[Dave Johnson]

Scott,

Yes, precomping can be a life saver. I’m glad some bit of my ramblings may have been helpful. As is often the case, it’s very hard to speculate about what may or may not be helpful without seeing or really knowing anything of the details. Without understanding the issues more directly, I doubt I could suggest anything that would help with the audio issues.

Unfortunately, it’s true that “those” clients don’t change … ever! I feel your pain since I’m a FTimer now too, but I also spent the vast majority of my career either as a freelancer or in jobs where there was zero hesitation to politely show “those” clients the door since they always cost way more money than they’re worth. My point in mentioning that is that in an employment situation, the same issue could actually be an opportunity since the time/money being wasted is actually the “client’s” own rather than yours and everyone has to answer to someone. So if you can show the right person how they’re unnecessarily costing themselves a lot of money by forcing the process into a mold that it doesn’t fit, rather than simply accepting the tried and true methods our industry was built on, they might just be grateful and willing to share with you a portion of all that money you saved for them. ;~) It was worth a shot! Sounds like you’ve tried everything though … I do understand that some people are just unreasonable by nature (aka spoiled), which only leads back to the front door type solutions.

[Dave Johnson]

Leo’s advice is spot on so I’m not countering it at all. I just felt compelled to add a few things …

For reasons similar to what you described, I developed early on a style of working in AE that makes dealing with those issues much easier and that, despite the initial impression, I’ve found to actually be much faster in the long run. It’s hard to describe in detail, but it amounts to dedicating amounts of time appropriate to each task up front rather than on the tail end of projects when time isn’t available. I guess I’d describe it as being very deliberate in the way everything is done in AE (and in any NLE) …

It begins before even opening AE … with things like file naming and format standards that I stick to whenever possible … its much easier/faster to find and replace a 720×486 animation codec MOV named “Interview03Take01” with a same-spec file called “Interview03Take02” than it is a 640×480 AVI called “Joe”.

Once in AE, that methodical approach continues with a well organized project from the start and it continues with how I build my animations. Whenever practical, I do all my work in the timeline instead of the viewer and remain precise. For example, I type in values for layer positions (and everything else for that matter) instead of dragging things to random positions/values. Similarly, I use even numbers for not only keyframe placement, but all other values like position, scale, opacity, etc. I also use lots of precomps and adjustment layers so changing a few things doesn’t necessarily mean changing or affecting dozens, if not hundreds, of layers.

I could go on with other examples, but the basic idea is that all of those things in combination save enormous time when I inevitably have to revise or duplicate animations, replace media within them, troubleshoot animation issues, etc., etc., etc.

[… is this just one of those things we have to deal with as editors?]
Flexibility as an editor is very valuable so you’ll only benefit from finding ways to make revisions that are well beyond reasonable to any project at any stage. At the same time, if you get stuck with a job or client wherein words like “rough cut” and “final” permanently take on meanings opposite to what they really mean (as many of us have), there’s not much you can do besides whatever it takes to make the client happy … and bill for it!

[Dave Johnson]

I’m on a Windows machine at the moment so I can’t give the Mac answer. On a Windows machine, depending on the AE version, O/S, and computer settings, it should be very close to this:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects X.0\Support Files\Render Settings

[Dave Johnson]

I suspected you would’ve known that and that there might be something else going on. Before doing a total re-install, you might try

[1] Trashing AE’s preferences … a pain if you work with many very customized settings as I do, but you’d lose all your preferences with a re-install anyway (unless you keep multiple copies of your prefs).

[2] Investigating whether there may be a BMP issue on your machine either not specific to AE (having issues with BMPs in any other apps?) or specific to AE … is AE’s BMP extension file where it should be? On my windows system,. it’s at …
C:Program Files/Adobe/Adobe After Effects 7.0/Support Files/Plug-ins/Standard/Format/BMP.8bi

[Dave Johnson]

In the render queue, just click on the “output module” settings and in the “Format” dropdown at the very top of the window that pops up, BMP sequence is among the first in the list.

[Dave Johnson]

To your first question, the “funny colorful screen” is called color bars and it’s what AE shows to indicate missing footage/files. That generally means you’ve moved files from where they were the last time you saved your AE project … just double click one of them in the project panel and select that file on your hard dive to relink them.

Sorry, but I don’t really understand your second question.

[Dave Johnson]

I cant say I’ve done specifically what you’re doing so I’m not sure this will be much help, but typically when I work with PDFs in After Effects, I first bring them through Acrobat Pro and/or Photoshop to get rid of objects or whole pages I don’t need, optimize the file size, etc.

[Dave Johnson]

David B.’s advice is spot on so I’m certainly not contradicting anything he said … I would just add a couple things …

It might be cheaper and more effective to increase your RAM, rather than replace your video card. But, if you want to replace the video card, you might consider cross referencing the FCP5 and AE7 lists for compatible video cards and only choosing one that appears on both. As David mentioned, all software makers make the specs for their newest products most easily available, but the others are can be had if you try.

I also felt compelled two comment on 2 things that David said:

I work in AE on both Macs and PCs and OpenGL is a cruel joke on both platforms so Mac users shouldn’t feel slighted in the least. I prefer it’s default position to be off on both platforms and only use it when it can’t be avoided.

As far as rants about “impatient kids”, I try sooo hard not to say anything so I’m glad it’s not just me thinking evil thoughts when I see post after post asking why AE takes sooo long to render, only to read on and discover that the person was referring to a 20-minute render. Even though render times are far faster than in the AE3/Cosa days, I and other AE designers I know still make a point to finish projects days before the true deadline because we know we have 12+ hours of pre-rendering and rendering ahead of us (on well-maintained top-line systems) … if all goes well, that is. So, if anyone does ever find that rendering “easy button” in AE, please enlighten the rest of us. :~)

[Dave Johnson]

I’m not 100% sure I understand your description and problem correctly, but if it’s that you can see the edges of a smaller precomp or layer (the face) when it is used inside a larger main comp, a quick fix could be to just add a feathered mask to that smaller precomp. The basic way is to choose Mask>New Mask from the Layer menu, hit M on your keyboard twice, and adjust the feathering. Of course you could also draw a more precise mask with the pen tools, but it sounds like you just need to soften the edges of a frame so a basic mask should do.

[Dave Johnson]

There are very many things that affect the end result of a video so it’s hard to say what the issue is while knowing nothing of the process by which the video was generated. Was the file you posted rendered directly from AE? What is the format of the source material (codec, frame rate, etc.)? What are your AE comp settings? What are the details of the “render settings” and “output module” you used in AE’s render queue (codec, frame rate, etc.)?

With that kind of info, I’m sure the collective minds of the COW herd can help you find the issue with your video.