[David Johnson]

[Philip Jacobs] “The clip will actully be overlayed as a ghosted image over another video clip … id much rather just pull her out of the entire thing, then ghost her; a keying effect.”

I’m with Cory … since your intent is to key, re-shooting with a key background will be much faster and easier than roto and yield better results than masking … even if it’s not a perfect key.

[David Johnson]

I understood the question to be about reconciling media on various drives, but agree that CatDV is the best for cataloging media.

[David Johnson]

Hard to tell from a still, but if there’s not a ton of leg movement, you might be able to get away with using a rough feathered mask to mask out the bottom of the wall around her feet, then duplicating the layer and moving it down to fill the gap. That would need a little tweaking to keep the shadows looking true, but it’s doable.

If there’s lots of leg movement, the above method would only work on the series of frames with less leg movement. In other words, only as a means to avoid spending time on roto precision when it isn’t needed.

Also depends on how the footage will be used (stylized, other stuff composited in, etc.) and how good it needs to be (YouTube, broadcast, etc.).

[David Johnson]

That should work as simply as you described and expected … maybe post a screenshot of the timeline and viewer so folks can look for anything strange that would cause a mask not to feather.

[David Johnson]

Although it’s unclear why doing that with “really long” PSDs/AIs and a camera would be a problem, “really long” PSDs/AIs don’t seem necessary … or even a camera for that matter.

I might’ve missed something, but it seems the background doesn’t change so all you would really need is one background layer, a few precomps that are 1-2 times the frame width of the main comp, a few 3D layers, a couple Stroke effects on open masks (that could extend beyond the frame width), some position keyframes and possibly a few instances of Offset.

[David Johnson]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qmi1_Wc6v88

There are lots of options so one can never be sure how a particular graphic was done, but the first thing that comes to mind for that look is AE’s Fractal Noise as a track matte for text with Roughen Edges applied and perhaps a Glow over the whole thing. You could just keyframe the Fractal Noise parameters to slowly become more luminous.

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[David Johnson]

I do this for different reasons (to always have multiple copies of all critical data), but the process is the same. On Windows machines I use a program called GoodSync and on Macs I use Tri-Backup to pretty much automate the process of two-way drive synchronization. The programs compare two data sources (individual files, folders, entire drives, etc.) and synchronize them. For example, for each “work” drive I read/write critical data to/from, I keep two synched copies that I don’t work from (backups only). If drive A fails, it’s replaced by drive B, or, if drives A and B fail, I pull drive C off the shelf … zero data loss or downtime.

If you go the automated route, it’s important to understand the software well before diving in. For example, many synchronization programs have an option to propagate deletions … meaning if a file has been deleted from drive A, it will be deleted from drive B upon synchronization. A very useful feature that saves lots of time from tedious manual tasks, but it can also be dangerous if one isn’t careful, which is why it’s generally optional.

[David Johnson]

The native codec your foootage is in (DV25) makes reasonably small files as it is and hard drive space is so cheap now (and will continue to get cheaper) that there doesn’t seem any reason to throw away image data by transcoding to a delivery codec like H264 (as opposed to and editing codec like DV25).

Just a slightly different way of saying the same thing others have said … I would:
1] capture the footage from the tapes and see how much it adds up to
2] buy two hard drives of that capacity and an external enclosure, copy all the DV25 files to both drives, put the drives in static bags and sit them on the bookshelf
3] keep the original tapes … you may be parting with yours, but DV cams and decks will still be floating around out there for a few years

[David Johnson]

It’s not something I change once I set it and I’m not at an AE machine to check exactly where it’s at, but there’s a preference that says something like alternate mask colors.

[David Johnson]

I certainly don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth, but perhaps what Steve meant by “think of the computer as an investment” is not that the computer itself would gain value. Rather, if one spends $2000 on a computer and uses it to make $6000, they’ve made a $2000 investment and gotten pretty darn good return on investment.

As for your original question, much more so than the length, it depends a great deal on the types and complexity of videos you plan to work on. For example, true HD vs. HDV and very basic cuts-only vs. mograph, compositing, FX, etc. 4Gb of RAM is about the minimum to work with video nowadays and a 13″ monitor is pretty small, but again, it depends primarily on your needs and expectations.