[Dave Johnson]

Have you tried the Trapcode People site? I’m not sure which tut you’re referring to … I’ve seen tuts that show how to make Shine look more 3D, as well as ones that show how to get the same effects as Shine without using Shine so I’m not sure which you’re looking for.

[Dave Johnson]

I haven;t run into that issue since I do most audio work outside of AE and this may be the workaround you already found, but just in case, I’ve found it better to adjust audio levels and other audio properties using AE’s built-in audio plugins, rather than the timeline properties.

[Dave Johnson]

Among the first things to check are:

• that you’re doing proper RAM previews … with the zero key or SHT+zero keys, not the spacebar … sorry, I use both platforms, but only my fingers (not my brain) recall the Mac keyboard equivalents when I’m on a Win machine as I am now
• that you’re not using a codec that isn’t suitable for AE work … check Dave L.s “stock answer #1” for details
• that you don’t have OpenGL turned on
• that your machine has enough RAM, which a new Mac pro tower should
• that you don’t have a ton of other RAM-intensive or processor-intensive programs and/or background processes running outside of AE
• if you’re working in HD with a massive amount of layers, render-intensive effects, masks, cameras, lights, shadows, etc., etc., you may be getting the best your machine can handle in that scenario

If you;ve confirmed that none of those things are affecting your previews, you may have some other issue going on that’ll require more info to figure out.

[Dave Johnson]

I’m not sure any of them are considered “magazines”, but I also like https://xplsv.tv, https://www.motionographer.com & https://www.motionworks.com.au

I find online resources invaluable but, for the most part, I’m with you, Dave … I tend to get most of my reading done when I either can’t or don’t want to lug a laptop around and … sitting in lobbies waiting for appointments, on occasional visits to the the beach/pool, in restaurants, etc.

Maybe its just an old-dog-new-tricks thing, but for me, its much easier to stick a few mags in my bag than it is to carry a laptop everywhere I go so I actually miss printed mags and even newspapers.

I understand that cost-savings is a very potent business driver, although some would argue whether its really any cheaper to build, administrate and maintain websites, but its still hard to figure why the choice has to be one or the other instead of both, which is probably why the COW chooses both … at least for now.

[Dave Johnson]

I’m not sure this will solve your issue, but may at least be helpful to know …

AE Flame is a very old AE plugin so, although I haven’t tried using it with CS3 or CS4, and despite the fact that all of Adobe’s current web pages include references to the currently available versions of its products (CS4), I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Flame just doesn’t work in v8 or v9 since AE’s core coding seems to have changed significantly since the version Flame was written for, which I believe was AE v5.

About the general issue of installing plugins, make sure you follow each plugins’ installation instructions explicitly (make sure you’re putting it in the right folder, if that’s all the install requires).

Also, on any topic, it’s much harder to get help when you don’t include relevant info (platform, version, O/S, etc.). In this case, the folder plugins go in differs among platforms and O/S … and, whether the plugin works depends on version and system requirements.

By the way, in my humble opinion, lack of third-party plugins doesn’t at all affect one’s ability to improve as a designer … in most cases, plugins only affect a designer’s ability to do things he/she has already learned to do the hard way a little faster.

[Dave Johnson]

In addition to what Micheal suggests (not in place of), it’s important to make sure that the aspect ratio and dimensions settings for both your comp and the layers within it are what you want them to be and that you’re viewing everything correctly.

For the first part, go into the comp settings and make sure the aspect ratio and dimensions are correct. Also, (as Micheal pointed out) check the same things in the layer settings.

For the second part, make sure you are aware of your comp viewer’s aspect ratio correction setting (there’s a toggle button at the bottom of the comp viewer) and that the “correction” feature only affects what you see while working (not the actual output).

[Dave Johnson]

When you say “I cannot seem to get the handles up” its unclear whether you mean you can’t get keyframes with bezier type handles or you just can’t see the handles in the comp window to move them.

In the first case, right click on the keyframes to change them from liner to whichever type you want (bezier, auto-bezier, roaming, etc.).

In the second case, click the view option button in the top right corner of your comp window and check the option that says something like show keyframe paths.

[Dave Johnson]

[Jason Brown] “I guess I need to Sub-folder those graphics…to lock away the graphics for each version into a folder that AE can’t find. ”

When doing what I call ‘versioning’ projects, I find using archives helpful … allows ‘hiding’ things from AE without changing their locations, names or folder structure. On both platforms, you can set up you computer so that putting files and folders inside of archives, as well as extracting them back to the same locations, are both just a single click away (i.e., via WinZIP’s shell options). Archives also save space, although drive space is much less a concern these days.

By the way, the “yon” folder is right next to the flux capacitor … duh!

[Dave Johnson]

The AE forum has been around longer and, thus, suffered from this problem longer as compared to the FCP forum so it just seems the problem should be addressed there as well.

In any case, my vote is for a low vote count before moving (i.e., 3-5).

[Dave Johnson]

I don’t speak Flash so I can’t make a direct comparison of the methods, but I can tell you that you absolutely can do this in AE … many different ways, in fact. To do it using masks, you’ll just need to animate the masks … using hold key frames will make it easier.

Sorry I don’t recall the details so I can’t offer specific directions, but I’ve also done eye blinks in AE using various distort effects.