Harmony Toon Boom

[Fluffkomix]

So Atomic Cartoons, the makers of Atomic Betty and Johnny Test have a temporary position for me on monday and possibly other days as well provided i do well and they need the workers. My job includes importing and exporting files in harmony toon boom and passing them through after effects for a quicktime file.

I don't know either of these programs very well, in fact i have never touched toonboom at all. I'm gonna be looking up videos online to figure out how to do this stuff but does anyone know how to use toonboom? and possibly how to use it in conjunction with after effects?

This scares me.

Btw i know these are simple things that i could figure out with five minutes on the program but i'd like to be as prepared as possible. I actually never figured out how to export files in after effects without making them bloated as almighty fuck. 1 minute video became three point someodd gigabytes

[rtil]

i can help you with the aftereffects thing. there are a few codecs and containers you'll want to use if you're going for small video filesizes. you can take your pick out of the following: flv onvp6, mp4, m4v, h.264 and avi's cinepak. i like to use flv and mp4 because you can specify bitrates. anything above 10,000 is considered HD video (you'll usually get at least 720p out of it), and 4-6,000 is your typical standard definition on places like youtube. mp4 or h.264 is probably the best at stretching your bits for quality, but mp4 has better color correction imo.

[Fluffkomix]

i can help you with the aftereffects thing. there are a few codecs and containers you'll want to use if you're going for small video filesizes. you can take your pick out of the following: flv onvp6, mp4, m4v, h.264 and avi's cinepak. i like to use flv and mp4 because you can specify bitrates. anything above 10,000 is considered HD video (you'll usually get at least 720p out of it), and 4-6,000 is your typical standard definition on places like youtube. mp4 or h.264 is probably the best at stretching your bits for quality, but mp4 has better color correction imo.

Well that's helpful for other times, but what about quicktime. Anything specific i need to know for that?

[rtil]

if you're being forced to export to mov then use h.264

[Fluffkomix]

The toonboom you're using is Harmony which is very hard to get a hold of. Are you actually working in a studio? I don't think anyone here has had any experience with that version.

Yeah, atomic cartoons. Atomic betty and johnny test and all that.

Hour and a half bus ride

[psi43]

I'd like to hear more about harmony when you get used to it. Unfortunately they don't let you download a trial from the toonboom site and they only sell it to studios for a huge chunk of money which sucks cause I heard its a really good program.

I'm preeeetty sure you can just torrent that program from somewhere.

[Fluffkomix]

Okay after a month using Harmony i'm ready to state my report:

Harmony is google docs for animators.

Harmony is nothing but toon boom with networking capabilities and better organizational tools, and as a result is much less stable. The reason they don't give trials and only sell them to studios is because you need to run it on a server and have the capacity to store all the data. Harmony is not a one man program.

Also, toon boom is pushing to advertise my company, Atomic Cartoons, as the leading users of harmony because apparently we've pushed the program to its limits in this show and are being amazing or something.

I also hate harmony because it crashes and freezes a lot, also file corruption happens often when transferring to and/or from our animation company seventoon, and we usually have to ask for another file to reimport. I have to spend at least two hours of my day waiting on imports to go through (an hour per batch of 3-7 scenes), and another hour or so waiting on it to stop being frozen.

This program is gonna be the death of me.

Btw the show we're working on is called Transformers Rescue Bots and it's set to air on December 10th on the Hub. Don't judge it too harshly on its first episode, that one was a bit rushed out but we've gotten a lot more efficient and there are a few things that are making me feel this is gonna be a pretty decent show.

[rtil]

sounds more like atomic cartoons sunk a lot of money into it and had to make it work, and toonboom looks at it as a success, while the actual animators are probably having a headache over it.

but you make it sound like you are animating at the studio now - i was under the impression that all you do is render scenes.

[Fluffkomix]

sounds more like atomic cartoons sunk a lot of money into it and had to make it work, and toonboom looks at it as a success, while the actual animators are probably having a headache over it.

but you make it sound like you are animating at the studio now - i was under the impression that all you do is render scenes.

No i'm not animating but i am doing more than rendering scenes now. I'm setting up scenes, positioning backgrounds, creating episodes and scenes (in the network) importing subclips into scenes, importing scenes from seventoon into our network, exporting them for seventoon, bringing characters and props into the scenes, quality checking, and making 3D builds for the prop design crew.

I think i might be doing more than that but i can't remember.

Also yeah that sounds like our situation with harmony. It seems like a good program that's just ten times less stable than it needs to be.

[rtil]

wow they've crowned you king of gruntwork

[Fluffkomix]

i know, isn't it great?