[Dave Johnson]

In addition to the things Dave pointed out, it’ll also be important to understand that it isn’t possible to “decompress” compressed video since that would mean somehow regaining all of the data that was discarded during compression. In fact, as far as I know, there’s no such thing as “decompress” in the context of digital media files … there’s “decode”, but that’s different in that it just refers to the computer using the proper codec to read/play or convert an encoded file, which doesn’t involve regaining discarded data.

[Dave Johnson]

Glad to help, Andrew, but it’s actually the folks at Redefinery that are awesome.

[Dave Johnson]

https://www.redefinery.com/ae/view.php?item=rd_Commentron

[Dave Johnson]

Todd, You made some very good points that I probably hadn’t considered adequately so thanks much for your always helpful replies.

I really hope it’s feasible to return the Embed Project Copy feature since just not knowing about it is the only reason I’ve ever heard over the years for any AE user to not use it religiously.

By the way, it’s commendable of you to avoid potential appearances of a shameless plug for your employer. I don’t work for Adobe so I can be shameless and mention for the possible benefit of others that you provided some helpful information on this subject in a similar string on the Adobe AE forum:
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/418668?tstart=0

If it’s considered inappropriate for anyone to mention another forum here, I sincerely apologize.

[Dave Johnson]

I’ve not yet updated my 3 After Effects machines from CS3 and have only temporarily used CS4 on other people’s machines so I didn’t yet realize this feature is gone … if it really is, I will never update beyond CS3 until there is an AE version with this feature returned. An autosave function simply does not replace embedding and I’m not sure I can think of any other AE feature I would feel as strongly about … maybe its ability to render video.

In fact, features that are being removed from AE should share equal time/space everywhere that users are inundated with announcements of new features … anything else feels like a bait and switch.

I’m going to post my same comments on the Adobe AE forum, as well as send directly to Adobe as a “feature request” and I too encourage every AE user who relies heavily on this feature to do the same.

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

[Dave Johnson]

[Let’s move on towards better things.]

I agree entirely … I’m sure a simple case of humor not always coming across as such or the way intended in writing as it would if spoken.

Cheers.

[Dave Johnson]

Roldand, point taken … perhaps I did read too much into what was said.

With that said, while I understand that my newly created account is misleading, I don’t really see the relevance of that subject since I never questioned how long anyone had frequented or how much anyone had contributed to the COW … I simply responded to what (perhaps mistakenly) seemed an unnecessary shot at my simple attempt to help someone solve their problem. I have no interest whatsoever in getting into a hissing match with people I don’t even know yet actually respect anyway (you, Roland, since I have appreciated your posts here for 10 years or so now, which is no disregard to David since I simply don’t recall having read his posts before). So, I’ll just take this opportunity to kindly remove myself from the conversation, thank you.

Cheers.

[Dave Johnson]

I actually have the full boxed software of “CoSA After Effects 2.0.1” sitting on a shelf in my office right now … manuals and all just as if it were purchased yesterday. lol More partial info about the history of AE:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Effects

https://cosa.com/

[Bret Williams] “If Adobe could somehow just get people to use Premiere they’d pretty much own production. Every time I play with it it seems just as capable as FCP, and in many ways more advanced. It integrates with PS and AE beautifully. They may have just missed the boat or the stigma of what it once was is too strong.”

Premiere is in fact just as capable since it is more mature software in many ways, but Adobe definitely missed the boat and can only try their best at the losing game of catch-up now.

While this isn’t in any way a criticism of FCP (I use both FCP & Premiere regularly and like both), in my humble opinion, Premiere lost the market share battle with FCP, not so much because of either of the applications themselves, but it boiled down to two things Apple has consistently done far better than any of it’s competition … understand the importance of and take advantage of good timing and strong marketing.

Timing in that FCP took the world by storm and never looked back by coming on the scene at just the right time … when the market was dominated by very expensive and more hardware-dependent NLEs for which a lot of people were anxious for a viable alternative.

Marketing in that Apple is obviously very strong in this area and that, in combination with good timing, was just unbeatable. Our culture has changed drastically in this regard … it’s not about building a better mousetrap anymore … in fact, as anyone who has ever seen the TupperWare cups of hurricane Katrina wind selling like hotcakes on eBay surely knows, you don’t even have to actually have a real product anymore … strong marketing in itself is what wins.

My apologies to anyone I may have offended with my opinions and for veering so far off topic … just couldn’t help it when I saw the mentions of the CoSA days and glanced over at that crusty yellowing box on my bookshelf. ;~)

[Dave Johnson]

“that’s all we seem to know how to do with it.”

Hmmm, although it’s unclear to whom the “we” refers, that still sounds pretty condescending. It seems to me that the original poster just asked for a solution to a specific problem, rather than to be dazzled by the depth and breadth of anyone’s knowledge of uses for UnMult plugins.

[Dave Johnson]

Although I’m not sure that it’s still offered for free and separately from the Knoll Light Factory plugin set it was originally made for, there is a simple plugin called “Knoll Unmult” that you add to the black solid your flare is on to get the flare alone with the rest of the layer as alpha. If Red Giant doesn’t offer it free, there is also an UnMult plugin offered by one of the many small AE plugin makers … I don’t recall which one (maybe Frishcluft or FAN), but you could probably find it pretty easily with a little research.