[Filip Vandueren]

I have the same problem.

Do you have a US keyboard ? Mine is Belgian/French layout.

[Filip Vandueren]

I don’t know the tutorial, but I can imagine the gist of it…

if you set your fractal noise’s contrast to 0 (you should see a uniform grey solid), do you still see the seams ?

The seams are probably there because either the cards are not all exactly scaled to 1, or they are not _exactly_ in the same Z-position, I imagine that would be caused by the fractal.

Some dirty tricks that might work:

precompose the cards-layer (and any layer it needs to reference), make sure it’s on a transparant background (so no black solid behind it)
Then add an adjustment-layer with levels and adjust the _alpha_levels so those semi-transparant edges dissappear. This can do miracles, but you might use anti-aliasing if you overdo it.

Another approach might be to use a minimax on the alpha only.

[Filip Vandueren]

Hi Justin,

double-check if the X and Y size are exactly set to 1 (eg. 0.996 would read 1 in the interface because of rounding error, but you would see the lines)

If you’re using asource+multiplier to animate the scales, make sure they contain absolute black or white.

What Camera settings are you using ? Perhaps a very extreme Fisheye could also cause this.

[Filip Vandueren]

the Mac os (both 9 and X) have a setting called: “Stationary Pad”: it’s under the general settings when you hit Command-I or Get info in the finder.

What this does it that when you double-click this file, you won’t open the file, but an “untitled” or “_copy” version of it, so you can’t accidentally save over the original, it’s always a copy.

I’m sure Windows should have something similar hidden somewhere buried in a tab.

[Filip Vandueren]

If your Avid is compressing agressively like the DV codec, any harsh colourcontrast would become blocky, red always seems to be one of the most obvious victims.

Check the colourspace for the codec, if it says something like 4:2:2, you’re out of luck short of blurring the chroma or using another codec.

[Filip Vandueren]

Square vs. Anamorph should only affect the horizontal scaling, not a problem with a vertical scroll.

Q: Did you render the animation out without using Fields ?

Using Fields, it will look crappy on the monitor, but much smoother on a video. (if you choose the correct field-order !)
If you’re not outputting to film or the web (other media than TV or DVD), absolutely render with fields.

I always add a gaussian or fast blur of less than a pixel (0.25 – 0.5) to any text layer.

Also, many people add an expression to the position after setting the keyframes so the text will always fall exactly on a pixel value and no differences in anti-aliasing of text occur from frame to frame.

the expresssion is:

[value[0], Math.floor(value[1]}]

Sometimes this gives better results:

[value[0], Math.floor(value[1]}] + [0,0.5]

do some short test-renders with each of these tips, and decide what works best for you.

[Filip Vandueren]

Square vs. Anamorph should only affect the horizontal scaling, not a problem with a vertical scroll.

Q: Did you render the animation out without using Fields ?

Using Fields, it will look crappy on the monitor, but much smoother on a video. (if you choose the correct field-order !)
If you’re not outputting to film or the web (other media than TV or DVD), absolutely render with fields.

I always add a gaussian or fast blur of less than a pixel (0.25 – 0.5) to any text layer.

Also, many people add an expression to the position after setting the keyframes so the text will always fall exactly on a pixel value and no differences in anti-aliasing of text occur from frame to frame.

the expresssion is:

[value[0], Math.floor(value[1]}]

Sometimes this gives better results:

[value[0], Math.floor(value[1]}] + [0,0.5]

do some short test-renders with each of these tips, and decide what works best for you.

[Filip Vandueren]

It’s been a long while since I’ve worked in director, but perhaps using a quicktime, or mpeg or even a Flash flv would give you the best performance.
Unless you need absolute colourprecision (codec colour drift) or need to reuse elements of the intro seamlessly in your interface, I’d think about doing true “video”

[Filip Vandueren]

I was preparing a whole post about how to script this, but scrap that:

do it by hand: Random cuts have the tendency to not look random enough, they look just like bad cutting, I doubt you’d be satisfied by the result.

[Filip Vandueren]

I was preparing a whole post about how to script this, but scrap that:

do it by hand: Random cuts have the tendency to not look random enough, they look just like bad cutting, I doubt you’d be satisfied by the result.