[Darby Edelen]

I can’t say that I know what the problem is, seems kind of strange. I would recommend running a series of tests, try working with footage from a different source (something you didn’t shoot/capture), try rendering from an AVI to a QuickTime Photo JPEG (uncompressed AVIs run very poorly). Basically, try to figure out where the problem is in the chain, I have a suspicion this isn’t a problem with After Effects.

[Darby Edelen]

[Dee-Ski] “Whenever I bring video (especially mpeg) after effects processes the video at 8fps out of 29.970”

Is that the worst case scenario with MPEG or is that with any video? Also, what kind of MPEG?

[Darby Edelen]

So is this dark cloud in the image something that you added in AE or is it in the original footage? And the camera in the footage is circling the man?

Particular is 3D aware, so if you have a camera in the composition and set Particular to use a light as the emitter (the light must be named ‘Emitter’) you can mimic the camera move with your AE camera (which would be the hardest part of this technique) and position the emitter in a static location in the comp and it will remain in the same 3D space, then it becomes a task of using a mask/matte to hide the smoke when and where foreground elements should be hiding it.

I hope I understood what you were asking.

[Darby Edelen]

[Bellypants] “I’m sure I’ll get even more grief from wuzelwazel for mentioning Divx, and now .wmv – ah well – it’s free and easy for beginners.”

No grief, just love <3

=)

[Darby Edelen]

[Bellypants] “Once you have your piece like you want, render it to a more compressed format like Mpeg4, or Divx or something.”

It’s actually often preferable to render Lossless from After Effects and then compress the file in a dedicated program like Compressor or Squeeze.

Also, little known fact, DivX is ancient greek for EVIL! =)

[Darby Edelen]

I haven’t had the pleasure of working with embedded 3D data in AE yet. But I can tell you that the Effect>3D Channel>3D Channel Extract is what you’re looking for. You’ll want to set the 3D Channel property to Material ID then change the black and white points to be more consistent with the IDs present in the channel.

After that you might need to Effect>Keying>Extract the specific material you want from the image and use it as a matte.

[Darby Edelen]

Go to File > Scripts > Run Script File…

[Darby Edelen]

Does it actually do a good job of upconverting the 4:1:1 color compression?

[Darby Edelen]

Here’s a little bit of information on using After Effects with Cineon files:

https://prolost.blogspot.com/2006/02/linear-color-workflow-in-ae7-part-5.html

You can look for more information on the ‘net if that doesn’t give you the answer you’re looking for. Also you could try playing with the Effect>Utility>Cineon Converter effect.

[Darby Edelen]

The statement:

for(x = 1; x < 3; x++){ //do things here }

is equivalent to the following:

x = 1;
while(x < 3){ //do things here x++; }

In the for() loop the first statement sets a variable equal to some starting value, when the second statement evaluates to false (or 0) the loop will stop, the last statement is run after each loop. So in a standard for loop you would start with a value, compare that value to some other value, then change that value after looping through some code.

The example above sets the variable x to 1 to start, then checks if x is less than 3, since x is equal to 1 and is less than 3 the loop goes into its first iteration. After this first iteration the value of x is increased to 2 (x++ is the same thing as x = x + 1). Then if x is still less than 3 (which it is) it loops again.

A while() loop is a little more straightforward. While the statement in the parenthesis (in this case x < 3) is true (or equal to some non-zero value) the loop will continue to loop indefinitely. So if we set x equal to 1 before the loop begins, then check to see if x is less than 3 to begin the loop, then increment x at the end of every loop it is effectively the same thing as our previous for() loop. I hope that wasn't too confusing, if you have any other questions or points to clarify let me know. Also, its been a little while since I've taken a programming course so if I left anything out... shame on me, and please correct me =)