Adolfo Rozenfeld
Forum Replies Created
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Bear in mind that if in AI you have all objects in a single layers, you can distribute them to separate layers by selecting the layer and in the Panel options menu choosing the “Release to layers (build) command.
Text animation presets won’t work on AI text converted to outlines, because it’s not text anymore. In fact, even if not converted to outlines, it won’t work either – AI text can’t currently be converted to editable text in AE.
Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe
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Dave:
Todd didn’t mean a sequence of PNG stills, but rather using PNG encoding in a Quicktime file. It’s mathemtically lossless. It supports alpha channels. It’s cross-platform. The two drawbacks are: No higher bit depths (16/32 bpc), and zero performance optimizations (just like Animation, but even worse). It’s more an exchange or “digital freezer” flavor, because real time playback can be challenging. It’s great when going from one app to another, for example.
Animation produces smaller sizes in content which has large areas of plain color (a lower third can be as low as 1 MB/s and it’s still lossless). PNG produces smaller file sizes for most “video” content.ProRes is “visually lossless”, not mathemtically lossless. A loose term which means that on simple inspection it looks identical to the original. But it’s not really identical to the original 🙂
Apple offers free ProRes decoders for Macs without FCS, and also for Windows. You can read QT ProRes files that way, but not generate them. I don’t think these free decoders have been updated for the new ProRes flavors yet.
Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe
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Hello, Jerome.
I have written about this many times recently. But I don’t mind doing it once more 🙂
AE CS4 is a 32-bit application that runs better on 64-bit systems.
The main advantage of a 64-bit application is addressing more than 4 GB of RAM at a time.
AE CS4 takes advantage of more than that amount, by launching a rendering instance for each processor/core in your machine. So, if you had a quad core machine, for example, it could use up to 16 GB of RAM (4 GB per rendering instance).
But ultimately, yes, a 64-bit version of AE would allow longer RAM previews and better performance with with very large frame dimensions for Comps or source elements, if you had a ton of RAM to take advantage of. If you don’t have a ton of RAM, there isn’t any practical advantage to 64-bit computing.Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe
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Jerome: I work for the Adobe After Effects team, so I am kind of partial regarding the convenience of upgrading to CS4 🙂
Each new version of After Effects adds support for recently introduced formats. But it’s all relative, because as you saw, some users prefer to convert some formats to something else before using them in AE (a whole subject in itself).The amount of RAM you’ll need doesn’t change that much from CS3 to CS4. In fact, AE CS4 does have more control over variables when you don’t have that much RAM (like limiting the number of cores used for rendering). In any case, RAM usage is more dependent on other factors. For example, if you work at HD resolutions, you will need more RAM. Yes, 3 or GB of RAM would be recommended. Otherwise, RAM previews would be very limited in their duration, and some Composition may not render successfully. If you want to take advantage of multiple cores (by enabling the “Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously” feature), then you will need even more RAM (2 or 3 GB per processor/core on your machine).
Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe
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It doesn’t matter if the light is above or below.
There are two tricky aspects.
You have to the beginning of the light animation, and make sure you enter the XYZ position values for the light in the XY and Z position values of the emitter.
You also want to set particle speed to nothing or very low values. Otherwise the particles will fly away from the motion path too quickly, and you’ll hardly notice it.Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe
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Yes, Jerome.
After Effects CS3 doesn’t support MPEG-4/H264 video. CS4 added support for handling these formats, since it’s what AVCHD uses (there are a couple of issues with some flavors, though).
The reason why CS3 imports theses files at all… is tricky: the Quicktime architecture reports that it can read these files. But not in a way that AE can use.
So, for CS3, it’s true that you will have to convert the files to something else (as explained above).Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe
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Which AE version are you using, Jerome?
Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe
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The bundled third party content (like Color Finesse) is only available when you buy the application. It doesn’t come with trial versions. You get the CF serial number in the AE (or suite) install disks, or when you buy the downloadable version. If you did purchase AE or Production Premium/Master collection already, and didn’t get a CF serial number with it, I suggest you call Adobe customer service:
https://www.adobe.com/support/service/Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe
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Colorista is a plug-in for After Effects, by Red Giant software.
Color Finesse is a color correction/grading effect that comes bundled with AE. It can do pretty much everything Colorista does and more. But the beauty of Colorista is how streamlined and direct the UI is. So many people feel it’s faster and simpler to use. But you should be able to do the same in Color Finesse.
Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe
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Assuming you didn’t enable autosave in preferences (a good idea), right? There’s still a bit of hope – After Effects tries to save a copy of the project when it crashes for some reason (this is not always possible).
These copies are called “After Effects Crash_1.aep”, “After Effects Crash_2.aep”, etc.
Right now, I am not in front of a Vista system to check where these would go. But you can perform a file search on your computer and see if you can find such a file, with today’s date.
I don’t think working for hours and hours without saving is a good idea 🙂Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe