David Johnson
Forum Replies Created
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5 minutes is a pretty long AE comp so it’s hard to say whether you’re render times are truly excessive without more details. That said, things you can do to reduce render times:
- turn off OpenGL
- add more RAM to the machine if it’s not already maxed out
- pre-render as much as possible (nested comps, etc.)
- make sure all sources are on a fast hard drive or RAID
- read sources from and write renders to separate drives
- close unnecessary programs and background processes to dedicate RAM & processor power to AE
- check AE’s “Improve Performance” page in the online help for more tips:
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I have this issue … there’s a selection towards the bottom of one of the FCP menus called something like “refresh video output” … not a full solution, but definitely better than switching preferences on and off.
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You may not have given enough info to be sure the issue is a corrupt source. Is there anything else different about the 100 project files that won’t open compared to the others that will? Are they on a different drive? Do they use any of the same sources? Have any of either been moved or altered? Do all of your drives have enough available space for cache files, etc.? Did you have any crashes or other system issues either while working in AE or in general?
[Heather Crank] “If the problem is with a corrupt asset, how can I fix this problem?”
Usually, sources only become corrupt as a result of a specific event (i.e., a crash while files are being written to, etc.). So, it’s unusual for many sources to become corrupt at once (except in the scenario mentioned below). If the issue is a corrupt source, you have to somehow isolate the corrupt source(s). This is tedious if it’s a large project, but you can temporarily move all sources to a different location so that AE can’t find them when you open the project. Then, replace them one at a time until you come across one that causes AE to crash.
[Heather Crank] “Is it possible that all the files from the last month on both drives have become corrupt?”
It’s possible, but very unlikely for all files on two separate drives to become corrupt at the same time … unless something happened to both drives at the same time and it would be something that’s hard to miss (i.e., a system crash while files are being initially copied to both drives at the same time).
By the way, I’d suggest never working with files in AE that are located on a computer’s desktop since what’s on a computer’s desktop are usually shortcuts to files that are really on the system drive … personally, I think it’s a bad idea to store any data files on a system drive and always have at least one separate data drive.
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The easy way … the shooter, director or producer notice the issue during the shoot and either have the actor change his pants or alter the shot to accommodate.
The hard way … mask out the area, find something suitable to replace it with (i.e., another area of the pants) and track the replacement image to the actor’s motion. This is also known as “rotoscoping” and, depending on the amount of movement, will probably not be quick or easy to do so you’ll probably want to look for some tutorials on rotoscoping if you haven’t done it before and/or are new to AE.
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As mentioned in the post just before yours, AE (and just about any other software) will only find files if both the file names and file paths are exactly the same as they were when the project was created.
It is possible to structure multiple drives with exactly the same files at exactly the same file paths so that, as you move an editing project from on one computer to another, everything in the project remains intact. I work that way with three different hard drives (two of which are portable external drives and the third a stationary RAID array). However, that setup is difficult to maintain without using drive-synchronization software.
An alternative method is to use AE’s “collect files” function (found in the File menu) to collect all sources used in a particular project into one folder so that you only have one folder to manually copy back and forth between hard drives (i.e., your server and laptop).
With either method, you’ll also need to make sure everything else the two computers use within the AE project are also the same … namely, any fonts and third-party plugins you may use.
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I’m glad you found my feedback helpful … didn’t mean to sound overly critical … the scene looks pretty darn good as-is … just some things that might help make it better yet.
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I’m not sure I understand how you turned the black text to white or what you’re trying to achieve, but perhaps this will help … if text is made of mask paths on a solid, it will either have the color of the solid layer the masks are drawn on or no color at all depending on the mask mode used. So, all you need to do to make black text out of mask paths is draw the masks on a black solid.
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Whether in AE, FCP or any other software, editing with mp3 audio is the equivalent of editing with wmv video. The best approach is to tell your clients to only send you either wav or aif auido and, if they insist on sending mp3, convert it to one of the others … and bill the client the extra time to do so. The only alternative is for both you and the client to accept final edits with poor audio.
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I’m not at my FCP machine so I can’t look for the settings to change the viewers output, but considering the general topic, I’ll mention that Digital Heaven has a pretty handy timecode viewer plugin for FCP. I don’t have it on my machine since I work in corporate, but used it on a friend’s machine and like the extra features it has.
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Do not use mp3 audio in your AE project … convert it to a WAV or AIF … or, better yet, use an original uncompressed audio file.
Render from AE via the Render Queue and use a lossless codec (PNG, Animation, etc.) … do not use the Export function.
Use separate compression software to convert the AE render to the web format of your choice. Some applications I use for that purpose are Adobe Video Encoder, Grass Valley ProCoder, Sorenson Squeeze, Autodesk Cleaner and MPEG StreamClip, but there are other good ones as well so use the best that you have access to.