recreate scratches and flicker...

[Mikael]

hello! is there anyone here who might know, the best way to go about re-creating scratches and flicker, in order to emulate more of an older and worn out gel film? here I am, sitting and thinking what might be the best way, and this is what I got so far... a.) scan an old picture frame's sheet of glass (for the slight imperfections and all), and then crop 30, 60 different clips of that image into desired ratio. b.) make a clip out of it and do a few passes in SA. <<<<<< --- I am trying to tone down the intensity of a pretty stark, spark-like-electro vid clip. I thought that a more analogue and gritty effect overtop of this with a slight alpha channel might make the whole thing nicer. here are two images, both from two similar clips that I am going to combine for a final render. I feel like my techniques are limited in my use of Studio Artist (I'm fairly new and ignorant ; ) ), and was wondering if anyone could suggest a neat, slightly technical way I could try to composite these two clips, so that the darker one looked like it was hovering holografik-like upon the other?

any musings or input greatly appreciated! thanks!

[Mikael]

these are actual detail. the clip is a simple pan of the city (keyed out sky, the clouds are timelapsish) 1280x720 720p.

I was really hoping to make it so that the weird neon-electro would hover and dance over the city like electricity, but I am stumped.

with the scratches and flicker to make it more film-noir, I think this might be okay.....

[Frank N]

So far I didn't run into something like that in SA (but I am fairly new too). But there are a bunch of plug-ins and filter sets out, amongst others "magic bullet".
Simple scratches and flicker you can also add up in Quick Time. When you export or save as you will find some filter for that purpose after you choose options.

Hope this helps.

[Synthetik]

I'm not sure i really understand the final look you are going for when you say holographic? You could use a layer composite like edge 3 to get a lot of pseudo color when combining the 2 images. And you could offset one of the layers if you are trying to get a more 3D look, or apply a gradient lighting ip op to it. You would do that before compositing. You could use a self modulated translation warp (you set the selection to the canvas image and then use the RegionModulate Translate interactive warp) as an alternative to something like a straight translation.

I think you could build a lot of different grain or flicker or degradation style effects in Studio Artist and/or MSG Evolver. If i get some spare time i'll try to hack a few examples together. You can use self animating temporal generators in msg to simulate things like scratches moving in the frame. Or you could use time particles in the paint synthesizer to do it that way.

You could also build a movie brush out of your scratch frames as an alternative to keyframing a scratch movie on a second layer to build scratch effects from a second 'scratch' movie.

[Mikael]

Thankyou both for your suggestions!

The alternatives that I seem to want to explore are the particle generator, and the msg evolver.

For now, I think I'll build that movie brush that you mentioned. Thanks!

[Synthetik]

There's a full frame option in the region fill as brush control panel for that pen mode that lets you use the paint synthesizer to construct full screen image processing effects. The region created is a full screen one when this is set. This would be one way to do it if you want to have the movie brush be full screen.

Or you could try a smaller brush size and do things like simulate vertical trails or boundary breaks in the film by setting up the appropriate path parameters in the paint synth.

I'm not sure which approach would be best. Seems like they both could be fruitful for different kinds of effects.