[Dale Paquette]

Thanks for getting back to me. I duplicated the foreground subject layer and converted the new (top) layer to B&W. I then set the the original (bottom) layer to inverted luma matte. These were then laid over a BG layer and it worked exactly as it should except that there was a “fringe” around the FG subject. I then tried to use the simple matte choker and quickly realized that it’s the two layers together that have transparency. So, I selected those two layers and pre-composed. When I looked at the channels of the pre-comp, there was no alpha channel – rather the pre-comp seemed to be just transparent in places (where it should be). If I tried to add the matte choker, AE (CS5) would not allow it. So, I then pre-rendered the pre-comp and it worked fine when I substituted it for the pre-comp. Hope my explanation is clear! Dale

[Dale Paquette]

I forgot to mention, I can watch all of the Cow video tutorials! Thanks again, Dale

[Dale Paquette]

Yes and no. The yes is that if you open the task manager and look at the processes that are running, Soundbooth is in fact running even after you close it in task manager, not the apps that are running, the processes!). That said, I eventually called Adobe support and they walked me through the solution – that’s the no problem – it was long enough ago that I can’t remember the details. Hopefully, they can help you as well.

[Dale Paquette]

Thanks Kevin, tried both to no avail. I have an email off to Cycore. We’ll see.

[Dale Paquette]

Thanks all. I did end up turning off multi-processing as well as the other suggestions. Don’t know if they worked BECAUSE, in the interim I ran a defrag and a registry clean and the problem went away!! I had been suspecting a data flow bottleneck somewhere and one or more of these tips broke it. Dale

[Dale Paquette]

Thanks, I’ll give it a try. I’ll check out Open GL in the forum as well. Dale

[Dale Paquette]

I checked Flash Player – I have 10. Reinstalled it to be safe. Had a friend try to watch the same reel on his identical PC with the same everything and he had no problem – so it has to be me. I think I already have as many background processes secured as I can and keep the system up. Could there be something going on with my MacAfee? As I mentioned, all other streaming video including Cow tuts comes through fine start to finish no matter how long they are. Cow reels is the only problem area!!! Dale

[Dale Paquette]

I have used both Mozilla Firefox with Google and Internet Explorer with Google. Both browsers and Google are up to date.

Dale

[Dale Paquette]

Thanks, I just tried increasing cache with no luck. Thing is, I watch streaming video (with sound) from dozens of sites with no difficulty at all – only with the Cow. I note, however, that even with the Cow, streaming tutorials work fine. Did the Google but didn’t see much? Maybe I entered something wrong. Dale

[Dale Paquette]

Dave, let me check out QT Pro – that, I can afford. If I remember right, AE has a media encoder built in, doesn’t it? I’ll look at that tonight.

These days, the main obstacle to general distribution of HD via Blu-ray is the relatively high cost of media and the fact that lot’s of people don’t yet have Blu-ray players. What I’ve been using is a Western Digital media player which will accept any of the multitude of HD formats from 720 p to 1080 i and p from a portable HDD and feeds it directly to the HDMI input on a TV. All but one of my viewing audience has an HDTV (not sure why the one is holding out). I’m hoping to upgrade either my NLE or acquire dedicated software to handle full size HD.

Thanks, Dale