Brendan Coots
Forum Replies Created
-
I agree with these points, especially the RAM cost issue. I buy all of our mac RAM from Other World Computing (and purchase their brand) because it matches the Apple RAM specs and costs a fraction of what Apple charges.
You could build out the system listed for 25% less than your budget if you don’t let Apple stuff the box with all those things, and buy them third-party instead.
-
Chances are any replies to this type of question will be subjective in nature, so no answer will be “the” definitive one.
That said, my personal choice between the two would be the mac option without a doubt. Here’s my basic (and admittedly personal) reasons:
1. Vista sucks with pro apps, it’s pretty well documented. Add to that the myriad security issues, constant Windows headaches and OSX feels like a dream by comparison.
2. Vista will hog more of your RAM and other resources just to run.
3. You will likely be able to take better advantage of that amount of RAM using a mac, depending on your needs and workflow, etc.
4. In my experience, macs have better support via AppleCare
4. Mac networking is easier and more solid/reliable
5. You can run Windows AND OSX on a mac using bootcamp/Parallels, with great performance on both OSs, so you really get two systems for the price of one.
6. More bang for the buck on OSX since you can run Final Cut Suite and Adobe apps, making your system a complete end-to-end production machine. I know you mentioned using Premiere, but you may eventually want to go with FCP. Having this option without purchasing a new rig offers nice flexibility.
Again, these are just my opinions and I’m sure people will have great reasons for using Windows boxes instead. My studio is currently ditching all of our PCs in favor of macs for the reasons listed above, but also the IT costs of maintaining the PCs (which are rife with BS issues that should have been ironed out years ago) far outstrip maintenance costs of the macs.
-
I have a White Intel Macbook and everything runs reliably via bootcamp, After Effects included. I even run Maya now and then, and while render times aren’t fantastic, it does work fine.
The only thing that I couldn’t get working through bootcamp was my Airport card, but few others seemed to suffer the same issue…
-
Sounds like maybe your glow plugin is corrupted or having other problems. Maybe try using a different glow method, or replace the glow plugin in your plugins folder. To do this you may need to reinstall AE.
-
The simple answer is (for North American standard definition) to do all your work in 720×480 compositions, regardless of the source media you are using. After Effects will know that your assets are square pixel and will handle everything behind the scenes for you.
It will only overly-complicate matters to start mucking around with using non-standard comp sizes and trying to get everything to work out properly, and it’s completely unnecessary since AE is smart enough to do the dirty work for you.
-
This is exactly how I do it as well, right down to the red/green particles. I think I got that one from a DV Garage tutorial many years ago…
-
Puppet Tool is very cool, the new multithreaded rendering is pretty great if you have enough RAM (2GB per processor core is recommended), Shape Layers are promising, etc.
It’s a more worthy upgrade than 7.0 was, which was mostly noted for its shiny new interface.
-
Sorry about that…
-
There are many very useful tutorials on the subject right here on the Cow:
https://library.creativecow.net/search.php?q=green+screen
-
You could just do it manually by:
1. pull both images into After Effects
3. Place one image on top of the other on the timeline, running the entire duration of your comp
4. Keyframe the opacity of the top layer to be, say, 100% at frame 3, then place a hold keyframe with a value of 0% at frame 4. Then keyframe the opacity back to 100% at frame 7. You could duplicate this set of keyframes along the entire timeline and you would have your flicker effect.
Another option would be to use an expression on the top-most layer to control the flickering.