[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

[James Mulryan] “Looks a bit rough. Maybe my shadow is too thin.”

You may need to change the alpha type in Final Cut Pro.
Right Click on clip > Modify > Alpha Type > Black

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

This is all true.
And that’s why the “OpenGL – Interactive” mode exists for Fast Previews.
It basically provides OpenGL acceleration when you interact (ie, while dragging with your mouse) with layers in the Comp panel, adjust parameters in the Timeline or Effects panel, etc. Then the software renderer kicks in when you release the mouse button and renders that frame.
This mode IMO gives you the best of both worlds, because the OpenGL muscle helps you get a very fast and responsive preview (even if not entirely accurate) and then you do get the actual result from the software renderer. With more powerful graphics cards, you get better results and more advanced features (like preview for Depth of Field, in CS4)
Even for OpenGL – Interactive, if your Comp has non-accelerated effects, it becomes a moot point. It just falls back to software.

The recommendation to turn off OpenGL is so widespread, because OpenGL driver conflicts can lead to instability (especially on the Windows side of things, because of the myriad of drivers available). Sticking to Adobe recommended graphics card and drivers should help. But if you’re not getting corrupt textures or OpenGL-related crashes, there’s no reason to turn it off.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

I think James means his Comp is set as DVCPRO HD. He mentions he exported QT Animation with RGB+A (why 92 percent?)

James: Are you compositing this over anything other than FCP’s default black background?

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

This doesn’t work just for transformations and masks.
It’s a way to alter the rendering order in any case in which you may want to do so.
For example, it’s not the same blurring a masked image, than masking a blurred image. The former is the default processing order in AE (Masks, then Effects). To achieve the latter, apply a blur effect to your layer, then Pre-Compose and mask the Pre-Comp.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Please also see long-ish post I wrote on this (above in the thread list).
Even if track mattes end up being a simpler solution in this case, it could be useful the next time you want to alter the processing order so that a feature that usually is calculated before another feature, gets processed later in the chain.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

There is a work-around.
Before pasting the mask, select the target layer and Pre-Compose it (Layer > Pre-Compose). You’ll see a dialog that gives you two options – in this case you, want the second one.

Pre-Composing means: Take the layer(s) I selected, cut them from the Comp I am in, create a new Comp that is nested inside this one, and paste the selected layer(s) inside that one.

So if you paste in the Pre-Comp (ie, from the main Composition) the mask will fit perfectly.

But what if you want to scale the image inside the mask? The original layer still has is its’ own scale property. If you double click the Pre-Comp, you’ll go inside the Pre-Comp and you’ll be able to edit the orginal layer’s scale.

Why are we doing this?
Because After Effects has a specific order for processing. Transform (for example, scale) always is done after masks, so when you scale down a layer, you’re scaling down them masks.
When you Pre-Compose a layer, you make sure that everything inside is calculated before. So, the layer inside the Pre-Comp is scaled, then the whole Pre-Comp is masked.

But, you say, if I do that, I can’t see its’ relationship to the mask as I scale it down!

Here’s when you can get all fancy and impress your friends.

If both the parent Comp and the Pre-Comp are available as tabs in the timeline (ie, they are both “open”) you’ll see you can enable a lock for the parent Comp in the upper left corner of the Comp panel. If you enable that lock, you can switch in the timeline to the Pre-Comp tab, adjust scale as you see the results in the parent Comp (don’t try to adjust it directly in the Comp panel, just drag the scale property in the timeline).

Too complicated?

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

WMV is not lossless. As all distribution formats, it’s highly compressed.

An AVI file can of course be uncompressed, but on the Mac version of AE, AVI is only available as a Quicktime export component (ie, it appears in File > Export) which is really not a recommended path to export video files from After Effects. Same for Flip4Mac.
So, yes, exporting a lossless Quicktime file and feeding that to an encoding application is a good idea.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

I am not allowed to say anything but “soon”. Sorry.
With 12 GB of RAM (once the update ships), you may want to use 6 of your 8 cores (you can set the multiprocessing preferences to leave 2 CPUs free)… This should still give you screaming fast performance.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Yes, although I also want to clarify that supporting a processor family that didn’t exist when the application was released is not a “bug fix” 🙂

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

It would be if it used square pixels. The final 4:3 aspect comes from both the pixel dimensions and the pixel aspect.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe