[Erik Pontius]

You mean to say that Vista 64 is not seeing all your RAM or that AE running on Vista x64 is not seeing all your RAM even though Vista 64 sees it all?

If Vista 64 bit isn’t seeing it start troubleshooting to make sure that your system itself (check the BIOS system setup) to make sure that it recognizes it (some motherboards and BIOS’ will not support more than 4gb of ram, no matter how much you shove in it.) In other cases, mixing various brands and sizes of ram sticks can cause some not to be recognized.

As for AE, since it is still a 32-bit application, it can only address a max of 4GB…later version allow several instances of portions of the application to run in their own 4gb virtual machine per core in multi-core/processor systems.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

You may not have it. Like I said alpha channels are only supported in Flash 8 and higher.
In my case, I’m using the On2 Technologies, Flix encoder, which is a Flash 8 encoder. There is an option in the lower right hand corner for Alpha Channel with a little checkmark for “Preserve Alpha”

You can download a demo from here:
https://www.on2.com/index.php?316

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Is the text and stuff in your Flash project or in AE?
If your text is in your flash project and you want the video you created in AE to sit on top of it…you’ll need to select the option in your flash encoder to preserve the transparency. Otherwise it will ignore it and flatten your video, causing the background to be opaque.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

I’d suggest buying a copy of Andrew Kramer’s “Serious Effects & Compositing” tutorial disc.
https://store.creativecow.net/p/52/serious_effects__compositing
He’s got a step-by-step tutorial on there on how to create 3d Silhouette (here’s a screenshot).

Lots of other cool stuff on the disc…pretty good deal for what you get and learn.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

CBR applies, well… a constant bit rate across the entire duration of the video. This is wonderful for short videos say less than 30-45 mins, in which the resulting file size won’t exceed that of a single layer DVD-R disc.
For longer pieces, doing a 2-pass VBR can create a better balance between the compression used and file size in order to get the resulting files to fit on the disc and still have good quality. 2-pass is more efficient by essentially taking notes on the first pass where areas that have low movement (say a nice steady tripod shot of a bowl of fruit on a table) where it can use a lot of compression with less artifacting and areas where there are lots of changes and movement (say a big action scene or explosion) where it needs to apply less compression to minimize the artifacting.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

The mojo is a huge resource hog. You will want to make sure that the Mojo is the only firewire device plugged into your firewire card or ports on your system…as anything else on it will cause the Mojo to flake.
The first step with any Mojo problem, is to unplug the power from it, let it sit for 30+ secs and plug the power back in.
You’d be amazed how many problems that fixes.
Other possible causes…the drive you are capturing your video to may not be fast enough. Most editing systems are configured with at least two hard drives. One for your operating system and applications and at least one or more drives dedicated to nothing but capturing video.
If you are capturing to an external USB drive it might not have the bandwidth and speed to reliably capture video.
If you are capturing to an external firewire drive, you might be upsetting the Mojo. Many editing systems have a second separate firewire card to plug other firewire devices into, leaving the Mojo on a card of it’s own.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Also keep in mind that if you are looking at the file in Quicktime, you will see a black background, since QT is not using the alpha channel. If you import the rendered file back in to AE, the background should disappear since AE will use the alpha channel to remove the background. Also, remember that AE can create two different types of alpha channels. Straight and Pre-multiplied. The default is Pre-multiplied, which includes your comp background color. Straight is preferable and cleaner in most cases, but looks pretty horrible if you just look at it in QT, since it does not include the background color.

Also if you are exporting to flash FLV, to then import into a Flash project, you will want to make sure that you are using at least a Flash 8 encoder and turn on the option for transparency. Otherwise, the flash encoder will discard the alpha channel (versions earlier than 8 didn’t have support for alphas).
You only need to do render flash with alpha if you intend on keeping the alpha channel so that your imported video sits seamlessly over a background that is in your Flash project.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

All of the media will be stored in two folders: OMFI Mediafiles
and Avid Media.
Copy those folders to your system’s hard drive. If the folders already exist you can overwrite them, which will add the media from the external drives to them. Then open each folder and delete the two database files, msmFMID.pmr and msmMMOB.mdb
The next time you start Avid, it will scan the drives and update/recreate these databases to include all the media.

Most likely you project files are located already on your system’s hard drive. On a Windows system they should be in C:\Program Files\Avid\Avid Application\Avid Projects\
Or in “Shared documents” and/or the “my documents” folder.

Also on the PC, there are free applications such as “MediaSift” and “MDV” that can scan your drives and copy projects and media for you to another drive or folder. Do some googling to find them (note MediaSift doesn’t support MXF, just OMF).

Erik.

[Erik Pontius]

The Questions:

Is the media industry really trending away from Avid?
Possibly. Avid is behind the curve in adopting new formats. It is pretty bare bones in terms of what it offers compared to FCP. This forces you to spend money on other apps for motion graphics, audio and such that are include or bundled with other NLE’s for a cheaper price. System requirements can be pretty strict. There still are a lot of commercials, television, films and news cut on Avid. Probably a lot more Avid’s in use in professional environments that FCP, probably due to the fact that Avid’s been around a lot longer in those environments than FCP.

Is there a benefit to Avid over Final Cut Pro? Perhaps
If so what?
Speed. Good media management. Backward compatibility. Cross platform. If your wife is using Avid at work on a PC, she can move that project to a Mac and open it up.

Why do you like Avid?
I didn’t at first and I still have a bit of a Love/Hate for it. If you are used to FCP/Premiere type NLE’s, learning/using Avid can be tricky since the vast majority of editing is done with keyboard shortcuts rather than mouse drag-n-drop. After using it for a while I got used to it, found it really fast to edit with. I enjoyed the customization that I could do. The software can be installed on as many systems that you want that can support it, since your software license is a hardware USB dongle. So if you have a more powerful desktop connected to mojo and decks and a notebook, you can edit on the go on the notebook, then transfer the project to the desktop for onlining or output to tape.

What kind of surprise await me using the Avid?
Price. Compared to other other NLE’s you really don’t get much in the box. Plan on spending some extra cash on other applications to fill in the gaps where Avid is short (motion graphics, 3d, Audio, etc..)

Do I need to by the Mojo?
Depends on your needs. If she needs to deliver on beta/digibeta or other pro tape format that isn’t firewire you’ll need one.
What are the benefits to the Mojo hardware?
Analog or SDI input/output.

Where can I get a good Price on the Avid software?
Look around. Some folks like VideoGuys.com, there maybe local resellers in your area as well. You can check out a list on Avid’s site: https://www.avid.com/products/howtobuy/index.asp

Any other advice or opinions you might have?
If you’re wife is used to using Avid, you’re not going to have much choice. She would get used to FCP after a while, but she’s going to miss a lot of things she is used to on the Avid. Both are good NLE’s and are both perfectly capable of creating professional work.

erik

[Erik Pontius]

I took a stab at just keying the sample image that you supplied with keylight.
https://www.burningfromice.com/keylight/keylight.htm

Not perfect, but passable…so it is possible. You’ll just have to fiddle with it.
My keylight settings are also included on the page.
I used two masks. One is just to eliminate the sides that weren’t covered by the greenscreen. The second was to eliminate the object in the foreground next to the desk…I set the mask mode to “none” and then used the Outside mask option in keylight to use this mask to remove the object.

Have fun.

Erik