[Dave Johnson]

[Darrell Boeck] I just never really thought the person in front of the camera gave any notice to the gear.

In the scenarios I described earlier in the thread, the people in front of the camera are rarely in that position for the first time and, in my case, have often been in that position for higher-end productions. So, yes, they absolutely are aware of the difference between sitting in front of a film rig with a dozen crew scurrying around them and the other end of the spectrum, which is one of many reasons a handycam and a toss-up backdrop just wouldn’t do for us … despite the intermediary clients’ common desire to do everything mega-cheap, they generally eventually understand that the real client (their client) is the one who matters.

[Dave Johnson]

Dave L. is right that it’s impossible for anyone to advise you well with out any info to go on, but I’ll mention in general terms that USB is about the worst connection choice for working with any video software, let alone AE. Another common cause of slower than usual renders is insufficient RAM so i hope you don;t come back and tell us you’re working with 512Mb.

[Dave Johnson]

I haven’t read the entire thread so I apologize if this has already been covered, but I’ve had lots of issues with Lacie external drives and found that the issue was more often than not related to the power supply … have you tried switching out the power cable/pack with the one from one of your other Lacie drives or buying another from Lacie?

By the way, that issue was so frequent with Lacie drives for me that I won’t buy them anymore and now only use external drives that use a standard power supply/cable like these:
https://maxxdigital.com/shop/index.php?cPath=152&osCsid=0abbb662e5887f4641838472a50f3c69

[Dave Johnson]

I hear ya, but I would guess that a matte box for a DSLR will be pretty small.

B&H has a used department too, as do most of the other big resellers like Adorama. Or, you could buy a non-functional yet impressive-looking shell of and old BetaCam from your local pro video repair shop for $20 and set it up next to your DSLR. ;~) Would blow the travel light plan out of the water though.

[Dave Johnson]

Just to reaffirm Todd’s always good advice, you might consider that, for the very reasons Todd described, it’s only in recent years that many video editors have even started using NLE workstations for anything other than video editing and directly related tasks (mograph, etc.) … for a larger portion of the time I’ve spent in the business, most NLEs weren’t even connected to the internet at all, nor otherwise treated as a “regular” computer.

[Dave Johnson]

For something like this, you won’t get any where near the realism out of AE as you would in a 3D program and it certainly won’t take less time to try to fake a remotely believable water splash in AE.

As far as stock footage, last time I used them was a while ago, but ArtBeats has quite a variety of good-quality water footage. Typically you get what you pay for with stock media so, the variety and quality will probably be noticeably better than most of what places like iStock have, but it’ll probably cost more too.

[Dave Johnson]

lol Indeed, those poor teachers must have totally demolished self-esteem. At the same time, it seems there’s a strong movement these days toward considering proper English and grammar passé (says the guy who just started a paragraph with “lol”).

[Dave Johnson]

The things John mentioned are definitley the places to start … if none of those are the issue, you’ll want to look at precisely what is happening in your comp at the 25 second mark to figure out what is causing the render to fail.

For example, if that’s the frame where a particular layer or effect first comes into play, something about the layer of effect is likely causing the render fail so you’ll want to do things like double check effect settings and stacking orders to confirm there isn’t some effect parameter set in a way that over-taxes your machine’s capabilities (i.e, a zillion particles with high blur) or some similar issue.

[Dave Johnson]

Dave, once again, my friend … kudos for saying what the rest of us were thinking … I read the post yesterday, but decided I shouldn’t have to spend my time trying to decipher a question in order to answer.

[Dave Johnson]

Since your client is already accustomed to getting MP4s from you, in order to keep it simple for them and you, I’d stick with MP4s and just lower the date rate until you get files of the size you have in mind.