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Also check out the text effects presets gallery in the help, there are loads of effects there, I find it a good place to look for ideas, although I usually end up rebuilding them from scratch as some of them are too hard to take apart.
Glenn Stewart
1K Studios

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I don’t know how it compares to the Final Cut Pro HDV integration as have no HDV footage to play with but according to the Adobe website the Premiere Pro 1.5.1 update adds HDV support. Presumably you would have to export to an intermediate file for After Effects to use.
The 1.5.1 update is free to all 1.5 users.
It’s all on the Adobe website, the first place I looked.
Anyone out there actually used it?
Glenn Stewart
1K studios

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I don’t know how to set the pixel aspect ratio in the render queue but if you render a PAL anamorphic comp without any stretch after effects tags the file as anamorphic pal, if it’s a 4:3 comp it tags it too. As long as the final file is 720×576 you should be ok as you can always interpret it as widescreen later if the target application does not detect the pixel aspect ratio correctly.
I hope this helps, it seems like after effects tags the render based on the comp settings but it is a bit of a black box, I’m not sure where that information is stored and whether all applications can access it. I’ve only tested quicktime for this, not sure how other formats detect or store this information.
Just make sure you tell whoever you’re giving the file to whether it’s anamorphic or not.
Glenn Stewart
1K studios

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I don’t really understand the effect you’re trying to achieve but Keyframe Assistant/Convert Audio to Keyframes will produce sets of keyframes based on the amplitude of an audio track which you could then used to controll another property, eg scale a solid to reveal the level bars of an EQ, if that’s what you want.
Please try to explain the look you want, I can’t tell from your post.
Glenn Stewart
1K Studios

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I would recommend importing the full size images initially and then setting much smaller proxies for them, that way it’s easy to replace the small proxies with larger proxies when required and still keep all your positions and scale ok. You could even turn off proxies in your render if feeling brave and not in a rush (maybe last thing friday night you could queue one render using proxies and another without later in the queue so if it crashes you still have one render.
Glenn Stewart
1K studios

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I still recommend posting to the Decklink forum here and see what they say. As I said before we’re mostly mac but my guess is that they’re pretty stable on the PC when using only after effects, Barend’s post was exactly what I expected to hear and is pretty much what we’ve seen on the Mac. I can’t think of anything specific about the card’s hardware that would make them more stable on the Mac than PC.

Glenn Stewart
1K Studios

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I haven’t used the decklink cards on the PC that much, we’re mostly Mac here and they work great. Check out the forum here to see what kind of problems people are having, but remember it’s going to be completely biased towards people with problems. The move to PC is relatively recent for them and I’m sure there have been teething troubles but they’re a great company and enable new features all the time.
As far as price goes they can’t be beat as far as I’m concerned. Just out of interest what other cards have been recommended to you?

Glenn Stewart
1k Studios

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Sweet, Dan you’re the man!! I came up with one myself, it works but is a rambling two-line monster compared with your compact code!!
Glenn Stewart
1K Studios

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Sweet, Dan you’re the man!! I came up with one myself, it works but is a rambling two-line monster compared with your compact code!!
Glenn Stewart
1K Studios

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The File/Reduce Project is a great way to trim a project down to just the elements used in the comps you want to keep.
Just select the comp(s) you want to keep in the project window and then select the command.

If you want to pre-render elements that are used in later compositions it’s best to queue them first, set the post-render action to “Set as Proxy” and then queue the other comps that use that element. The later renders will use the pre-rendered proxy not the composition. Just make sure that the later renders are set to “Use all proxies” or “Current Settings”. That way you can queue it all and go home rather than wait for the precomps to render and swapping the element back in!! The other great thing about this way is that you can always get back to the comp that created the pre-rendered element. (If you’re confident that won’t be a problem you could set the pre-render to “Import and Replace Usage”, the end result is the same but I prefer the proxy as it keep the whole build intact)
Glenn Stewart
1K Studios