Problems with ShowstoppersFX stock footage on CVE's Feb 05 DVD

Hi Robert,

There are 12 full size "logo free" ShowStoppersFX animations in appropriately named folders on the cover disk. These are full quality and free of logos or checkered backgrounds.

The animations you describe will undoubtedly be the reduced size (1/4) draft "preview animations". These are in folders that are named "viewer blah blah" which contain all the files necessary for the onboard viewer systems that we provide on all data disk products.

The operation of these viewers is explained in the "SSFX readme.txt" we supplied to Computer Video magazine along with the samples, but unfortunately this important file was omitted by whoever compiled the Feb cover disk, argh!! We also supplied a free QuickTime to AVI convertor tool, fortunately this was included on the cover disk.

Since we already got many e-mails from disgruntled people who confused these preview anims with the full size ones, it's obvious you are not alone so I am going to paste the readme text below, hoping that the site's moderator allows this.

Claire Watson
UK Creative Director
ShowStoppersFX.com

About ShowStoppersFX.com
------------------------

web site http://www.showstoppersfx.com

PAL product is made and supplied in the UK direct from our Northumberland studios
(support and order line 01661 843389).

Sample animations
-----------------
ShowStoppersFX motion backgrounds use standard DV encoding and should
therefore play smoothly without rendering on many modern computers.

ShowStoppersFX overlay animations are different, they use high quality
lossless PNG compression and contain an alpha channel for perfect
built in transparency. The 32 bit format should not be expected
to play smoothly or even look normal outside of a video editing
environment that can handle this format so do not be concerned if your
favourite stand alone media player cannot handle them, be assured they
will look and play just fine once rendered over other video or
backgrounds in the majority of NLE's.

Mov2AVI
-------
For NLE's that can't handle the QuickTime 32 bit format you will need to
convert the alpha channel MOV animations to uncompressed
AVI with the supplied "mov2avi converter tool", see the instructions
in the mov2avi folder or the tips in the viewer for precise
instructions.

What is the "viewer" and where do I find them?
----------------------------------------------

ShowStoppersFX disk based products incorporate a custom viewer
for browsing and previewing the animations. The viewer also shows
tips movies and web style tutorials on using the animations in
various popular NLE's.

We have included the relevant viewers with these sample SSFX products.
Look in the viewer folder and click the start.htm file, the viewer will
use your default internet browser in an "off line mode". The viewer
does not try and connect to the internet since all it's preview movies
and other data are in the associated "Viewerstuff" folder.
Be careful not to confuse the preview animations with the full size ones!

NOTE FOR REAL TIME SYSTEMS
--------------------------
Animations may need to be transcoded to your systems unique video
format for real-time use. For example using Premiere with a Pinnacle
or Matrox realtime system select a standard DV project setting instead
of the Pinnacle or Matrox one, render the short multi-layer video
clip to your systems own real-time DV format and import this clip
into your real-time wedding video project.

Copyright free
--------------
We hope you enjoy the free samples, the End User License Agreement
details the very reasonable conditions of use, effectively you are free
to use them in your video productions.

Hello Claire and thanks for your quick response. I have found the supplied file and save them on my computer. One final problem. I tried to convert the Quick Time files to AVI using the supplied conversion tool, but when I try and open them in Windows Media Player or Real Player I get an error message that they cannot be played. Something seems to have gone wrong in the conversion process. The two AVI files supplied on the disc for moving backgrounds that did not require conversion played fine. Any suggestions please.
Thanks.

Claire,

No problem at all with your posting this information.

This is the first time I've heard this complaint, though, so I've checked out the disc and there definitely is a read-me accessible from the ShowStoppers section of the DVD, and it's ShowStoppers related.

Are you saying that there should have been two read me files, one for the free stuff and one for the water-marked samples?

If so, and if these instructions were made clear to Lisa who compilied the assets for the disc (but did not author it), I can only apologise.

For anyone else who has a problem distinguishing between the free and watermarked footage, the footage without watermarks is on the DVD in the following ShowStoppersFX sub-folders:

Two in each of these three folders
Wedding\Backgrounds
Wedding\Overlays
Wedding\Title Animations

One in each of these five folders
Editing Essentials\Backgrounds
Editing Essentials\Lowerthirds
Editing Essentials\Overlays
Editing Essentials\ParticleFX
Editing Essentials\Pyro.

Oh, and Robert, I've just done some conversions using the supplied Mov2AVI program paired with the Move2avigui front end and these came out just fine.

I suspect the problem is that you didn't use the Option button (on the Mov2Avigui program) to pick an appropriate Codec.

So, click on the Options button at the bottom of the interface then, in the Window that comes up, click on the Select Codec button.

The Codec I chose was DV-PAL - which is what most of the footage I mess with is in - and the results, having converted all the non-watermarked QuickTime files, look just fine.

James Holderness, who wrote the command line program MOV2AVI did a pretty good job in my view (likewise the author of the gui front end).

Bob Crabtree

Oh, and I'm now going to close this thread and copy it to where it should really have been - the "Computer Video magazine" forum. Bob C

Thanks Bob for your help with this.
Bob H

Hi again Bob, Following on from your post I have copied the folder with the utility to my hard drive. Do I have a falty converter. You say

I suspect the problem is that you didn't use the Option button (on the Mov2Avigui program) to pick an appropriate Codec.

So, click on the Options button at the bottom of the interface then, in the Window that comes up, click on the Select Codec button.

The Codec I chose was DV-PAL - which is what most of the footage I mess with is in - and the results, having converted all the non-watermarked QuickTime files, look just fine.

When I click on the options button and get the window you describe. However I can't change any of the options shown, so I can't select the DV-PAL Codec that you suggest. Do I have a faulty file?
Thanks
Bob H

Bob,

After your comments I did another file search for the missing "SSFX readme.txt" file but I still couldn't find it. Since you say it's definitely there I got to wondering if it had been renamed or moved or perhaps both so I decided to let the disk self start in the normal way and looked more closely at it's front end user interface.

Ah! I then spotted a link named "Important readmore". When I opened this I realised that my thoughtw were correct. This is exactly what has happened, our file had been renamed to "RM_SSFX.txt" and moved from the ShowStoppersFX folder to a folder called "data\0205 READ MORE documents".

Okay, this is understandable when authoring a disk so I guess you don't owe us an apology Bob (or Lisa), maybe we owe you one instead,

Anyway, thanks for that! I would like to clarify something else which might address Robert's problem with the Mov2AVI convertor tool.

First of all this tool is not required for Premiere, Premiere Pro, Premiere Elements, Sony Vegas, Final Cut Pro which all work fine with the Quicktime format.

For those NLE's such as Edius, MSPro, Edition, etc that do require conversion to AVI it's crucially important to read the tutorials we provided in the viewers and particularly so for the overlays which are 32 bit movie files containing 8 bits of transparency information.

So just to make this absolutely clear, where are these viewers?
The viewers are in these folders..

data\ShowStoppersFX\Editing Essentials\Viewer
data\ShowStoppersFX\Wedding\viewer wedding1
data\ShowStoppersFX\Wedding\viewer wedding2
data\ShowStoppersFX\Wedding\viewer wedding2

To start a viewer, click the file named "start.htm".

With one of the four viewers open, press the MENU button then on the following screen press the TIPS button then select the link to "AVI Converter".

Good! You just found the dedicated instruction page we provided for using this tool with ShowStoppersFX animations.

As you will see from these instructions what is crucially important for the overlays is to be sure NOT to select a DV codec since DV supports only 24 bits (8 Red, 8 Green, 8 Blue).

Instead, choose "Uncompressed" (ie no codec) to retain the extra 8 greyscale bits which , are the 256 levels of transparency that allows them to be placed on a higher video track without need for keying.

As well as the tips, these viewers preseny a little 1/4 size movie screen where you can see all the "preview quality" animations play. These are the files that are watermarked that Robert confused with the actual full size samples.

Hope this helps,

Claire Watson
UK Creative Director
ShowStoppersFX.com

Claire,

Thanks for the clarification on use of the mov2avi converter.

I was simply converting the files to DV, totally forgetting that the whole purpose of the overlays is to have transparent areas!

D'oh!

Bob C

To Claire and Bob Crabtree, I have read the instructions you point out, but when I try to use my coverter it will not let me change any values. It is set at 'none' ie no compression and fixed at million+ for the depth. When I use this on any of the files it converts them to avi format, but when I try to open them I get an error message. This makes me think my copy of the conversion tool is faulty.
Regards
Bob Horton

Robert, just a thought, did you read this bit?

"Note: mov2avigui requires that QuickTime and the Quicktime Authoring Component (optional component of the Quicktime installation) be installed on your system before it will work"

Claire Watson
UK Creative Director
ShowStoppersFX.com

Hi again Claire, do you mean Quicktime Player that I have installed and upgraded yesterday or something different? Still no joy so far. Does the folder need to be saved on a given drive in a given location?

Bob H

Robert,

Quicktime Player is just one part of a QuickTime and no, it doesn't matter which hardrive or folder you save to.

What this refers to is simply an option to select (or not) when intalling QuickTime. I suggest you do a FULL install of QT.

BTW, what NLE is it?

Claire, are you the Claire who did so much for the Cinestream users before it was sacrificed? If so, I'm extremely glad to see you active here. I was active on the Cinestream forum, trying to get 3 and 3.1 right in the face of the obvious commercial crassness of the then and future owners :(

BTW, I still use, and am very happy with, CS3.1. And the training cds you (?) did were superb, and I still use them.

Claire, I use MSP7 and i don't think this supports Quicltime files.

Thanks Bob H

Er, MSP7 does support QuickTime - indeed, I think you´ll find that the program CD for MSP7 even has a QuickTime installer on it.

However, whether I´m right or not, the important thing is that you need to do a full install of QuickTime - MSP 7 is NOT involved with the conversion of Mov Files to AVI files.

Bob C

Alan,

It is me, good to hear you again!

aah.. (nostalgia) .. those EditDV days..

Splendid, nice to talk to you again. I retired a year ago but am doing some freelance work for production companies, encouraging them into HDTV. It pays nicely and it's great fun. Keep up the good work