[F8] Is it possible to trace a video?

[KingRoLo]

Hi, i have some video of moving sillouette people and i need to make these into vector animation. Is flash the right application to trace around each frame of the video automatically and then convert that into an SWF? If not could you recommend the best package/technique for doing this please?

Thank you.

[Ryanw2626]

Hi KingRoLo, I'm not sure if you have the Adobe Creative Suite. If you do, check out this video tutorial by Aaron Rabinowitz of Creative Cow. It really helped me vectorize a video of myself for a school project. You need to have the CS2 suite or higher to pull it off. The tutorial can be found here.
http://library.creativecow.net/artic...rtoon_look.php

or... You can play with Macros. I don't know if you are familiar with macros, but basically it automate tasks that would otherwise be tedious to humans. I'm sure you can google macros for Flash. What you can do next is:

1. use a program such as Final Cut or Adobe Premiere to render your video out as an image sequence

2. import the image sequence into Flash.

3. Set up the Trace bitmap options you want.

4. Use macros to apply it to all the subsequent frames.

Both methods are fairly easy to do, but take some time to set up. I personally have tried the first method, but macros might be a little easier and quicker. Good luck.

Ryan Wilson
Creative Director
3rd Lounge Inc
www.3rdlounge.com

[KingRoLo]

Thanks ryan, i actually read that today before submitting this thread and so was hoping that flash could simply do the tracing and lay the key frames out automatically - job done, rather than batch conversion using Adobe Bridge. I also tried that today but Adobe Bridge only allowed me to do 10 frames then i gave up but i think it does a good enough job at the tracing once you save the preset in illustrator. I think it saves the animation as a layered illustrator file, it's just getting that into either Flash or another program in order to make it into a SWF.

I'll have a look around for some macros, but to tell you the truth i didn't think it was going to be this tedious.

I also tried rendering it out in studio max as a texture on then using 'illustrate' vector renderer but it doesn't appear to recognise textures - only actual 3D shapes - bummer.

Thanks again.