[Erik Lindahl]

I know. It’s just a huge change that really can cause head-aches in set workflows and current projects (even future ones since we often have to play ball with other apps).

I just submitted a file again. To a degree I’d classify it as a bug since the new standard can totally ruin footage with the old 1024×576 standards. Esp. complex projects with a lot of comps with pre-comps and footage with 1024×576 square footage.

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Erik Lindahl]

I haven’t tested CS4 > FCP7 with the new values but the old ones are interpreted as expected and a reply to your previous link states FCP7 doesn’t recognize 1050×576 as a native 16×9 PAL file. Might be it does or doesn’t, the issue is you “broke” a set standard with out giving us an in-app work-around to go back to what we’d used to use. Editing the out-of-app prefs files in the methods you provide can still make AE interpret files wrong and you manually have to check this every time you import footage or start a new comp. Given this can be an issue in a lot of video-apps it’s a far greater one having to rely on 2 different PAL 16×9 standards.

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Erik Lindahl]

I did that before, I’ve had contact with both the national and international support (who sadly came a cross as having zero insight to the problem or what the difference in pixel aspect ratios actually is). The rep at IBC seemed very keen on talking about features like this but I guess after talking to 200 people at a tradeshow something “small” like this might slip through. Sadly this is a major issue (I had a few projects break converting to CS4 before finding a fix).

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Erik Lindahl]

I can second the above!

We’ve used Beauty Box on two recent commercials for major national brands with very solid results. This in combination with After Effects and Mocha and you’ve got your self a very power “post production make-up suite”.

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Erik Lindahl]

I’d agree with the fact that even if “we’ve been working wrong” – so what, SD is going out and HD is coming in – why fix something that isn’t broke?

A transition like this should have an easy built in toggle to say the least. I even talk with one of the rep’s at IBC last year about this and he hinting “things might change in AE CS5” and that a HUGE number of people where complaining about the new, odd, standard (be it more correct or not, it just makes life complicated).

In PAL-land things have been easy:
– 720×576 pixles is the base image. 4×3 square pixles = 768×576, 16×9 square pixles = 1024×576.

In PAL-HD land things are bit more complex but still rel. easy:
– 1280×720 and 1920×1080 25 or 50p or 50i are the base resolutions, square pixles no fuss
– Some formats are anamorphic and might thus use 960×720 or 1440×1080 pixles.

Adding the 1050×576 and god know what to the 4×3 PAL aspect is just confusing. As the poster has noted, does this also affect non-square HD-formats? Main thing is most post-workflows rely on the 1024 standard. PLEASE make this an option in CS5.

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Erik Lindahl]

Revision FX has a very solid morphing plugin called “re:flex”. Have a look at it, works very well in After Effects at least.

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Erik Lindahl]

Ah, ofcourse! When working with preiviews go to regins of interest, work with half or quarter rez as well as every other frame. Turn off things like motion blur and frameblending and make sure you work in an 8-bit comp. You can often plan comps well also when pre-comping. Put effects on the 1024×576 pixel pre-comp rather than each 3K layer in the comp (if possible obviously).

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Erik Lindahl]

Different stabilizers work differently well depending on shots. I’ve had great success with FCP’s stabilizer and never seen it “drop frames” when rendered. What can be common is the motion-blur on the stable footage (if it’s very jerky). The only real way to combat that is lower the stabilization a bit and on a per-frame basis sharpen clips up.

CoreMelt’s Lock and Load is also an awesome tool I’ve more and more started to use as it’s got more features and only renders i/o points rather than the entire media (huge plus often).

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Erik Lindahl]

A few things you might already be doing:

Prepare you media. Scale it to the maximum needed size, make sure it’s RGB PSD files and so forth. Never make them bigger than required. Avoid working with compressed files if you can.

Check that rendering. How is your system being taxed when you render? Fiddle with the multi-core settings. Really really large comps can be faster on fewer cores with more RAM addressed to them.

Work smart with proxies and pre-renders. If you end up with long render times you still have to get the jobb done. 5 hours is a full rez revision per evening if you may, hence during the day you might need to work with proxies and pre-renders.

We did a spot earlier this year that was a comp based on 3K RED material placed in an SD PAL comp (720×576) for the ability to pan, scan, scale, zoom and so forth. Some of the more complex part had 4-5 pre-comps with say 4-5 3K layers in each pre-comp. After a while you’re forced to pre-render unless you want to drive your self insane.

At the end of the day, the issue you have is something I think will be far far better on a high-end computer with CS5. It will still be there but less of a “block” in the road.

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Erik Lindahl]

That sounds correct given the blog does state they’ve reworked a lot of the internals i AE for the 64-bit transition and improved the multi-core handling.

The key-phrase from the help doc however:

After Effects CS5 is a 64-bit application, so each process can use all of the RAM addressed by 64-bit Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Mac OS operating systems.

Yes, you can use multiple instances of CS5 to render multiple frames at a time. The benefit of 64-bit is that these aren’t limited to RAM-constrains more than what your system has. A MacPro with 32GB of RAM could have:

– 16 instance with 2GB each
– 8 instances with 4GB each
– 4 instances with 8GB each
– 2 instances with 16GB each
– 1 instance with 32GB for it self.

In CS4, this would be impossible. There the limit was ≈3GB / instance as with most 32-bit applications.

If you look at HP-workstations they can have 96GB of RAM for an 8-core system. Here you could easily address 16-24GB for 4-6 instances. This is the power of 64-bit when working with either large or complex comps. And again, this information is completely wrong in this movie.

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se