Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=1164441&Start=1&Artist=JasenJ1&ByArtist=Yes

My church does a big [ Easter production](http://www.lbcmin.com/2005/ministries/worship/seasonalprod/livingpics.htm) every other year. This year we're going to do a :30 ad for our local cable provider. I've apparently volunteered to do a logo rendering of some sort. Eeeek!

Can anyone point me to some tips, tricks, advice, etc. on doing nice targeted for TV renderings?

The logo itself is DONE. Someone else did it and we are using it in print materials already. I'm just planning to do some sort of "3D spinning flaming logo" sort of thing. We have a media minister who uses Avid, so we have a pretty decent editing setup, too.

The attached link goes to a quick rendering I did this morning.

• Jasen.

Jasen,

Set your production frame safe area to 80% for starters. Keep your logo within the inner box of that production frame (or at least when your logo lands, stops or finishes.)

Rendering size: 720x540 @ 30fps. Then when you bring it into the Avid, you will want to resize it to 720x486. This has to do with Carrara using square pixels (Photoshop is the same way). This will keep your images from looking stretched when they hit the TV.

If you are just rendering the logo alone and need to put it over a background later in the Avid, you will want to render with an alpha channel at a Depth of: Millions+. I usually render out a file format of Sequenced TGA (for Pinnacle editing systems) but I can't remember off the top of my head what Avid will/won't accept as far as file format goes.

That's about all I can think of right now - sorry if some of this is too basic info, I'm not sure what kind of questions you need answered. :-)

Hope that helps,
Chuck

Message edited on: 02/24/2006 15:35

If you don't want to do the "squish" thing (720x540>720x486) you can set the pixel aspect ration to 1.11 in the render room>Output window and render at 100%. Mark

Aha! Thanks for the great tip Mark!

Chuck

You probably also want to run an "NTSC Safe Color" filter on the final output in the Avid; Carrara will sometimes (particularly when rendering flames -- you did say a flaming spin) render colors that are outside of the NTSC ability to represent. That would wind up causing buzzing in the audio track (yes, the video will affect the audio track) on many home TVs. I render my video images at 30 FPS 720 x 480 with a pixel aspect ratio of .9 for DV NTSC video. I edit in Adobe Premiere Pro and Media 100, and this size and shape works just fine. You should probably consult your editor to find out what frame size Avid needs. One other off-topic thing, and this might be too late, but I don't think that the grammar in your logo is correct. Obsolete English has two second person forms, much like Spanish. These forms are "you" which is formal and "thou" which is informal (equate these to "usted" and "tu," in Spanish or "Sie" and "Du" in German). The graphic says "For Thou, Oh Lord." In this context, the second person pronoun is the direct object and should conjugate as "thee." If the second person pronoun was the object, "thou" would be correct -- "Thou art my Lord," for instance. But as it is now, it should read "For Thee, Oh Lord." Probably only a cranky grammar dork like me would notice this, but I think it's worth noting, if it's not too late to change. Good luck with the project. I'd love to see what you produce. - Dex

Wasn't expecting an English lesson. I'll just submit this link in reply. I'm not certain what verse(s) the title comes from, but I'm going to guess some of the Psalms were in mind. The only glitch I see textually is that the "Oh" should be "O".

And thanks for the advice about pixel sizes and such. I'll check with our head media guy and see what he says. I have the feeling he's more in the thankful for anything mode than worrying about the nit-picky "professional" little details. I'd like to raise his level of expectation and knew the community could help me out.

• Jasen.

Message edited on: 02/24/2006 21:59

Nice point on the grammar. The dangers of quoting out of context!
Psalm 38, v. 15

Message edited on: 02/25/2006 02:47

I'm sure your media guy can manage with most anything, but I'd reinforce the suggestion that an NTSC-Safe filter be run on anything that comes out of Carrara -- it's not just a little detail, but something that will cause some broadcast and cable stations to reject your spot. If the video levels go outside of NTSC-safe perameters, many (not all) stations won't run it because it will cause problems somewhere along the transmission chain. As for the grammar -- wasn't trying to be a jerk or anything; I don't jump on typos or grammar errors in forum postings. But when I produce something for broadcast at work, we have a policy that absolutely every graphic that goes on air MUST be checked over by a qualified proof-reader for grammar, style, punctuation and spelling errors. Though the verses you link to do say "for thou, oh Lord" it is, as Falconperigot points out, out of context. In each case, there's a verb attached to "Lord" -- such as "art" or "wilst" -- making "Lord" the object of the sentence, and thus needing the "thee" form of the second person pronoun. If this error isn't something that bothers you or your church, no problem at all -- I just pointed it out in the spirit of helping. Apologies if I offended or in any way derailed the thread. - Dex

Sorry, but I don't have any advice. However, I would love to here how things went in regards to how you rendered out. Good luck and congratulations. E