EU has very strict laws about child labour;-) The finished piece will eventually be at: http://www.lullabies.co.uk Thanks for your helpful thoughts. Charles Lucy - lucy@... ------------ Promoting global harmony through LucyTuning ------- for information on LucyTuning go to: http://www.lucytune.com for LucyTuned Lullabies go to http://www.lullabies.co.uk Buy/download/CD from: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/lucytuned2