Erik Waluska
Forum Replies Created
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Quicktime Pro ($20 for the key from apple) can flip video without re-compressing. Open the movie in QT Pro and go to Window > Show Movie Properties then click on the Video Track and then select the Visual Settings tab, you will see the options to Flip/Rotate. Then just go to File > Save As… and be sure the “Save as a self-contained movie” option is selected.
There may be some file types that will require re-compressing, I’m not sure about that, but the ones I’ve tried do not seem to re-compress or lose any quality. You can check the file size and data rate in Window > Show Movie Inspector and compare the before and after versions to see if there’s any change that would indicate re-compression. In my experience, the new file will generally be just a tiny bit larger, I assume this is just the extra data that Quicktime saves with the file telling it to flip the video. But the format and data rate should be identical to the original.
Quicktime Pro is very useful but I don’t think many people even know what it can do. I use it all the time for taking a huge capture files and trimming all of the useless stuff out of them and saving them as much smaller files with only the parts I need and without a loss in quality — and fast! It uses the same JKL shuttle system as most editing apps as well as the standard shortcuts for in and out points, cutting, pasting, etc.
-E
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Hi Riccardo, Unfortunately, I don’t know of any settings that will make AE remember the render location on a per-project basis. I also switch between multiple projects frequently so eventually I found a way to maintain my sanity by just creating on master folder called “RENDERS” that is the destination for all of my project renders. I keep it on the desktop but you could put it anywhere that make sense for you and your workflow. It works great for me, I almost never have to change the render path now.
-E
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And be sure to check the “Prevent DLL Address Space Fragmentation” checkbox.
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Carl Larsen did a couple of really good tutorials on this subject that might be just what you’re looking for:
Child Tracking 1
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/larsen_carl/child_tracking.phpChild Tracking 2
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/larsen_carl/child_tracking2.php -
That link just goes back to this post – no movie.
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The settings look correct to me.
Do you see the black line when you open the movie in quicktime player? If not, then it’s probably something with the settings in premiere and not AE. In that case, you may have better luck finding help in the premiere forum.
Sorry I couldn’t be more help.
-E
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Pretty cool! It’s a good idea for a short and I liked the exploding heads effects and the bugs were pretty good too. I didn’t care for the opening and closing credit sequences though, they seemed like they were from a different movie. I guess you were going for a campy feel but it just felt disconnected from the movie to me.
I liked the idea of the bugs POV shots with the compound lens effect, but the grid effect looked a little rough. The lenses might look better if they were more organic shaped, rather than sharp angles. Maybe blur the grid a little and apply a glow or something so that you still have the color between the lenses but it matches the look of the bugs and seems more organic and alive. I’m assuming of course that these bugs are alive and not machines, is that right?
The video quality of the bugs POV shots looked pretty rough too. Was that intentional? If the video quality is good enough maybe try reducing the number of lenses to like three or so and making the video size larger because I think it’s too small and hard to see the video as it is now. One big lens in the middle with just the edges of the surrounding lenses showing might look cool too. Maybe you could also try offsetting the image in each lens so it appears they are facing at slightly different angles. A little stronger bulge effect with heavy distortion around the edges of the lenses might look cool.
The opening confused me a little too when the bugs came out of the thing that had “Space Bugs” on it. What was that? I assume you were trying to combine the main title with the mother ship, which is clever, but I would have rather seen the title first and then transition to a realistic mother ship (or mother bug) without the title on it. Just my opinion.
Overall, I think it’s a great idea and fun to watch.
-E
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Also enable the disk cache if you haven’t already done so. Also, try to quit and restart AE so it flushes the memory (edit>purge all doesn’t always do the trick).
When the render fails, does it fail in the same place every time? If so, check the timeline and see what’s going on at that point where the render fails. Is that where a layer starts or an effect kicks in? Is there a large image or multiple large images that start in that spot? Just look for things like that and try to narrow it down. Try turning off layers you suspect might be causing the problem and see if it will render. If that works then maybe you can pre-render those layers by themselves.
-E
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Do you see the black line when you open the movie in quicktime player? If not, then it’s probably something with the settings in premiere. Check that you are using 720×480 DV and not 720×486 D1 in premiere. As far as the squishing in AE try clicking on the “toggle pixel aspect ratio correction” button in the composition window.
-E
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If you’re on CS3 or CS4 first be sure your composition is set to HDTV 1920×1080 29.97fps by selecting the “HDTV 1080 29.97” preset in the Composition Settings.
Then for the render open the Output Module settings and choose the “MPEG2 Blu-ray” preset. It will render out 4 files: the movie, the audio and two other files you probably won’t need. If you just need the video then you can delete the other files including the audio.
I’m not familiar with Dreamscapes but if it doesn’t like the MPEG Blu-ray file then you may have to change the extension to .mpg instead of the default .m2v. Our broadcast server likes the files, just not the .m2v extension, so we always change it to .mpg and it works fine.
HTH
-E