[Michael Duff]

so they will be playing from DVD?

it is really up to you whether you want to go widescreen or not .. if you do go widescreen make sure you author your DVD for 16×9 letterbox … this way if it is a 4:3 projector your picture will definitely get letterboxed and not cropped.

…you could ask them if they would prefer a 4:3 or 16:9 format.

[Michael Duff]

I always use Animation codec when rendering out with an alpha… and never have any problems with using it in FCP (or DVD authoring etc)… maybe because animation is still a very large file your hard drives can’t read it fast enough?

or you could try rendering out uncompressed … i can’t think of other codecs that support alphas at the moment, but I’m sure if you google/wiki it you find a few

[Michael Duff]

maybe you are referring the type of effect that can be created with trapcodes 3D stroke? (https://www.trapcode.com/)

[Michael Duff]

“[” should do it…. make sure you have the timeline marker where you want it and that the timeline window is selected.

actually, i just found this thread:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/912085
this may be of more help….

[Michael Duff]

are you using two synchronised DVDs to play from? and then just splitting the video in half?
And are they widescreen TVs? If so, I’d just use the AE widescreen preset and change the width to 1440 … then when you render out you can use the output module to crop it in half.

[Michael Duff]

Check out the Sticky post at the top of this forum …. then go to:
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=867951

[Michael Duff]

so you just want a number to count up from 2000 to 2060 between two points in time?

Make a solid. Apply effect Text->Numbers . Choose a font. Then keyframe the setting Value/Offset/Random Max and set it to 2000. Then go to the point in the timeline where it will be 2060 … and set the same setting to 2060.

Set decimal places to 0.

Does this work for you?

[Michael Duff]

thanks …

i’m not really sure about AE training … a few years ago I looked for some and there really wasn’t much around (and what was around looked below average) .. since then I haven’t looked … probably a person with better/more information on this would be John Dickinson (former COW leader & motionworks.com.au)

good luck, and let me know how it goes and if you come over here

[Michael Duff]

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/bird_flock1.php

enjoy!

[Michael Duff]

Firstly, you should always be using the render queue when you output out of After Effects. Never use File->Export (unless there is a really specific thing that the render queue doesn’t do).

Also, you want these as data files right? or do you intend the viewer to watch them on their DVD player on the TV?

Are you rendering .AVI uncompressed? this would explain the large file size. you need to choose a codec. If it is mostly for windows users maybe try wmv9 or for quicktime maybe an MPEG4 or h.264 … getting the correct balance between file size and picture quality is something you will need to experiment with.. and maybe ask more specific questions in the “Compression Techniques” forum..

If you are trying to re-author a DVD to play on the TV that is a different procedure.

If this doesn’t help or doesn’t make sense maybe tell us in more detail what you want to achieve.