[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Hello, Eric.
It was a tricky one, but I think I figured it out (of course, it’s human nature to consider the app is “broken” and I was very close to reaching that conclusion!).
It turns out, one of the color stops in each of these gradients was set to use a spot color (Pantone) instead of a process (RGB) color. And of course, one shouldn’t blame AE for not handling inks, right? 🙂
If you edit each of these gradient stops so they use process colors, there will be a very slight shift but then it will render identically in AE.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Wouldn’t it be possible to post the AI file instead of a JPEG? That way I could take a look and see what’s going on.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Without knowing exactly what you call uncompressed (“None”, “Yuv 4:2:2”?), I am not surprised about MPEG-2 being faster than a third party codec. MPEG-2 is among the file formats that are handled directly by MediaCore, Adobe’s high-performance format handling library. With some exceptions, lossless encoders (like Lagarith)are more optimized for file size shrinking than performance. In any case, there’s no contradiction – MPEG-2 encoding should still be slower than non-temporally compressed formats handled by MediaCore.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Please note that After Effects does have 3D text capabilities, in the sense as it lets you set and animate text attributes -position, orientation, anchor point and so on- fully in 3D space, and in a per character/word/line basis.

It seems, though, what you want extruded text, right?

While there are ways to generate extrusions manually in 3D by repeating and shading copies of 3D text layers, it could be more direct to accomplish what you want by using a third party plug-in for After Effects, like 3D Invigorator from Zaxwerks.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Doumbe:

After Effects is a very different beast from a typical non linear editing system.
An editing system is designed to be played in real time, much like a music instrument. In such an application, meaning is created mainly by using time as the primary material.

After Effects, on the other hand, is designed to deal with much more complex issues in terms of processing images. And there is a price to that versatility.

Because of this, the classic Spacebar-play as you may know it in an editing application won’t do much. It will just play the timeline at whatever speed it can, which has very little usefulness in terms of evaluating your content.

In After Effects, you need to build a RAM preview before you can get to watch a segment of your composition at full frame rate.

You can invoke a RAM preview in several ways. One is by pressing the big, “super play” button on the right side of the time controls panel. A better way is just to press the 0 (zero) key in your numeric keypad.

When you do so, After Effects starts building a preview (either from the current time or the beginning of your timeline, depending on how you set time controls) and after creating such preview, you get to watch it in real time (full frame rate). This happens when you interrupt the preview which is being built, or when it reaches the end of your Comp, or when you run out of RAM memory (it’s called RAM preview for a reason!).

More info on RAM previews in the Preview video and audio of After Effects help.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

I am glad it worked for you!

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

It’s very important that Andrew (the original poster) visits the help section on pixel/frame aspects I linked to above, because creating a Comp with a custom size of 1280×1080 and Sq pixels will never do what he needs. Looks like he just needs to pick one of the DVCPRO HD presets and enable the PAR correction button in the Comp panel.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

You can do it with or without expressions.
Without expressions can be a bit less intimidating if you don’t have any experience with them, but way less flexible to update.
In that case, do not parent it. Just copy the position keyframes from the original layer, paste them to the second layer and them select all keyframes (clicking the property name will do that for you) and move them to the right a bit. That will make the second layer do the same thing but with a short delay (which you can adjust by moving all keyframes a bit to the left or right).
The problem, of course, is: should you update the original layer’s position, the second layer will not react to match the changes. You would have to do all of this again.

With expressions, you could link the position of the “follower” layer to the main one using a time-based expression.
Alt-Click (win) or Option-Click (Mac) the position property’s stop watch and add this:
thisComp.layer(“OriginalLayerName”).transform.position.valueAtTime(time-delay);

“OriginalLayerName” of course is the name of the original layer. The one you want to follow.

time = current time. Don’t change it.
delay is a number in seconds (0.5 would be half a second, for example).
So, time-0.5 would means the original layer’s position half a second before current time. You can easily update it altering “delay” so it’s longer or shorter.

If you also want it for rotation, scale, etc do the same thing for those properties.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

DVCPRO HD is 1280×1080 with a PAR of 1.5 (ie, a final frame aspect of 1920×1080).

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

In the first case (creating a Composition), make sure the Pixel Aspect Ratio in the Composition Settings dialog is set to Square pixels:

However, it seems your source footage is not square pixels.

In the second case, you’re evidently dragging to the Comp button in the Project Panel a footage item that is NOT square pixels. You need to ask After Effects to show a preview for the Comp the compensates for non-square pixels. So, you need to press the pixel aspect compensation button in the Comp panel:

Also, I recommend taking a look at the Pixel aspect ratio and frame aspect ratio section in After Effects Help.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe