[David Johnson]

BTW, ever since that QTX crap and bundling QT with iTunes I’ve been praying that Apple will sell QuickTime to a company that gives a shiznit about the pro market … not gonna happen, but a boy can dream. ;~) In fact, can asking Adobe to buy QT from Apple be considered a feature request? lol

[David Johnson]

Thanks Todd. I’ll submit a feature request … that feature was very useful and I could never figure out why all AE users don’t find invaluable the ability to have an exact copy of the full render-state project file permanently saved inside of all renders regardless of computer changes, hard drive failures, file corruptions, dumb co-worker deletes, etc., etc., etc. By that method only, I literally have project files from a decade ago and, although I rarely need to go that far back, pulling one from a few years ago has come in very handy many times. Anyway, thanks for verifying.

[David Johnson]

Glad to help, Vali.

I haven’t used Texturize in a while, but if I recall correctly, it also adds a bevel to the edges of the frame … if that’s the case, you may have to slightly scale or crop the frame to get rid of that.

Getting the look you want with the blend mode method often requires trying a number of different modes and adding filters to compensate for undesired changes (i.e., levels, brightness/contrast, etc.).

[David Johnson]

To each his own, but personally, I despise being lied to in any context … perhaps it’s my own character flaw, but I take it as an insult to my intelligence since I always seem to know when I’m being lied to and find it very hard to ignore or ever deal with that person again in any way. In other words, I would take the “oh, by the way, this other guy is gonna do it” (at the last minute and at a cut rate) as proof positive that it’s a job I didn’t want in the first place so thank you very much for doing me the favor of not wasting my time. Then again, to each his own.

[David Johnson]

I forgot to mention … if you don’t want to go the route of just asking the client for good files, you could try importing the files into any software that uses the QuickTime engine and re-encoding (i.e. compression/conversion software like Episode, Squeeze, etc.) … unlikely to work with files that won’t open straight away in QT7, but may be worth a shot.

[David Johnson]

Sounds like your client might’ve done something really brilliant like dismount the drive before the files finished copying over, which would undoubtedly result in corrupt files that may be recoverable but that would take far more time/effort than just getting them to re-send in-tact files … and may not work at all anyway. In other words, to a large degree, it doesn’t matter if 75% of the file’s content is there (thus, the large files) … a corrupt/unuseable file is a corrupt/unuseable file.

[David Johnson]

I’m not disagreeing with Dave’s or Noah’s advice, but from what you described, it sounds like slap a high-wattage Frezzi with dimmer on your cam, get what you get and do the best you can with it in post … omfg!! did I just say “fix it in post”!!!?. That’s never a great (or cheap) solution, but sometimes it’s the only solution.

[David Johnson]

I’m pretty certain that there is nothing built in to AE that will do this for you, but you might be able to find a scrip that’ll do it … try places like AE Enhancers and Google “After Effects scripts”.

Keep in mind that you’ll not only need to change the comp settings, but also “fit to comp” everything inside the comps without messing up your work. That may be difficult to do other than manually so I’d suggest trying whatever methods you come up with in a duplicate of the original project file.

[David Johnson]

Glad to help, Chad. One thing I said I should clarify a bit just in case … when I said “pay them and get what you need” I wasn’t implying that you should pay the full amount up front. In most cases, there is some sort of deposit and balance due upon delivery agreement. It is often to both parties benefit to have at least a basic contract with clearly defined and agreed upon terms.

[David Johnson]

Yes, it is.

MoGraph obviously isn’t like buying a pre-manufactured product off the shelf so, depending on the market you’re in and the details of your project, you may or may not be able to find someone who will do it for slightly less (and may or may not do as good a job) or for slightly more (and may or may not do as good a job), but it’s not like that amount is outrageous or something. It’s understandable that it may seem outrageous from the perspective of someone who doesn’t fully know what goes into the piece, but you might consider the many hours that can go into creating all of the many individual elements that make up each second of that 30 seconds, then making them all interact fluidly and flawlessly. That’s not to mention time spent on consult, design, etc. before the mechanics of getting it done even begin. The exception would be if you weren’t talking about something comprised of original content.

I would say look at the person’s previous work, do whatever you can to confirm that it is in fact his/her work (not someone else’s or many someone elses’) and, if that work conveys that the person can in fact do what you need, pay them and get what you need. The alternative is to find a novice to convince you that he/she can do the job for half the price only to deliver some junk that leaves you disappointed and, more importantly, having to spend even more money/time to get it done right.

I hope my two pence is helpful.