[Dave Johnson]

My pleasure, Jeff.

It’s been many years now since I did any training beyond minor refresher/update type stuff so I don’t make a point to keep up with the current resources. With that said, in my opinion, the best way to learn anything is always via a balanced combination of instruction directly from other people (aka classes) and direct research/reading.
It’s obviously up to you whether you want to go as far getting formal training, but for the research/reading, some ideas that might help …

I’m not sure if they still do, but Adobe use to put out a good crash course type free document called the “DV Primer”. There is also a massive amount of info on the subject available on the web via Google searches (try terms like “digital video”, “streaming media” & “video codecs”). You might also try searching the COW tutorials, articles and archived posts for similar terms and the COW “Web Streaming – Audio|Video” forum is another good place togo when you have specific questions.

Best of luck!!!!

[Dave Johnson]

A much easier way to get the same result is to turn of the white background layer you put under your text layers, save it that way as a PSD, and import it into AE without merging the layers (import as a comp rather than as footage). If you can’t turn off the white background layer, it’s because it’s a true “background layer” … just double click it in the layers window, which will convert it back to a regular layer and, thus, allow you to turn it off.

With that said, to answer you question more literally, invert your selection (CNTRL+SHFT+I) before creating the alpha channel.

[Dave Johnson]

First, instead of WMV for video clips on CDs, I’d suggest MPEG1 since it’s still the only format that will:
[1] play in any computer media player
[2] on any computer of either platform (Win or Mac)
[3] without installing any software that didn’t come with the computer’s base O/S straight out the box
[4] import into PowerPoint presentations very well, which is often the reason people want video clips on CDs, rather than DVDs they can’t figure out how to get the video off of

Sorenson has a couple MPEG1 presets, but they’re harder to find in version 5 of Squeeze … if I recall correctly, they call them “PowerPoint” presets and/or they’re mixed in with the MPEG2 presets.

The optimal bitrate depends on how all-inclusive you want to be in terms of the computers that’ll play the files. That said, 1800-2000 Mbps is often accepted as the range that offers decent quality and will still play on just about any computer that has any chance of still being in use. I verified that a few years ago on a quite old test machine we had with Windows 95 and my MPEG1 files played flawlessly.

Best of luck!

[Dave Johnson]

The only things I can think of that would cause that are:

[1] If you checked the “Leave all attributes” option when you made your precomp, which would mean all effects would remain applied to the precomp layer inside of your main comp instead of within the precomp itself and you would, thus, be rendering precomps that don’t have any effects applied in them. Go to one of your precomps and see if there are any effects applied to any of the layers that should have them. If not, go to that same precomp layer inside your main comp and you’ll find your effects there. If that’s the case, you’ll need to redo the process of making precomps from your layers and check the “Move all attributes…” option instead.

[2] If you had “All Off” selected in the “Effects” options of your render settings instead of “Current Settings” or “All On”. Click your “Render Settings” in the render queue and look at the “Effects” option.

[Dave Johnson]

I’ve never done t-shirt design and obviously can’t speak on what the vendor you’re dealing with will require or charge, but here’s some very general info that might answer your questions anyway.

Illustrator is a vector program, Photoshop is not. That means several things …

The main advantage of vector art is that it can be used at literally any size without quality loss … from a postage stamp to a billboard. Photoshop is primarily for raster images, which only retain 100% quality at 100% (or less) the size the images were created at.

A PSD can’t be converted to vector art … it can be saved as a file type that usually denotes vector art (EPS, AI, etc.), but that doesn’t make it vector art.

In general, it’s always best to create original designs as vector art regardless of the intended purpose(s). However, whether that is practical in your situation and whether a raster image will suffice is a call only you can make.

[Dave Johnson]

AVI isn’t intended as a web video format since it’s generally either uncompressed or has relatively little compression. By definition, all compression (regardless of the codec and file type) sacrifices quality for file size. So, a WMV or any other compressed file will never be the same or even comparable quality to uncompressed.

Similarly, the quality of the WMV you made is a direct result of the compression settings you chose, as will be the case with any other codec or format you choose. So, you could make a WMV that meets your quality standards by raising the bitrate and adjusting other settings such as frame rate, dimensions, etc. Also note that, although it does offer quite a few options to generate various types of files, compressing/converting video to various formats isn’t AE’s specialty … generally software like AE is used to make content and separate compression software is used to convert that content to different formats for different purposes (i.e., Sorenson Squeeze, Canopus ProCoder, Autodesk Cleaner, On2 Technologies Flix Pro, etc.).

With that all said, via the “output modules” in AE’s render panel, you can choose any of the web-ready file types and codecs such as FLV, WMV, MOV, etc. They all have pros and cons, but those are way too much to go into in a short forum post. You might also check the YouTube recommendations for files to be uploaded to their site and make your file accordingly.

[Dave Johnson]

Yes. If you precomp each layer (or groups of layers) and render the precomps, you’ll have all of them as individual files. If you like, you can choose “import & replace” in your AE output module, which will import each of the rendered files back into your AE project and use them to replace the precomp layers within your main composition(s).

[Dave Johnson]

I don’t now that it’ll be any of these, but when I’ve had a layer just mysteriously disappear for one frame even though I had no opacity or other keyframes at that point in time, it has most often turned out to be one of these three things:

[1] If there were 3D layers in the comp, something about the placement of the layer that was disappearing caused it to briefly disappear into the 3D abyss. For example, even though there were no keyframes at the frame where it was disappearing (or in that layer at all), it or other 3D layers were keyframed at other points in time and, at that particular frame, there was a conflict with how they interacted in Z space causing one of them to just dissappear (or in some cases be overrun by another 3D layer).

[2] I think this one has been resolved in newer versions of AE, but in older versions it was very common to have to switch between the “Standard” and “Advanced” renderers in the composition settings window when working with 3D layers in order to prevent 3D layers from doing weird things as they interacted with each other (like completely disappearing for one frame).

[3] An OpenGL error wherein the layer wasn’t really disappearing at all … OpenGL just didn’t feel like showing that one frame. I turned off OpenGL and problem was solved.

[Dave Johnson]

You can choose which area of the video to apply any given effect to by either applying the effect to a masked adjustment layer or precomposing only the layers you want to apply the effect to. Which method is best depends on the specific circumstance.

For the first method, add a solid to your comp, draw a mask on the solid to isolate the area you want to be affected, apply the effect you want, then click the adjustment layer button for the solid’s layer.

For the second method, select the layers you want to precompose, then go to the Layer menu and select “precompose”. AE will move those layers into a new precomp and put a copy of that precomp into your main comp where the layers it contains originally were.

I hope this helps.

[Dave Johnson]

What you’re describing now is a separate issue from the attributes of the photo itself and implies an issue with color management settings, viewing settings, monitor settings, other related settings (i.e., graphics card) or some combination of any or all of those.

Sorry, but those are things I set up on my machines immediately and never touch again … and its been a while since I needed to do that. So, you’ll be better off with troubleshooting advice from someone who has dealt with those issues more recently and/or frequently.