[David Johnson]

Any chance of re-shooting with a bluescreen? Sorry to suggest that, but it really seems the approach that’ll be both least time-consuming and still yield decent results since that literally looks like the textbook definition of a chromakey nightmare … the background doesn’t look chroma green at all and, even if you find a way to separate the men’s clothes from the background, you’ll still have to deal with the areas where the yellow background reflects onto other objects (i.e., each TV in the back row).

[David Johnson]

I work on Macs and Win machines and prefer those same codecs for AE work on both platforms, though it also depends on your workflow … I sometimes use an Uncompressed codec out of AE when the hefty file sizes are less important to me than avoiding re-rendering in FCP.

By the way, sorry I didn’t mention the solution (transcoding) when suggesting the issue might be the source codec … figured that was implied.

[David Johnson]

Sounds like a codec issue rather than a RAM issue … although 8Gb isn’t a ton of RAM, it should be enough. Also, if you have OpenGL on, you might try turning it off too.

[David Johnson]

Sorry I can’t offer a solution, but perhaps a reason …

Did you check the CS3 system requirements to see if Win7 is on there?

https://store.adobe.com/store/en_us/popup/software/creativesuite/mastercollection/systemreqs.html

The Adobe page above actually doesn’t specify CS3 or CS4 so my guess is those specs are for CS4 and Win7 isn’t even mentioned. Considering CS3 was written a few years before Win7, it’s not particularly surprising that they may not play nicely together.

[David Johnson]

Precompose the layers, then add the light.

[David Johnson]

AE works well with almost any standard video codec except MPG codecs … for details on that search the forum for “Dave LaRonde stock answer codecs”.

With that said, it’ll be best to work with a lossless codec of your choice within a QuickTime wrapper in FCP, export that from FCP to use in AE and render with that same codec from AE. For example ProRes or Uncompressed … whichever you choose, use the same exact codec in FCP and AE, rather than one that is just similar (i.e., all “uncompressed” codecs aren’t the same).

Explaining more than that about codecs is a bit much for a simple forum post, but the subject has been discussed at length in this and the main AE forum many times so a search of past posts will yield a lot of useful details.

[David Johnson]

It depends on the format of your source footage and FCP sequence, but as long as you use a lossless codec (ProRes, Uncompressed, etc.) and make everything about your AE render match your FCP project (codecs, aspect ratio, frame rate, etc.), you’ll be fine and won’t have to re-render in FCP. There are sometimes color and/or gamma shifts with certain codecs, but that is another topic and you can search the forum if you do encounter any of that, which you may not depending on details that you didn’t provide (formats, codecs, etc.)

[David Johnson]

There are a number of ways to do that. Examples are …

Apply the Vector Paint effect, draw in the comp window and change the effect setting to Animate Strokes.

Draw masks in the comp window with the Pen Tool, apply the Stroke effect (or Scribble) and animate the start or end parameters of the Stroke or Scribble effect.

Draw on a piece of paper, scan it in, key out (or use a blending mode to get rid of) the white background, animate masks to sequentially reveal different parts of the image.

Some methods are better than others for specific scenarios or desired looks and you’ll probably need to adjust various controls of the effects mentioned and/or the masks (if any are used), but there are plenty of tutorials here and elsewhere that will give you detailed instructions for any method.

[David Johnson]

Actually, I don’t get that urge anymore since I already know the answer … they’re too busy talking for that silly thinking stuff. How do I know that? Here ya go …

The first scenario (save 10 minutes of billing, yet waste 10 hours on things that contribute zero to a project) is one I’d actually never encountered before, but I work in corporate now so it’s the standard.

The second scenario is a direct quote from an Account Manager who insisted that I not risk “messing up” the client-provided “high-fidelity” mp3s by converting them. Need more proof? “It sounds fine on my iPod so I already know there’s nothing wrong with the file”. Because supporting my family is frankly far more important to me than any individual project, I complied.

[David Johnson]

From what I’ve experienced, saying that mp3s work in AE is a “half-truth” is a pretty reasonable characterization and here’s why …

Although I avoid using mp3s in AE whenever possible and have experienced the typical problems before converting them, there have been times that I’ve made entire AE projects using mp3 audio and haven’t had any problems at all. I can only guess that it has to do with how the mp3 was encoded (bitrate, VBR or CBR, etc.). So, it seems it is possible that an mp3 will work fine in AE … just not likely, which is why I always convert them unless the person paying me insists they’re not willing to pay for the extra 10 minutes it might take or that they don’t want me to “mess up” their audio track. ;~)