[Andy Owen]

Well the nice thing is that I wasn’t TECHNICALLY working with masks, because I actually drew them with the pen tool as shapes originally. I work a little less traditionally (note I didn’t say better as I’ve run into weird issues due to it) and don’t use masks a whole lot DUE to their incompatability between software. It takes a bit longer, but USUALLY I get better results…except in this instance of course.

Thanks again guys.

[Andy Owen]

I think you’re right when you say it’s something they’ve probably cleared up since then. I’ve just undergone a job change and my previous employer had the Production Suite CS3 with AE and I’m thinking that’s where my confusion/frustration was coming from…it felt like I could do anything with that version.

Time for me to upgrade I think, especially now that CS4 is out. Thanks again for the idea! That was the last thing holding me back from getting this particular project done.

[Andy Owen]

Kevin, you just made my night my friend.

It’s one of those things that I was almost ashamed to post because I was sure it was just one setting or something that I was missing in AE, but instead it was the vector masks. Simple enough. Thank you so much. I don’t know if I ever would’ve pegged that down as the problem…I’m so used to vector being a “superior image,” at least in quality compared to a bitmap image, that to degrade the quality (at least in my mind) wouldn’t have been an option.

This might seem dramatic, but it’s been plaguing me for a full day now, so again THANK YOU!!

[Andy Owen]

Thanks so much for those tips Dave! My last employer used the Production Suite all together so that I just created a comp and when I was ready I imported it into Premiere’s timeline which gave me a polished line to work around. Well, now I’m on a mish-mash of software from AE 6.5 to FCP 5. It works…but this is the one graphic that’s giving me trouble and I can’t pick out what’s different.

It’d been so long since I couldn’t just drag a comp into PPro, that I’d forgotten all about the render queue! Duh! Thanks for that reminder.

As for the diagonal bar, it’s simply a 2D object in 3D space (using it with my camera layer). So the camera rotates from left to right while it drops vertically from off screen into the center of the screen. Pretty simple…I can’t figure out why it looks like trash. I’ll try re-creating it with the tools in AI and see if that helps too.

Rather than H.264, if I’m doing this to import it into FCP when I’m done, what would you recommend? Just a QT movie file?

Thanks again!