[Darby Edelen]

[Dimas] “4)Exported just the subtitles with alpha, imported into final cut … and it looks worse than final cut text – fuzzy and chopped up. When I open them with quicktime they look great. “

Have you viewed them on a broadcast monitor? FCP is notoriously bad for its desktop previews.

Also, any video put in your FCP sequence will be rendered into the codec specified in the sequence settings and likely lose quality due to compression.

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Darby Edelen]

[Michael Goldberg] “I just came across a strange bug, has anyone seen this, and have any ideas? I have a layered photoshop file. In this file, I have a folder of layers. I then copy that, and merge the layers into 1 layer. When I try to import an individual layer into AE (by selecting choose layer), I select a named layer, but it brings in a different layer.”

I’ve complained about this before, it has something to do with the Layer Sets in the PSD. I had yet to hear anyone else complain on the forum, so I guess it’s nice to know that people outside of my company are suffering as well (;

The way I’ve been getting around it is by either not using Layer Sets to organize layers (ugly PSD) or importing my PSDs as Compositions (ugly AEP). What I’d really like to hear is that Adobe is working on a fix, because it is truly annoying… and it seems like it should be easy to fix (especially since it worked properly in 7.0).

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Darby Edelen]

[Dave LaRonde] ” Drop the comp-in-progress onto the make comp icon at the bottom of the project window.

[Darby Edelen]

I would render at 1/3 resolution, 1/3 frame size (1920×1080 -> 640×360) at full frame rate, lossless and then import this render back into AE, make sure the footage is interpreted as square pixel, place it in an NTSC DV comp and lay it over a black solid for letterboxing. I would render this final comp out at Lossless if you have the disk space.

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Darby Edelen]

Although I don’t have experience with 3dsmax, I can tell you that you need to render the Z Depth information from your 3D package into the RPF files.

Then in AE you can try using the 3D Channel > Depth of Field effect. However, I would recommend duplicating your image sequence and using the 3D Channel > 3D Channel Extract effect to extract the Z Depth and use this to drive a Lens Blur effect. This would ultimately give you more control over the look.

The most important part, however, is that you render your image sequence with a Z Depth channel.

I’m sorry if this is redundant information for you. If you could upload pictures of the problem, or be more specific about what part of the process you’re having trouble with, then someone might be able to give more specific help.

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Darby Edelen]

I can tell you that you’ll want to use an additive blend mode on your pre-comp. Probably ‘Screen’ if you’re not working in a linearized color profile, I like ‘Add’ but it sometimes blows things out.

That said, AE has a couple of animation presets that can get you started on a look. Try searching the animation presets for TV.

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Darby Edelen]

[mrling007] “on a sig how do you make the text in the next line down”

Include a line break tag in HTML code:

My Name<br />My Position

Will appear as:

My Name
My Position

Any HTML code should work in a signature.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Darby Edelen]

Rotating a camera around its pivot is fairly simple with a wiggle() expression applied to the camera’s orientation property. However, for this to work you need to turn off the camera’s auto-orient to point of interest by right clicking on the Camera layer and going to Transform > Auto-Orient > Off.

Then apply this to the orientation property:

f = 3;
a = 1;
wiggle(f,a);

You can change the frequency (f) for a different feel, lower it for more of a ‘floating camera’ feel or raise it for a more frenetic ‘handheld’ feel. The amplitude (a) should probably remain quite low as the Orientation is measured in degrees and only a small change in degrees is very noticeable.

There are some pretty cool camera expressions out there, some of them developed by Dan Ebberts and I believe available on his website: https://www.motionscript.com

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Darby Edelen]

This should work for you:

f = 2;
a = 10;
posterizeTime(f);
wiggle(f, a);

posterizeTime(x) causes the expression to only return an updated value x times per second. It must be called before the return value, which is the value returned by wiggle() in this case.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Darby Edelen]

[mark harvey] “I would use the exposure filter, then use an expression to control the amount of exposure.”

I’m sincerely curious, how would you use the Exposure effect to accomplish this? I can’t think of a way…

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA