[Chris Dortch]

Thanks for looking into that. I came up with a similar solution; however, the layer order you suggested improved the result of my tests. Thanks again. I will continue to experiment to see how I might get that extra range. Now if I could only get Adobe’s secret HDR recipe…

[Chris Dortch]

Thanks for the info Carl. I too usually use the automated features of another application (Photomatix) to produce a sequence of EXR’s. I have found a situation where this will not be the best approach however. Is it possible to use a combination of blend modes and maybe certain effects inside of After Effects to create an HDR that matches the color information of an HDR created using Photoshop or Photomatix? Or is there a place someone can direct me to that might shed some light on the subject. I think the info about luminance combination using a threshold matte is very interesting and is close to what I am looking for.

[Chris Dortch]

I need to output 32 bit, not an 8 or 16 bit tone mapped. I know that Photoshop and Photomatix can create a 32 bit file, but If I knew the science behind properly combining images to boost exposure range, I could solve this particular problem which permits me from using either of these programs. What does Photoshop (and Photomatix) actually do to the 3 images to create a single 32 bit image?

[Chris Dortch]

Thanks for the intelligent response. I am sure you are right. I guess if apple would have given each drive its own bus I would not be having this problem. Right? Thanks again.

[Chris Dortch]

You are nice to comment, but I am aware this.

[Chris Dortch]

Thanks for the notes about color depth. I do not need the output to have 32bpc attributes. I am working in Float only to capture the look of Float into the 8bpc premultiplied output. Keri Matthews of Gridiron software sent me a message saying:

“It looks like the problem is due to the output being png files. Png files are not threadsafe, so if generating several at a time you may run into problems…”

So I need to either turn multiprocessing off or use a “threadsafe” format if I want to avoid further multi-processing problems. Which of the following are threadsafe?
– Targa
– Tiff
– SGI
– Radiance
– Photoshop
– PICT
– Open EXR
– Electronic Image
– Cineon
Other?

[Chris Dortch]

I inserted a Hitachi DeskStar 7200RPM hard drive into the hot swappable drive bay to write my files to two weeks ago; however, my problem started a week after doing this. Thanks for the HDV tip, but my project has no HDV footage. I have noticed this problem while rendering with Nucleo Pro, but the problem persists even if I turn Nucleo pro off. The purge tip may fix the problem if rendering with AE. I will just have to give it a try. Is there a way to set Nucleo Pro to purge every so often? I am not a multi-processing expert, but it seems like every X number of frames, one background instances of AE will crash before it finishes the frame it was working on.