[Collin Alexander]

I did the FCS remover and trashed all the files. The installer will not accept the serial number.

[Collin Alexander]

Thanks for the input. I already spent 3 hours reinstalling and it still won’t take the serial numbers.

I’ll try the FCS remover.

Sigh.

[Collin Alexander]

Deleted the System ID file, it still won’t accept the serial number.

[Collin Alexander]

Yes, that was it! Thank you, thank you.

[Collin Alexander]

Thank you, thank you. Dennis’ solution is great. I didn’t know you could change the properties in Quicktime. That’s exactly what I needed to do. I just change the dimensions from 720 x 480 to 640 x 480, and it plays right on my Virtual VTR.

The master file for the DVD will just be straight from compressor with no tweaking.

Thanks again.

[Collin Alexander]

Thanks for the input. Actually FCP does use MIDI, and works nicely with my Mackie Control Surface, transport controls, shuttle wheel, etc.

No way to slave FCP? At all? Weird.

[Collin Alexander]

Yes thanks, that cleared it up.

[Collin Alexander]

Thanks for replies. We were thinking about Symphony 3.5 because we have an opportunity to buy a particular system from a guy. Also, my son just finished his first year of college, and that has got us pretty poor! 😉

But a new system is a possibility also. We really don’t know that much about video. One of our clients at the studio is a jam band, quite good actually. They were asking about the possibility of music video, and especially realtime FX, in keeping with their improvisational approach to music.

Which actually brings up a related point. My son is taking film and TV at school, and needs to write a paper on the history of digital effects. Can anyone suggest a good resource for documenting the capabilities, year by year?

[Collin Alexander]

Thank you very much sir. OK. I’m not crazy, it’s not me. It’s not a checkbox. There are situations where the compositing is based on layer order, and not on position in 3D space.

I’ll just use a 2D “data flow” and have the particles always face camera. It won’t be as cool as 3D, but it will be OK.

[Collin Alexander]

Actually, Gary Allen has confirmed the same issue:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/970292

The demo and comments posted by Jim Johnson above is encouraging, but he has used a still picture, not a video. Perhaps the rendering is correct around a still, and not a video. I’ll have to try that.

In any case, Jim Johnson confirms the problem, not as “a bug”, but as a reality of 3D compositing. Fair enough. It’s a bug to me.

My studio computer is not wired to the internet, so it’s a little cumbersome to upload screenshots. I thought I provided the information requested. I’ll try out some more iterations of “3d local” “3d global”, still pictures vs videos, etc. and at least be able to give an even more detailed report on when 3D works and when it doesn’t.

And I’ll take screenshots of my layers tabs.