[Chris Poisson]

Ryan,

I think what you have to understand is that there is sufficient media on both clips to allow for a dissolve. You still make the cut right where you want it.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

David,

Rendering to ProRes is a smart move, but I’d bet you wouldn’t have this problem if your clips were ProRes too, if you have the latest version and a fast G5 you can capture to ProRes via FireWire.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

Oscar,

The Boris Clouds filter is good, but it ain’t cheap. There’s some smoke and mist in the stock effects inside Motion, with which you can also make your own with particle generators.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

I have to agree with Raphael. The Sheer folks were VERY helpful, and I agree that their website was great. I had nothing but good experiences all around.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

David,

Does that mean every app I had been using needs to have their caches flushed? Could also be that the MBP I did it with only has 3 GIGS of RAM to start with.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

I would stress Walter’s advice about using the Boris controls, BUT, DON’T use Boris animation controls, especially animating tracking, they suck. Boris drop shadows suck even worse.

And to Mr. Bogie, had to laugh about the AE/Motion comment, because I love AE I’ve never been able to get my arms around Motion.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

Dave,

I have mixed feelings about most Boris products, but no preview is not entirely true. Once you apply Title 3D and put the clip over your video, you have tons of control over placement, scale etc. in the viewer window, even animation, although most of T3D’s animation sucks. It’s shadows suck too, so I just use the Boris controls in the viewer for placement and size, then animate and put on shadows in the motion tab.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

Ian,

I use a little app called Video2SWF, it allows up to 1600 mbs movies, which look great, it’s easy to use and the movies are self-contained with players of your choice, I did my whole Web site with it. Completely painless and quick. See my profile if you want a look.

BTW note that I am making SWFs as opposed to FLVs, which IMO are a pain in the ass.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

Ben there too, what I used to do to get around that for things like this is buy it myself and turn ’em in with my expense report, but you have your own style.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

Mark,

I have to say, at iStockPhoto’s quality and prices, your beef is pretty weak. We use them almost daily, and we just buy what we need, it takes about two seconds.

There are a few other sources, Bigstock comes to mind, and clipart.com has some photos, and it’s just a yearly fee.

Have a wonderful day.