What is a typical rate for rotoscoping??

Hi all,

I don't want this to be a post where people throw up random bragging posts... So read the rest carefully:

I would like to gauge lightsaber rotoscoping performance with the various methods. While a given shot may take anything from seconds to perhaps minutes to actually rotoscope, let's all answer the following question:

How long would it take you to rotoscope 1 moving saber (i.e. 1 blade) through something like 1000 frames of footage, using your prefered method of both rotoscoping, as well as your prefered method of actually filming the sabers.

For example: In the film I'm working on, our producer developed his own colour detection code in MatLAB. We shoot the video using bright orange / pink saber blades, and then export the captured DV footage as a deinterlaced BMP stream through Adobe Premiere 6.02. Using the tools he developed (officially known as CRONFX), if lighting conditions are appropriate the colour replacement software locks on to the sabers quite well after keying it every 10 to 20 frames or so. At my best I've done about 1000 frames in 3 hours... but most of this time is spent waiting for my computer since it's a little old, and rotoing the frames that CRONFX couldn't handle manually... hence a good deal of time was twiddling my thumbs or being productive in other ways.

At it's worst, I had to draw every mask in by hand... whereby I probably average a frame every 20 seconds with increasing risk of carpal tunnel. Note also I have to wait for my computer quite a bit between frames.

I think what we should determine the most efficient way of rotoing lightsabers. I'm not so much concerned about rendering the footage afterwards - which is mostly an issue of computer speed, only the human aspect required to produce the masks.

Note also that there are many issues at stake... for example, I imagine keyframing masks in After Effects doesn't work as well if the shot is hand-held, where as color replacement is completely indifferent...

Your stats, opinions, and questions are welcome.

-Spiff

 

Well, I occasionally make a new layer (in AE, all white. Then I scale that down to a thin rectangle with the anchor point at the base of the rectangle. I set a keyframe for the rotation and position and just apply my vidoe under it. The only times where this method is less than very good is in major fans...in which case I usually just go back later with some submasks.

This actually, works, too. Then, in another comp, I just Image Control/Median, gaussian, duplicate, color, etc.

You can get away with about 6fpm this way. (Frames per minute).


Figadiddle

 

Well my ONLY option is Photoshop for rotoscoping sabers, with good footage where I don't have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out WHERE the blade is I can probably do 2-3 frames a minute, which would mean 1000 frames would take me (plus meal and bathroom and stretch breaks) 333-500 minutes or 5.5-8.5 hours.

Actually, that's a lie.. What I do when I'm rotoing is save my work as a Photoshop file with only the rotoing done, no blurs or colors. Then when I decide HOW I want to do the particular saber I reload the frames and using actions apply my method.

As an example, the rotojob I did on Ryan W's footage took X hours to Roto plus an additional 30-60 minutes to apply my glows but I can change and reapply them to the whole or parts of the footage very quickly, another 30-60 minutes to do the whole clip again with a whole new saber effect...

Personally, 500-700 a day is about all I'd REALLY want to do.. I imagine after effects would speed it up because you can key and let the software fill in some of the blanks.

 

BRAG SECTION: I rotoscoped about 2889 frames in about 3-4 hours.


REAL SUGGESTION: I used to use photoshop and had a nifty little action command that does all the effects after I draw over the saber with the line tool. Not to many easy and fast ways to rotoscope, unless you have an an unlimited computer programming vocabulary. My suggestion would be, just try to take some time with it and make it look really super awesome.

 

Like I said, at the start - I pretty much consider making the masks all of the work. Once that's all done basic knowledge of image addition, 2D convolutions, and gaussian blurs is all that's needed to make glow. I'm thus in the same position as ReactiveLlama - I can tweek my glows however I want after the fact. I suspect this is pretty typical.

*sigh* I can hardly wait... in 6 days I'll have a shot which will continually feature on about 5 blades per frame. I suspect it will look great, but will it ever be tedious if the lighting's not right!

-Spiff