[David Bogie]

After Effects.
Shatter.
Incredible recipe for just exactly this effect.

Can’t be done without a particle system that takes an alpha input

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

Not in these little posties, no. Four hundred pages of instruction to create that effect.

Run the tutorials. Twice. Buy the two Apple pro training books for Motion.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

AE is way more complex than Motion. AE would take a couple of weeks to get to the point where you’re proud of what you do. (Only takes a few hours to figure out the basics but AE makes Photoshop look like iPhoto.)
Assuming you’ve got the machine horsepower and the training materials, Motion will probably get your project out the door in one tenth the time you’d waste on getting started with AE.

Get both of the Apple Motion Pro books and dedicate a weekend to the learning curve.

A big problem for your group will be re-thinking your grand project so it will fit your time/energy/knowledge coefficients. There are things you see in your heads that you won’t be able to figure out how to do yet. There are things you simply won’t have time to do till the next big project. but by then you’ll be ready.

You should buy After Effects anyway. Incredible tool.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

We have had some success by saving out of WMP on a PC to a lowest common denominator AVI codec. It’s absolutely crucial that you absolutley know for a fact that the codec will be available on the Macintosh. Dozens of the old and obsolete AVI codecs are not and never were available for Macintosh. The AVI can then be opened in QT.
Sometimes.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

Not really but try selecting the different alpha settings on Item Properties.

The problem with Luma Keying is you may not be seeing the actual key or matte unless you turn off all underlying layers. Your timeline image may actually be less opaque than you think.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

Not that it helps at the moment but, Kevin, let’s say he uses a Boris font tool and chooses a style from the palette. Can you make a change to that style and have it go global? Seems we did that once back in the Olden Media 100 Days with the original Graffiti but I may be fantasizing?

We did save ourselves a ton of trouble on a project last year with some preplanning. We KNEW the clients would change their minds many times on fonts and colors. We designed the lower thirds and other text in PowerPoint. All we did was change the master slides and reimport. The only reason it worked was careful planning.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

It would have been better to have used Media Manager to create a copy of your project and all associated media but you would have needed adequate storage to make all of the copies.

Read the section in the manuals on reconnecting, it’s pretty easy to do. Once you locate one file, you have the option to reconnect everything in that path.

However, if you have moved your media by copying it and then deleting the originals, some of it will never reconnect and you will have to reimport it. I doubt any of your renders will reconnect (mine rarely do) but you could get lucky.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

see tools from

discreet, popwire and flip4mac

This is a topci that comes up around here at least once a week, sometimes more, so scroll down the posts a few pages or search for similar terms. You’ll find several suggestions.

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

I blame it on the Media 100 blamers.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

You don’t have to import the folder, you can import each individual image. Umm, none of mine are sequentially numbered so maybe not altho I can’t think of a reason why not.

If you don’t get any assistance soon, try creating a batch in Photoshop to rename them, shouldn’t be very difficult.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”