[Michael Duff]

try rendering it out as something else .. maybe quicktime movie and see if you still get the same problem …. this way we can work out if the problem is in the render settings or in the composition itself …

[Michael Duff]

hi moldyboot … seems you know a lot about RAM and such so might ask you another question…
We get the old Image Buffer error a lot on big jobs… we thought it was that our machines needed rebuilding … so the other day we did this … so a number of G5s with slightly different configerations all with fresh installs … the problem is still the same … heres the thing, if we take out extra RAM and just have 2Gig or less we don’t get the error … any more and we do… we also just got a new macPro (4gig RAM), and were surprised that we get the same Image Buffer error still…

this happened in AE7 and now with a fresh install of AE8 …

all the memory cache settings are set on default on all the machines…

so… the 2.5Ghz G5 with 1.5Gig of RAM … no errors
… the brand new 2x 2.66Ghz dual core macPro with 4GB RAM … image buffer error

any thoughts?

[Michael Duff]

apple-K …. then you can extend or shorten your composition at any time as needed …. you can also choose to only render out segments of your timeline in the render queue …

you should check out some of the tutorials here at the cow … even though some of them are for older versions of AE they will set you up with more than a basic knowledge of the program

[Michael Duff]

you must just have them both selected … are they both yellow? rather than grey? this means they are both selected … click away from the layer and try again

[Michael Duff]

click on the layer then press “u” to reveal all keyframes … you can then drag the keyframes closer together to speed things up …. or further apart to extend the animation ….

[Michael Duff]

do you mean fading out the entire layer?
just select the layer and hit “t” to reveal the opacity setting … press the stop watch to enable keyframing … it should be on 100% for where you want the dissolve to start … go to where you want it to end and make the value 0%… it will dissolve out between those two keyframes

is this what you meant?

[Michael Duff]

sounds like the flames have been composited in and probably time stretched (slowed down) without using any frame blending … or maybe the flames came from a source with a different frame rate ..

[Michael Duff]

hmmm .. we just installed AE8 on the same machine and multi-frame rendering works perfectly … just ticked the box in preferences and away it went … oh, but we haven’t got the 8.0.1 update … maybe it is buggy or something?

[Michael Duff]

you should get the plug-in “Automatic Duck” – I could not work without it now … basically it translates your FCP timeline into AE and links to the original source video … so you aren’t wasting any hard drive space or losing any quality …

if you can’t get the plug-in then: if you haven’t done any graphics or distorted the video stay in the same codec (DV or whatever) … if you have added graphics or scaled the footage or added effects etc etc then export using an uncompressed file or animation codec if you can afford the space…

maybe someone can confirm this? I’ve been using automatic duck for so long maybe there is a better way?

[Michael Duff]

hi … probably best to not think of film as a tape … film is like the stuff you put in your (non-digital) camera… if you look at it you can see the picture of each frame… tape on the other hand is like your VHS … normally magnetic or similar and you can’t actually see the picture in it.

So 35mm film needs to get processed just like your still camera does … nowadays it is converted to digital after the processing (like scanning each frame in) Then all effects and such are done on computers … then if it is getting a theatrical release it will be printed back onto film.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35mm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_tape
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movie_projector

does that make sense?