Taking the Rendered AVI's into Movie Maker & Premiere

I now had both the video-based and audio-based media to combine and enhance in the two video editing programs available to me. Having recorded background track-audio myself from a compilation Jazz-Funk CD and obtaining various ambient clips related to each Ident from www.ilovewavs.com (watery bubbles and dish rattling for the Washing Up Ident, high pressure steam for the Ironing and a cleaning-squeak sound for the Cleaning Ident...), I decided to experiment to see if the background music could be normalized in Premiere at the stages when the sound effects initiated, and resume to a normal level when they weren't being used.

The backing tracks themselves were chosen based on their ability to emulate the synthed sounds and strong, bass-driven undertones of many traditional sci-fi and space-age programs shown through the years. I also felt that the timing of the score and beat inherent in the tracks were prefectly fitting in with the sweeping, panning camera in the Idents themselves

Before I describe that, I first had a few issues with rendering the Ironing and Cleaning Idents...

I knew that the inclusion of a translucent/reflective material on any object in the scene would cause rendering to slow right down, but at only just over 300 frames, the Ironing Ident took a lot longer than was predicted
It was made worse by the fact that the television was always in shot and so I couldn't use the technique of rendering the frames where it appears and then 'Hide Selection' on it, and then continue with the other 100 or so frames

This technique thankfully, was applicable to the third Ident as the camera sweeps past the TV after frame 180
Although not lasting near as long as the three hours spent waiting for 'Ironing', the sheer size of the file and UVW Map meant that as the table top came into view, the rendering slowed right down

I made sure to use 1280 x 720 resolution to get the best from Max ( I had previously tried the 'HD_Output' size selector, but the AVI resulted in a file of 1.2GB!)

Opening up Windows Movie Maker, I imported the 'identone_washingup' AVI file, as well as the WAV files 'backing_track', 'dishesrattling' and 'plops1'
I then dragged the AVI file and the backing track WAV onto the Storyboard. I had to crop the beginning of the track to fit into the 14 seconds worth of video and then attempted to drag the other two WAV files onto the board too -I found that I couldn't combine them with the backing track, only place them before or after it
Unfortunately, I discovered Movie Maker only allows a single audio track at once - I would retain this info as a potential advantage to me...


Content with the backing track only, I then chose 'Save To My Computer' from which M.M brought up a window which displayed a multitude of options for video, each with varying levels of file sizes and resolution quality
As I had set 25fps on all my Max animations along the timeline, subsequently defaulted as PAL, when I originally exported the AVI from Max I knew I was to stick with this settings in both Premiere and Movie Maker

^The Ironing Ident actually needed two renders in the end as I found that the last 30 frames where the camera is above the 'board and spins round to look at the shirt, their was no footage exported! The last part of the end of this timeline actually shows the extra rendering I needed to do, not forgetting how precise I needed to be to stitch the excess footage onto the original, video and audio combined...^


Although I was perfectly happy with how the video quality and the inclusion of just the backing track to accompany it turned out, I kept having a nagging thought about my selection of sound clips that I'd collected on the basis that I'd use them in conjunction with the backing track
The image here shows how, in Premiere now, I had the opportunity to make use of four audio channels, the technique of 'normalizing' each separate channel, to raise and lower the volume of the relevant audio clips placed on the channel

Using the 'Razor' tool, I was able to target certain key-timeframes throughout the backing track that, when conflicting with the sound clip ('dishesrattling', for example), I could then make a cut at the start and end of that clip. I repeated this method for twice again for the 'plops1' effect when the plates are in the water
The sections of the backing track now 'cut' could be moved to the second audio channel - the effects were on the third - and these two channels were normalized to -2 and -1 respectively
This meant that the backing track would remain at a constant volume until an effect would play: the track's volume would drop and subsequently raise to the set volume again after the effect had played along the timeline

^The image above demonstrates my technique described in the previous paragraph. Note how Premiere automatically recognises separate clips and buffers them right up to the next clip in the timeline, thus reducing any overlap or pauses in the soundtrack - also shown is the 'clip-gain' window where I 'normalized' the audio in keeping with the ambiance of the animation^

^This is an example as to why I ultimately ended up reverting back to using the backing track only in Movie Maker. The tempo and note-choices inherent in all three backing tracks mean that, even though the sound clips sounded fitting in isolation, when combined in the timeline in Premiere, it just didn't work. The decision was also backed by opinions given to me by others who felt that the visual animation and track are so well scripted together, to dilute that track and distract the viewer with a misplaced sound effect just for 'effect' didn't sit right and spoilt the sense of serenity and cohesion with the animation itself^

^Here was where Premiere really feel short for me. Even though I chose to input the exact(!) 'resolution settings', 'frame rate' and 'pixel aspect' as I had been successful with in Movie Maker, as shown here, the resultant video quality that Premiere delivered just wasn't up to standard for me to use. Yes, the inclusions of the effects altered the feel of the video (as I have described in the previous paragraph), but I was looking for video quality that matched the audio clarity and expanse - Movie Maker was the program I considered to match this expectancy^

Finally, after much deliberation and concentration with timings,renderings and outputs, the Idents were completed. The final post shall detail, as I did at the end of the first Semester, all the positive and negative points of the animations as a whole: due to them being only markedly different in content, but still keeping the same location, lighting, characters...Idents, as a part of their nature, will always be broadcast by a company as a group of three or four, and only differ in settings and perceived atmosphere anyways...