[Dave Johnson]

Are you judging by an output to a broadcast monitor or the preview screens inside of FCP?

Also, DV is a lossy codec that isn’t great with graphics so a lossless Animation codec graphic rendered from AE will always look far better than the same graphic once it has been dropped down to DV.

[Dave Johnson]

I’m glad you found a solution, Andre. I’m still curious why I haven’t encountered this issue since I very frequently use Red Giant and Sapphire plugins together in After Effects CS3.

The article that link leads to only mentions Premiere Pro and Encore CS3 … were you encountering the issue in After Effects or Premiere?

[Dave Johnson]

Dave makes a very good point with “You don’t have to abandon the use of Auto Bezier if it’s important to the motion”. The various fine-point controls over keyframe behaviors are collectively a strong benefit of doing even basic motion in AE versus most other software. So, if you’re not very familiar with various types of keyframes and keyframe controls, it would probably be beneficial to read up on them.

https://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7d99a.html

https://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7d78a.html

[Dave Johnson]

Sorry I misunderstood the issue. I’m not the right guy to advise you on expressions since I usually need help myself when I use them.

Todd K. provided an answer in the thread right below yours … he was referring to lights, but same applies to cams.

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/202/884799

[Dave Johnson]

Do you mean AE won’t render it at full-rez or it won’t preview it at full-rez? The two can be entirely separate issues.

If it won’t preview, maybe your machine just doesn’t have enough horsepower to RAM preview the effect at full-rez, but would render it just fine. Maybe try a 0+ RAM preview (skip frames), free up some RAM by closing other unrelated software you may be running, etc.

If it won’t render, are you not getting any errors messages via either pop-ups or error logs? Are you working at some gigantic screen size, with some funky codec, etc., etc.?

[Dave Johnson]

In that case you should have no issues at all and I’m not sure why you are. I have no direct experience working with R3D footage, but as I believe someone mentioned in this string and from what I’ve heard from peers and reading, you can shoot at pretty high frame rates with R3D cams so if reshooting is at all an option, it might be easier than spending a bunch of time troubleshooting post issues.

[Dave Johnson]

Twixtor works very well … in my opinion, as with all tools, whether it is “worth the money” depends on your budget, how much you’re charging for the work you’d use it on, how often you’ll use it, etc.

[Carlos Weaver] “when his arm crosses his body it produces pixelated holes”

I’ve done tons of time-remapping in AE and have never seen it produce holes so it sounds like that could be a function of the footage you’re working with … what codec, frame rate, etc. are you working with?

Although I get very good results with time-remapping in AE, I stand by my opinion in my previous post about how to get perfect results … perfect is just rarely necessary for some of us so its a trade-off.

[Dave Johnson]

Only an IT guy can tell you the realistically insignificant performance difference that might (very doubtfully) exist so the main consideration is that its generally best to get the largest RAM capacity currently available per stick.

The reason is future expansion … if, for example, your machine has 4 slots and you fill them all with 2Gb sticks to get 8Gb, then you decide to go to 16Gb a year from now, those four 2Gb sticks become garbage. However, if you fill two slots with 4Gb sticks to get 8Gb today, you can just buy two more 4Gb sticks a year from now.

[Dave Johnson]

If you’re running AE on the same machine(s) as your NLE, 3D apps, etc., as I would guess most editors do, you might consider the relevance a decent video card can have for other things.

I’m not an IT guy so I won;t try to recommend specific models, etc., but my personal experience has consistently been that you can’t go wrong with a reasonably current Nvidia board (I and other editors I know have had several bad experiences with ATI boards). And, whether you need SLI, dual graphics boards, etc. depends on the totality of your specific situation, rather than AE or any one program you work in. I hope those generalizations are at least somewhat helpful.

[Dave Johnson]

It seems unlikely you’ll find the equivalent of an already relatively cheap stock footage shot in a form that is free, legal and of comparable quality, but you might try some of the various resources posted in the COW’s “free stuff” forum.