[David Bogie]

[Greg Galowitz] “So is it possible to point the emitter to a folder that has about 30 1min videos in it? So it would be random on what videos are coming out. “

Negative, that would require 30 different emitters, each pointing to a separate video clip, each set to random start frames.

You can, however, create a new moviein FCP, highly intercut, that appears to have random frames from all of your 30 clips and use that as your emitter source.
Or you can create on long movie of all 30 clips and establish the random setting high enough that no two consecutive particles are from the same clip.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Marcus Painton] “I was hoping to shoot all shots in-focus, simply to give more freedom in post. Is there a way to recreate the “look” of the hexagon-patterned blur through a plugin that I have overlooked, or is there one that I should install from a third-party? Also, which would be the most efficient way to apply these blurs to the portions of the frame that are desired to be out-of-focus? “

You are trying to fake depth of field. You are hoping to impose the pattern of your iris blades as a film camera would see spectral highlights. You need to understand the family of filters known as Compound Effects that apply their filter setting based on grayscale input.

You can look up depth of field and rack focus filters and explore camera and lens blur filters from several third party suppliers. Beware, these are hacks and flat simulations that are not 3D-aware. The look is interesting but it’s not real. The rendering can be painfully slow and tweaking the settings may require lots of experimentation.

Thinking you could do this in post without knowing how you were going to do it was a bad, very bad, idea. It will cost you three to ten times the time and money than to simply allow your photographer to use his camera’s lens to its fullest capabilities and to allow your lighting designer to go nuts.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Shatter is the go-to filter for breaking glass. However, it’s a simulation. The result is a bit stylized.

As Joe suggests, the best realism is accomplished with practical effects. That’s how we did effects for a hundred years: we blew stuff up.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Seems like every third party filter maker has a different update/transfer/move/adopt system. But CS4 has been out for a long time so other Red Giant users should be able to clue you in. Hope they drop by today.

Start by seeing if Red Giant offers updates to your plugs.

Then see if RG has a support document explaining how to transfer them.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Without looking over your shoulder we can only guess.
Since i have no idea what you’re doing or if you know how to do it, it’s obvious to me that something is happening at that frame location. So look at your timeline and start turning off layers that might be causing the problem.

Since I don’t know if you have dozens of layers with interactive or reiterative effects dependencies, you could probably precompose several layers and prerender them as self contained movies, eliminating tons of processing.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

This is a weird issue that seems to be cropping up in the FCP and Motion forums all over the planet, confirmed by some heavy hitters and major power users. Looks like a serious bug but I try not to make such claims any longer, relying instead on the results of superior testing procedures from bigger fish.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Stephen Smith] “iStock photo has a bunch of flying money shots that you may be interested in. Just type flying money and you will get a bunch to choose from. “

CHEATING!!!

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

I’d use the blade tool to snip each scene into a separate clip.
Apply Color Correction to each separately.
The problem is FCP is attempting to interpolate between your keyframes. I’ve just tried to set dramatic changes between keyframes using CC and had no trouble resolving single-frame changes.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Horst Dendemann] “yes thanks, i see the align panel… but none of the align/distribute-symbols work like the space-align-symbol in flash or fireworks! “

They work for me just as expected. Time to pop open the manual?

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

After Effects is not a natural phenomena simulation system. It’s a compositor in which you will combine your elements from live footage and 3D animation systems.

Trying to simulate water in AE is difficult, making it interact with a greenscreened actor is even more difficult. The results are highly stylized and unrealsitc. CC Particle World will give you the water drops or a stream of water from a hose and a maelstrom can be faked by distortion or compound effects but there is no 3D down-the-drain representation.

bogiesan