[David Bogie]

Your director is putting the cart in front of the barn where the horse is still asleep.
3D is a b-i-g word.
Most 3D productions are configured based upon their release medium, not the editing platform. Theatrical or home viewing? Polarized projection, shutter glasses, inter-field rasterization, immersion…

Tell your director to move along further in his proposal and then you can talk about editing.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

The Live Update switch and OpenGL settings are featured early in Total Training’s AE programs. All that stuff is in the “getting familiar with the interface” tutorials.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Yar, sudden changes made at the whim of some overpaid art director can have ripple effects on the budget. Particular is about $400 and has a learning curve. Dozens of tutorials but you’ve still got to watch them and practice.
If this football-disruptor effect had been considered earlier in the workflow, you might have built the heart/leaves using Shatter running backwards (assuming the look and feel were acceptable). The problem with making leaves disperse in AE is they’re not curved and they don’t have back sides which makes them look fake. As long as fake leaves are acceptable, fake ballistics could be part of the stylized look and feel and you could try to sell your client on Shatter.

Umm, try to get this guy to stop being creative or, at least, be sure you have an understanding with him that changing his mind is gonna cost him some money.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Michael Brookes] “However, why can’t I key the devices out? Otherwise, even with tracking, I’m going to have to paint out frame-by frame to match to finger movement. Whereas I thought as long as the devices were a solid blue I could isolate, I could then have them as a separate layer I could manipulate in AE. No? “

Congratulations, you’re WAY ahead of most folks who start similar threads!

I have perhaps misunderstood what exactly you are keying out. Generally, keying only works as a matte generator for flat objects like backgrounds. for instance, there’s no need to key out a screen on a PDA since it will be replaced with a tracked image. Motion in front of your blue or green screen can become a terrible mess so be sure your shooting format has the shutter speed and temporal resolution to give you the results your client expects. Faster shutter speeds can help reduce motion blur at the expense of an unnaturally sharp image. Shooting progressive can help, too, especially if your release media is destined for progressive display only.

I think you’re very far along. Best of luck, try to keep thinking ahead.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

That’s not a ball, it’s a “nubbin.” Well, some folks call it a scrollball, scroll ball, scrolly, nipple, miniball, or little doodad.

A monitor wipe or any damp (not soaked) lint free cloth with something volatile on it will clean the thing. The problem with using air or just shaking it is the dust bunny can fall back into place and make you think it’s a blown mechanical system.
If you ever destroy one of the mighty mice and take it apart, you’ll see how fragile the sensing system is but it’s also nearly bombproof.
https://weblog.mrbill.net/archives/2005/11/24/apple-mighty-mouse-repair-a-success/

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

There is an excellent render file article by Richard Taylor here:
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/render_file_problems_taylor.html

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

You’re way out of my league but I can tell you that you should be designing your editing format for the most likely output and working backwards from there. If your most likely release is PAL, work in PAL. If it’s film, work at film frame rates. NTSC? Generally, having more frames is better than not having enough.

Attempting to mix frame rates requires compromises and lots of planning. You pay dearly to try to create frames that don’t exist or you throw away frames you spent lots of money to acquire. Each is a stylistic approach that needs testing and evaluation before committing or the budget to keep changing your mind.

Never heard of Teranex, you need to find their user group.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Alexander Kallas] “Thanks, best description I have seen.
“

Agreed, thanks, Andy, very helpful and a great resource for future Fuster Cluckers.

I’ve got to say though, the whole process is ridiculously convoluted, very non-Macish. I’m dreaming, I now, but setting up and running Qmaster should be a one-button solution.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

My usual response:
Be careful with “old film” effects. A little goes a very long way with today’s sophisticated audiences.
There’s a big difference between applying a stylistic look and feel to some footage and trying to make it look like it is old film.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

You may be totally screwed. I’d leap immediately to that conclusion and start rebuilding. Probably going to be quicker than trying to recover.

Multicam is interesting on the surface but it’s full of gotchas. It’s an effect and it will render in the background if allowed. That means the Render Manager (a terrific oxymoron) has control of the rendered media and will cheerfully delete it. Rendered audio files are not real unless they are actually exported and deliberately imported as movies. That is, an audio render file, like an effects render, will be deleted for many seemingly inexplicable reasons but it could be simply that you’ve changed an in or out point which effectively makes the audio render file useless so Render Manager deletes it.

I don’t know what you might be dealing with in terms of higher level system issues but I would only attempt to edit using multicam with fully rendered footage: no reference movies, no nests, no upstream smoothcam. Export those items as self-contained movies. If they are still in play and decisions are still being made on your speeds and effects nests, you need to figure out a way to use proxies until you’re ready to backfill the timeline with versions of your movies that are getting closer to being golden.

Sorry if I’ve missed the underlying issues. Without watching over your shoulder, just guessing and offering up some multicam experience. Wish you luck, I know it’s frustrating.

bogiesan