[Dave Johnson]

I could be wrong, but I really don’t think so … of course everyone’s workflow and needs are different, but personally, I’m not sure how useful that would be … perhaps if you explain what you’re trying to accomplish someone may be able to offer an alternative method to accomplish the same.

[Dave Johnson]

I’ve so rarely worked with web files like WMVs in AE that I don’t really recall whether AE usually accepts them without complaining, but I can tell you that all web video formats are among the worst types of files to use in AE. I’ve only seen that particular error message before when there were issues with a file’s encoding (typically the codec). So, I’d suggest transcoding the files to a more editing-friendly codec … perhaps DV25 MOVs … only as a balance between file size and not losing even more quality than has already been discarded for WMVs … I’d normally never recommend DV.

[Dave Johnson]

The first things I’d try are making sure I’m running the project and source media from a fast drive, freeing up as much system resources as possible (quitting any unnecessary background processes) and giving AE lots of extra time to load the project at its own pace … it sounds like a pretty heavy project so it may just be taking much longer than your use to and, in those situations, I’ve found clicking things only makes it worse and sometimes leads to that white screen, which in my case, hasn’t necessarily meant a hang.

Hopefully, trying those things will do it because, being that you forced AE to close the last time you had the project working, that may have corrupted the project file. If that’s the case, hopefully you have a backup copy … if not, you might consider making project file backups a natural part of your workflow. If a project file isn’t too badly corrupted, sometimes you can get it to open by importing it into an empty AE project instead of opening it directly.

I hope this helps and good luck!

[Dave Johnson]

Thanks for sharing that fine work, Kush. I too lean toward Audition, but that’s primarily because I never took the time to get familiar with Sounbooth so it was very helpful to hear the rationale of someone who is well-versed with both. I do think the drop-from-the-tower comparison would’ve been helpful too, but I guess we can’t have it all.

[Dave Johnson]

I work on both Macs and PCs daily and have for my entire 20-year career so my opinion is that the issues at hand have nothing at all to do with Mac shop or PC shop.

[subbu arumugam] “i originally asked them for the files as .mov’s – their “guy” said that the quality would be terrible”

Their “guy” obviously hasn’t a clue what he is talking about. The fact is that both MOVs and AVIs are identical in one very important way … they are both simply wrappers that can contain media encoded with any of many dozens of, if not hundreds of, possible codec choices … codecs (not wrappers) can be lossless or lossy and one AVI or MOV working on a particular system is unrelated to whether one with a different codec will work on that system. So, the same potential for compatibility and/or quality issues apply to both formats depending entirely on the codecs used.

Personally, regardless of the platform I’m working on at a particular moment, I do all video work with QuickTime files (for specific reasons that apply to my typical workflow).

Personally, I’d avoid DVDs like the plague and would try to get copies of the DV tapes so my work isn’t dependent on someone else’s knowledge/skill (or lack thereof). That probably won’t happen so, if they don’t know how to make good QT files, as someone suggested, get a test AVI from them and see if your Mac can work with it.

[Dave Johnson]

Ok, then so I was way off the mark … was wondering why you’d want a white mirror of black line drawings, but figured why ask why and tried to just answer the question. Thanks, Dave, for stepping in and providing a more useful suggestion … I’ll try to read more carefully before replying next time. ;~)

[Dave Johnson]

As Nicole said, neither is the best answer …

DVD isn’t editing quality and is often a pain to digitize (especially relative to editing-quality files that you wouldn’t need to digitize).

AVIs are wrappers (versus codecs) so they can be in any number of codecs … some of which can be very problematic.

I’d word my answer so that it emphasizes the advantage to the other company … being that they’re shooting DV, they should be able to easily provide DV QuickTime files without the extra work on their part of converting it all to AVIs or burning DVDs. You wouldn’t need to do anything to DV25 or DV50 QuickTime files to work with them in FCP … better quality output, easier workflow for all parties … what more could anyone want?

[Dave Johnson]

I’m not at all sure that I understand what you’re trying to accomplish (perhaps a screenshot would help?), but it sounds like you basically want a drop shadow that’s white and doesn’t have any blur. If that is the result you want, but you don’t want to do it that way for whatever reason, perhaps just duplicate your animation, map the black lines to white, then offset it a few pixels?

[Dave Johnson]

I don’t think it’s hard, but “hard” is a relative term … it’s not hard to me as someone who has been doing this kind of stuff for about 20 years, but it may be hard if a person doesn’t yet have a firm grasp on video editing and motion graphics.

[Dave Johnson]

I don’t use presets much and I’m not familiar with that particular one so I’ll try to answer in general terms. If you think about it, what you’re asking is how to time-stretch something without affecting the speed at which the action takes place, which is technically impossible.

So, duplicating the layer you’ve applied the preset to is the only way that comes to mind to accomplish what you’ve described (although there may also be some fancy-nancy expressions method ;~). To avoid a repetitive loop you can adjust the effects parameters slightly differently for each instance. I hope this helps.