[Dave Johnson]

The native AE filter is called Echo. There are also several third-party plugins that do the same things better and with additional controls … most of the ones I’ve seen and the ones I use are typically called something like “Motion Trails” or just “Trails”. The same effect is also sometimes accomplished by using multiple instances of the same footage.

It’s also important to note that other techniques (i.e., rotoscoping) were used in combination with an echo/trails filter in that example and it is well done so making something like that will not be nearly as easy as applying a filter and tweaking the settings.

[Dave Johnson]

Unless you’re saying that your images appear blurry and jittery inside of AE before you even render at your finished composition, it doesn’t sound like your issue is how you’ve drawn or imported your images … it sounds like your issue is the composition and render settings you have chosen, but you haven’t given enough info to narrow down precisely where the problem might be.

So, in general terms, you might check that the frame rate, screen dimensions, aspect ratio, etc. of your AE composition and render settings are what you want them to be and that they don’t conflict with each other. As far as the render settings, you might also check that the codec and codec options are what you want them to be (Animation codec is a good place to start). If you’re rendering highly compressed MOVs from AE using a codec like Sorenson or something similar, the problem is probably a result of the specific codec settings you chose. If you have access to separate compression software (i.e., Sorenson Squeeze), you might consider rendering a high-quality Animation codec MOV from AE, then converting it to a lower resolution version if that’s what you ultimately need.

I hope this helps … good luck!

[Dave Johnson]

https://www.editorskeys.com/

[Dave Johnson]

I’ll try to be optimistic and say that I’m sure someone will have a happier answer for you, but in the meantime, this is what I’ve experienced pretty consistently working in AE on both platforms for quite a few years now …

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know in saying that the best solution by far is to do whatever you can to get the font file that the package was designed with emailed to you, but I do realize how difficult some people can make the simplest things so …

The issue is that there are so many variations of the same fonts on the market that, even if you buy the “same” font, its unlikely you’ll get an exact match unless you buy the exact same set from exactly the same place … if the client could provide that info, they’d surely find it easier to just include a font folder with the other source materials (a standard practice of the good ole days).

If it was built on the same platform you’re working with it on, it’s just a matter of finding the same version of that font … raid every machine of that platform you can get your hands on til you find the right version of that font.

If the package was built on one platform and you’re working with it on the other, most of the time you’ll have to replace all the text one-by-one … I’ve heard of people writing scripts to do that, but have never personally witnessed it work successfully.

I typically avoid font issues so I actually only read your post because the title sounded like a a song about fonts or something. ;~)
You know, “Oh font, where art thou” or something like that. ;~)

Dave Johnson
Sr. TV/Video Specialist
Raymond James Financial – Marketing
St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S.A.

[Dave Johnson]

[In Quicktime the image looks perfect. But that’s on the computer screen.]

As I mentioned, that means the issue is with the DVD encoding. The fact that you view the QT file on a computer screen is irrelevant unless you’re suggesting that the issue is with the plasma screen instead of the DVD itself, which is easy enough to find out … just play the DVD on a different player and screen. However, I’d be extremely surprised if the issue is the screen or DVD player unless one of them is stretching the images significantly, which seems even more unlikely than usual to cause the kind of issue you described since you said the issue changes constantly, which wouldn’t happen if it were due to aspect ratio stretching.

Again, the issue could be VBR encoding instead of CBR, which is different from one-pass or two-pass.

I’ve offered all I can to help … good luck.

Dave Johnson
Sr. TV/Video Specialist
Raymond James Financial – Marketing
St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S.A.

[Dave Johnson]

First, try to isolate the issue … if you play the exported MOV with QuickTime, do you get the text issues? If not, the issue is probably with the DVD encoding and the fact that it changes constantly instead of consistent bluriness or pixelation makes it sound like it might be from using variable bit rate encoding instead of constant. The fluctuating bit rate of VBR could cause various frames of similar images to look significantly different in quality.

A couple other comments on things you mentioned …

Putting a lower resolution sequence (or source material) inside a higher-resolution sequence does nothing more than require an additional unnecessary render step and increase the resulting file size … it does not increase the resolution. So, putting a DV sequence into an uncompressed sequence or an 8-bit sequence into a 10-bit sequence isn’t helping the quality of the output at all.

About the DVD encoding, if you are using VBR, you might check that your minimum bit rate isn’t set too low, although it would be better to just use CBR. Either way, you might also try two-pass encoding instead of one-pass since its purpose is to provide higher quality by analyzing the content more closely and encoding it more precisely. Note that two-pass does take much longer to encode though.

[Dave Johnson]

I’ve been using PS for many years and have never heard of “re-rendering” low-rez web graphics to high-rez print graphics, but would love to hear about it if such doubtful magic does exist.

Note that “well-established” does not equal “all-knowing” or even “smart”, for that matter. So, it sounds like your client has two very common client ailments:
[1] They’ve heard a term like “render” before and erroneously apply it where it doesn’t fit to sound like they know what they’re talking about … I’m a video editor and mograph designer, which are the two main areas “rendering” is done and it’s meaning has little to do with magically regenerating media at a higher resolution than that at which it was originally created
[2] They failed to accurately evaluate and express the needs at the onset of the project and misled the designer to believe that the graphics would only ever be needed for web use (typically in effort to save money, which ironically costs them more in the long run). Because this issue is so common, my approach has always been to create everything at the highest resolution it is likely to be needed (regardless of what the client tells me), then dumb it down for lower quality needs.

With that all said, it seems you have 2 options:
[1] recreate all of the graphics at the needed resolution
[2] shell out some cash and take a chance with one of the Photoshop plugins that uses advanced algorithms to scale images with minimal quality loss … I use to own one called Genuine Fractals that, to my surprise, worked pretty well, but that was years ago and I’m not even sure it’s still available and I’m not promising you that it would work sufficiently for your particular needs

In either case, it will cost and I’d definitely bill the client since you shouldn’t have to bear the costs of fixing their mistakes and the only way people accept the right way to do things is when it costs them to continue doing it the wrong way.

[Dave Johnson]

Please consider my answer only one perspective from someone who seems to have a similar workflow, rather than definitive …

Although it can be used to create some video content if one chooses, I think most agree that Flash is primarily useful for designing and/or generating web pages. I create all content in AE and FCP since it also has to be usable for non-web mediums, then use Flix Exporter and Flix Pro to convert that content to FLVs for websites.

Flix Exporter allows exporting FLVs directly from AE with all the same functionality of Flix Pro, but it adds the option to skip the step of first rendering a MOV from AE before converting it to an FLV.

In my opinion, On2 products are by far the best software for encoding good-quality FLVs with adequate control over all aspects of encoding. In fact, I believe the FLV codec was built on the On2 codec in the first place before Adobe acquired Flash (I’m sure someone will correct me if that’s wrong). So, it doesn’t seem that you need Flash, although whether you need it or what other software might be useful for you to work in conjunction with AE depends on specifics of what else you want to do.

I hope you find my opinions helpful.

[Dave Johnson]

Yes, David, thank you for the correction and sorry for the misinformation … I apparently have a hard time remembering which features of various software are standard since it has been a long time since I’ve worked on any system that doesn’t have both the Adobe Suite and QuickTime Pro installed.

[Dave Johnson]

Yes. FCP comes with a license for QuickTime Pro, which has the ability to export FLVs …

[1] select your FCP sequence
[2] go to Export Using QuickTime Conversion from the FCP File menu
[3] in the Format dropdown, change the slecetion to “Flash Video (FLV)”
[4] click “Options” at the bottom of the Save window & set to your liking

FYI …
On2 Technologies Flix Pro is, in my opinion, by far the best software available for encoding good-quality FLVs with adequate control over all aspects of the encoding. It isn’t free (or even cheap), but you generally get what you pay for with software as with most things in life.