[Andrea Stewart]

There is a super long and VERY useful thread on this started by Graham Jones. Just do a search. This is probably the most posted question there is for AE7 users.

Andrea Stewart
Germane Creative LLC

Andrea Stewart
Producer/Editor/Director – Owner
Germane Creative LLC

[Andrea Stewart]

You can probably find a gradient wipe in Pixelan spices that suits your purpose. Or I’m sure you can find a whole slew of gradient wipes elsewhere on the web if you do a search.

Basically, a gradient wipe will replace one layer with another layer using the gradient as a guide to what to replace first. Whatever’s black will go first, graduating until the whitest section is replaced.

For better instructions, check “gradient wipe” in the manual or help menu.

Andrea Stewart
Producer/Editor/Director – Owner
Germane Creative LLC

[Andrea Stewart]

Graham,

Thanks so much for this discovery in the first place and all of your continued responses. Your advice worked great for me on my Intel Dual Core for my previous work. It saved my butt.

I’m now working on an HD project that’s 1920 x 1080 59.97 with many collapsed pre-comps, and it’s just a real RAM killer. Even using your settings and playing with them I wasn’t able to work on it without hitting the buffer problem at some point. I eventually had to breakdown and purchase Nucleo for the render.

Before I did that, I did download the demo of Nucleo Pro and I have to admit it makes things go so much faster as your working. I may have to splurge for the Pro version just to get my RAM previews going at a reasonable work pace. (Also because the standard version doesn’t help with the RAM previews, just the render.)

As a side note, I did trick out my machine with 8GB of RAM which I think NucleoPro was able to use 6GB of.

Thanks again.
Andrea Stewart
Germane Creative LLC

Andrea Stewart
Producer/Editor/Director – Owner
Germane Creative LLC

[Andrea Stewart]

Jason,
Here’s a link to a very useful video tutorial about black levels.
https://pro.jvc.com/pro/attributes/prodv/clips/blacksetup/demo.html
I too have had problems getting my black levels in standard, but that’s in Final Cut.
Aharon also has a tutorial on the COW that provides another method of dealing with broadcast safe levels without using the broadcast safe filter. Check it out.

Andrea Stewart
Germane Creative LLC
http://www.linkedin.com/in/andreastewart

Andrea Stewart
Producer/Editor/Director – Owner
Germane Creative LLC

[Andrea Stewart]

Martii, Can I just say you saved my behind today? Thank you for this bit of advice on up-rezzing to HD. I thought I was going to have to go through all 90 layers and adjust positioning and scale for each one.

To the Cow Powers that Be… This answer should be in the “Check Here First” thread.

-Andrea

[Andrea Stewart]

Bogiesan, thanks for the advice. I tried it without much luck. It pretty much just made the letters look fuzzy.

I also tried importing the words as eps files but that didn’t make a difference.

Adding a bevel to the pre-comped text seemed to help a little but there’s no control for bevel smoothness like in photoshop.

My solution: I’m using a different font which is slightly better (Arial Black).

Oh well, maybe when I get CS3 and I learn how to do that neat new vector stuff in photoshop and import it into after effects this will be a solution to creating 3D text.

Until then… an imperfect shatter it is. It’s still a neat trick.

By the way to anyone interested — I had some success at making the text a little glass-like by adding the bevel, using the luminosity composite mode, then doubling up the pre-comped text layer on top, lowering the opacity to a very small amount and put that layer as a classic difference composite mode.

[Andrea Stewart]

Bob, I admit I try to understand the tech aspects of editing, but its just me and my FCP alone. I too experienced crushed blacks coming out of my digibeta when digitizing SDI into the AJA. Is it that the AJA is taking the digibeta’s signal which is normally 7.5 IRE (right? or wrong?)and sending it to FCP as 0 IRE? How do I correct for that. I don’t want to boost the blacks in FCP and find out when I lay back to digibeta via AJA that I’ve now made it all washed out. Should my waveform be monitoring from the deck or from the AJA? And why not use the waveform in FCP?
I’m ready for you to rail into me now.
-Andrea