Adrian's Journal

Press "W" key, the quick select tool. Press "]" key to make the brush bigger. Drag the brush over the subject you want to keep. Press "[" key to make the brush smaller. Drag the brush over the smaller details you want to keep. Magnify (hold “cmd/ctrl” key and press “+” key) the image for more accurate selection. Zoom back to original size by holding “cmd/ctrl” key and pressing “+” key. If you selected something you don’t want, hold the opt/alt and drag over it. Click “Refine Edge” button at the top. Inside the View Mode box, select a temporary background to work with. Inside the Edge Detection box, tick Smart Radius. Inside the Adjust Edge box, tweak Contrast, Feather, Shift Edge and Smooth. Drag the Refine Edge brush over the edges for detailed fine tuning. Click Ok. Save As a PNG format image.

Maxon Cinema 4D Lite is an industry standard 3D and Animation Creation Software. Comes free with Adobe After Effects CC. Can only be activated from within After Effects. (Note: After Effects is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription) One heck of a learning curve for a newbie. Maxon has 4 Cinema 4D products: http://www.maxon.net/products.html Cinema 4D Studio (about US$3,700) Cinema 4D Broadcast  (about US$1,700) Cinema 4D Prime  (about US$1,000) Cinema 4D Visualize  (about US$2,300) - for Architects Cinema 4D Lite is very similar to Cinema 4D Prime, but with some features missing and 2 features extra: Fracture - break objects into parts. Effectors - add effects to the above broken parts. (Note: Must register online to get the 2 extra features)l HoEw to add and edit an existing Cinema 4D file? Import a Cinema 4D file. Make a comp with the file. Use Effects Control panel to tweak effects. Note: On the timeline, the Cinema 4D fi...

Download and install The Unarchiver free... http://unarchiver.c3.cx/unarchiver Or  download it from the Mac App Store... https://itunes.apple.com/app/the-unarchiver/id425424353

Adobe has updated Premiere Pro CC to Premiere Pro CC 2014. I have uninstalled Premiere Pro CC to reduce clutter of apps. Now, I face a new challenge. Intermittent random blinks or flicker occur on H264 MP4 exports. The annoying split-second blinks occur at different places on repeat export. Freeze framing the blink, you see a darkened image or a green blank screen. 29 August 2014 Update: The temporary solution... Turn off GPU. Go to Files > Project Settings > General... Select Renderer: Mercury Playback Engine Software Only. I attempted to identify the cause: . Original mts video blinking? No. The original files were great. . Wrong sequence settings? No. Other sequence settings also have the same problem. . Effects filter?  No. Removed all effects and exported the naked mts file still produces the blink problem. . h264… . How is Youtube 1080p? Ok.  But clients wants it rendered in 720p for some hardware reason? . youtube 720p… . YouTube HD 720p 25 ...

Adobe CC 2014 was released on 18 June 2014. When I updated the Creative Cloud desktop app, a new version of each Adobe app was installed (Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Audition, After Effects, Illustrator and even Media Encoder) The previous CC version was not be replaced, but kept alongside the new CC 2014 version. (Note that Premiere Pro CC could not open on my computer while the other apps could) Having two versions of everything takes up precious hard disk space.  Can we delete the previous CC version? Not "delete", but they can be uninstalled.  WARNING fellow users: Do not uninstall the previous version until you have synced you customized setting and presets. I noticed from online discussions the problems that other users faced. Photoshop presets have to be transferred from the previous CC to the new Photoshop CC 2014.  https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/preset-migration-photoshop-cc.html The fast way to migrate customized presets is to go to the previous...

Drop 2 or more clips to be synchronised into the timeline. Lasso select all of them. Right-click and select Synchronise. In the Synchronise Clips pop-up window, select audio. Watch the clip sync and align the audio waveforms. Adrian Lee http://videolane.com/courses/basic-videography/

How to deliver one-to-one training?  This is a followup to my previous research on teaching adults . Presentations work well in classrooms, but useless in a one-on-one situation. A one-page handout with a few helpful hints should do just fine. Practise your subject (try out the software options) before leaving to teach. Focus on the trainee rather than on conveying the information. Don’t touch the trainee’s mouse when teaching software. Sit on a chair next to the trainee never take their  place in front of the screen. Do not talk about user’s equipment being under powered. Have small talks during silent waiting time. Let the trainee do most of the typing. They will become more involved and attentive. People learn best using hands-on approach. Like a driving instructor, your role is to guide explain and occasionally demonstrate the software. Insist that your trainee take notes. Make sure they write down the instructions. Encourage the trainee to jot down notes in ...

Tips for Teaching Adults I teach working adults how to shoot and edit videos for their work.   After every class, I feel I can do something better to make the class more fun, exciting and memorable.  So here is a list of tips I gathered over time. Adults learn best when they understand why something is important to know or do. Tell them to write in one sentence what they want to learn and tell their table group what they wrote. Pair them up to tell each other three facts they already know about the topic. Get them to read the list of learning objectives and select the most important to them, then allow them tell their table group why they made the selection. Adults learn best when they have the freedom to learn in their own way. There are three general learning styles: visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic. To know which student has which learning style, use style assessments online. Incorporate the specific learning style techniques into the class. Use images to te...

I have uploaded and played back Full HD videos at 1920 x 1080 pixels without any issues. However, Facebook recommends uploading HD videos at 1280 x 720 pixels. These are FB’s recommended custom settings: H.264 video with AAC audio in MOV or MP4 format An aspect ratio no larger than 1280px wide and divisible by 16px A frame rate at, or below, 30fps Stereo audio with a sample rate of 44,100hz Videos must be less than 20 minutes long. The longer your video is, the larger its file size will be. This may affect the quality of the video. So take note if you want your FB viewers to watch your videos in high quality. Adrian Lee VideoLane.com PS: FaceBook video Experiment: I uploaded a one and a half minute video twice. One version is 1920 x 1080 pixels and the other is 1280 x 720 pixels.  Result: Both have the same result.  Played in low resolution mode automatically.  Have to click the HD button in the viewer to play in high quality.

My Kid’s school project. Guess what it represents… Adrian Lee The father http://adriansjournal.blogspot.sg