[Erik Pontius]

I’m running AE 6.5 pro and QT 7.1 on Win XP. Haven’t had problems with any of the 3 different systems I have it running on. I seem to remember some reports of 7.1.2 causing some problems, though I’m not sure what platform. Looks like the current release is 7.1.3, so maybe they fixed some things.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Yes. You’ll need to Export to Quicktime Movie, then choose your settings (H.264 for compression, etc…)

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

I’ve seen this same error as well when switching to AE. My guess is that AE is attempting to use the DV output to create the video output, which upsets the Avid, which really doesn’t like to share anything.
I’ve had to close Avid, open AE do my comp, output and re-open Avid.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Can you post a sample video clip some place that could be downloaded?

[Erik Pontius]

With split track usually all your voice over/dialog is on one channel and music and sfx on the other. At least in the news world this is done so that when they capture from tape, they can throw in their own voiceover if they choose to (just throw out the VO track from the tape).
Tricky part is if you already have a stereo mix with vo/music/sfx thrown across both channels in the Avid timeline, you’ll need to go back and adjust the mix so that all the VO is on one and all the music/sfx is on the other, before laying off to tape.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Apparently a popular request. I built a burning fuse for a MI themed event as well. Built mine completely in AE.
Particuliar should create a good alpha channel. There should be a toggle on the comp window to toggle the visability of the alpha channel, and you can check your alpha (black areas are transparent, white are opaque, grey is semi-transparent)
If you render out to a format that supports an alpha channel (i.e. quicktime animation or AVI uncompressed) and still end up without transparency, you might need to use an “unmultiply black” effect on the layer to remove the black. Some effects like lens flare, will not output a usable alpha without it.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

I’ve seen similiar kinds of wierdness when mixing resolutions. You might have better luck if your titles were DV25 as well and your effect aperture set at DV25 as well.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

HD and BD are just starting to come out on the market, so not many people have them in their homes yet. I’m not sure if there are any affordable HDDVD or BD authoring packages out on the market yet and don’t think burners for either format are readily available either.
HD-DVD, MPEG-4, etc… are outside of the required specs for standard DVD. Needs to be DVD compliant MPEG-2 video. Since this was cut 24p, you might want to investigate creating a 24p DVD.
You may also want to see about outputing the film to HDcam, DVCPro HD, etc… tape to preserve the HD in case you want to master it to one of the HD disc formats in the future.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Couple of things to think about. Ram, currently WinXP 32bit can only address 4gb if mem, (only 2gb will be available to apps, 3gb if you tweak with some switches). That being said, 64bit OS’s are picking up popularity XP64 and soon to be Vista will be able to address a large amount of memory and be able to run 32bit apps (such as AE) in their own memory space with a whole 4gb chunk (if there is enough).
Intel’s processors can be 32bit or 64bit capable, you’ll need to find some specs on the processor to find out if it supports 64bit(EM64T). Rendering is a bunch of number crunching so a nice fast CPU will help quite a bit.
AE7 can now use some of the horsepower of the Graphics Processor Unit (GPU) on the graphics card and OpenGL to speed up effects and renders. You might check Abobe’s list of supported graphics cards before buying one:
https://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/opengl.html

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

SMPTE bars would be used for NTSC. They contain a little more information for calibratig luminance levels as well as color. 75% bars have color bars across the top that are at 75% intensity, including the white bar (which is white, just not 100% white). Along the bottom you’ll find a block that is 100% white, and then blocks that are at black 7.5%, then one that is blacker than black and one that it slightly above black level. Viewed on a waveform monitor where you can set the line that you are analyzing, moving it to a line in this bottom section then line up your Y and setup levels to fit.
Wikipedia has a good article on it.
I’ve also found that Steve Bayes book “The Avid Handbook: intermediate techniques, and strategies and survival information for Avid Editing systems” to be invaluable. He has a section on how to setup Express’ video input tool with color bars.
As for the countdown and leaders. I do mainly corporate and news video, so never have much need for them. You might check the goodies folder on the Avid disc, there maybe quicktimes of countdowns that you could add.

Erik