Brendan Coots
Forum Replies Created
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Without a doubt I agree with you on that. It would almost be a waste of money to get a Quadro for AE. But hey, the guy asked which card would be best! 😉
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It’s pretty easy to get a cross-grade (from PC to OSX), just call their main customer support line, press 2 (for Sales) and ask for a cross-grade. They will need your serial number and that’s pretty much it. From there, you will be sent a new version that is Mac and your license (for upgrades etc. will be Mac.
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OpenGL really hasn’t been very well implemented in After Effects as of yet. It can be pretty nice for certain situations, but overall I think there are more important factors to consider, like having as much RAM as possible.
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The graphics card alone is not worth the price jump on the Macbook Pros, but what DOES make it worthwhile is that Final Cut Studio 2 will not work on standard Macbooks due to the lower-end graphics card. If future-proofing is your goal, you should go with the Pro. Whatever you choose, I would strongly recommend going with one of the Macbooks. Being able to install XP via bootcamp makes it a dual-purpose machine that can, in effect, run any app you happen to need. They are also speedy, lightweight and well built.
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Your best bet, if you can afford it, is to get an Nvidia Quadro series card. They range in price from $300-$3,000+, but even the lower end models are better equipped for CAD work than standard gamer cards because they have certain pro features enabled.
That said, most of the Nvidia gamer cards have the same basic pro features, the pro features are just disabled to keep people buying the Quadros. There are applications out there that help you “soft-mod” your gamer card into a Quadro by unlocking those features (do a google search for RivaTuner Soft Quadro). Nvidia does not approve of doing this needless to say, but it isn’t illegal or immoral since you paid for the card, you can do whatever you want to it. It’s really no different than unlocking a cell phone for use on other networks. I will say that it’s not as simple as pressing a button, you have to follow the instructions closely, and it’s a good idea to research in advance which gamer cards work best for this operation.
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This should work depending on the actual images you plan to use:
1. copy the image/background layer with the glass, moving it above the actor layer
2. use a mask to isolate just the glass portion of the image
3. use Hue/Saturation or similar to make the glass black and white
4. put this glass layer in Add or Screen mode, depending on which looks better to you
5. apply a Levels effect, and use its controls to dial in the glass look
5. play with the opacity of the glass layer to fine tuneBy putting it in screen mode, all of the darker portions (such as the black floor showing through the glass) will drop out completely, leaving only the brighter reflections.
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A lot of After Effect’s features lean heavily on your RAM, from previews to rendering to processing effects. Adding more RAM will definitely give you the best boost for your money in AE.
One thing to consider is that, while your particular processor speed may not be as big of a roadblock in AE, you will be held back by the slower bus speed, older/slower type of RAM and other issues that newer macs have improved upon. The mac pros add considerable horsepower beyond the simple gains of increased processor power, including increasing the speed and efficiency of what RAM you DO have. G5s are great, but upgrading to a Mac Pro should be on your horizon if you are feeling held back by your computer’s capabilities.
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At the very least, apply the Broadcast Colors effect to your red layer, which will force the saturation down to a broadcast legal level.
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Personally, I never use the export option simply because rendering provides more options. If you want the best quality possible and the smallest file size, I would do the following:
1. Render out to half resolution. Most online videos are not full size anyway, and would choke average computers.
2. Render to MPEG-4 or H.264, and experiment with bitrate settings. Somewhere around 800Kbps is a good starting point, and is a good tradeoff between quality and size.
3. Do not render out to 29.97fps. Almost all online videos are 15fps, and I assure you it looks just as good, but cuts your file size in half. You would think the motion would be affected by cutting frame rate in half, but it looks fine every time.
I would also consider a better workflow – render out to an uncompressed/lossless format like the Quicktime Animation Codec, and then use a third party app for your web compression. They almost always do a better job than After Effects at compression, resulting in better quality and smaller files. On the PC there is a little app called Super that is free and encodes to a wide variety of codecs.
https://www.erightsoft.com/S6Kg1.html
I would also consider compressing to flash video. It is similar to h.264 in terms of quality vs. file size, and something like 98% of web users (both mac and PC) have the flash player installed so you get around compatibility issues. Again, there is a free encoder for PCs called Riva Encoder that does a great job.
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Are you on Mac or PC?
For Mac, there is a free program that is easy to use and can capture to a variety of codecs:
https://www.shinywhitebox.com/home/home.htmlOn PC, the best option is Camtasia’s Screen Recorder, which is $299:
https://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp