COMMOTION 2.0 REVIEW

by David Nerlich

ONE FOR THE MONEY SHOT

Commotion is a specialised single-shot compositor with powerful masking, paint and titling capabilities designed to complement a basic non-linear editing system or even a compositing system lacking some of Commotion's strengths.

Commotion lets you play uncompressed video clips in real time, directly from RAM. Naturally this necessitates a truckload of RAM - probably twice the recommended 100 Megs to be practical - although it does let you work in compressed or smaller resolutions and upscale your work later.

In the paint department, Commotion's FX brush creates a custom brush from any graphic element be it image or text. If you wish, the auto paint function then lets you record brush strokes over time for write-on text , animated effects or cleaning up images or mattes. You can also create original 2d animations using a transparent overlay of clip footage or an overlay of preceeding images as an animation guide - a traditional technique known as onion skinning.

The superclone tool lets you make a brush defined by one area of a clip and apply it to another. In this case 'area' doesn't just mean an area of space but also can also be a separate time range in your clip. Essentially this is compositing with paint and provides an excellent method for seamless removal, shifting or echoing of moving elements within a clip.

In the compositing department, Commotion employs 'rotosplines' or animated bezier curve masks to separate and recombine image elements. An infinite number of these can be applied to a moving image then rotated, scaled or reshaped to track multiple moving objects. You can create intersections and overlays of rotosplines for complex mattes and they can employ motion blur. You can also 'stroke' splines with any brush to create paint animations as well as colourize scanned 2D pencil line drawings using the Cartoon Fill tool. There is access to multiple undos with paint and rotoscoping operations.

Commotion' s motion tracker can be used to stabilize shots, match movement of combined elements and automate brush or rotospline movement. You can add an unlimited number of trackers and export tracked data to other applications - eg: to match 3D character
s or objects to live action.

Commotion supports a range of third party plug-ins as well as onboard effects. RRP: $3895

For more info: www.puffindesigns.com or Adimex on 02 9332 4444