[Filip Vandueren]

Sorry, you can’t set this as a preference.

[Filip Vandueren]

Does it occur with all fonts, or are you only using 1 particular typeface ?

If you create, say a solid that’s 4 pixels wide, 200 high and rotate it 45

[Filip Vandueren]

Not to state the obvious, but the downloaded file would be a “Stuffed”-file, you have to unpack it using Stuffit Expander,
It should become a folder with dozens of AE-plugins: that folder should go into your plug-in folder, not the .sit file.

Is that the problem ?
If not, I’m not sure what’s wrong.

[Filip Vandueren]

As good as I can see, it looks as though it was just a red tunnel in the 3D soft, with white highlights allready in place.

Then they used either luminosity or blue or green, with a treshold on the shine.
Don’t use red, because it will be too sensitive:
there’s red information all over the place, but there’s only blue in the pixels that are very white (white= r+g+b, you know)

Then I think they used add or screen, with a slighly yellowish color

The alpha and alpha edges will not be very usefull here, they’re more suited for text-effects and such

[Filip Vandueren]

In the fooatge window, using “Page Down” and “Page Up” will go through your footage 1 field at atime.

Not so in the comp-window though.

[Filip Vandueren]

If you’re starting out with pixel-text out of Photoshop (not vector in AE) and you have very slow sub-pixel movement,
then yes, IMO you would have some more definition that way.

but it would be best to (vertical) Blur it some more after scaling down anyway.

To get good titles in the DV-codec, try to avoid colours alltogether: Black and white (but not 100% white) will work best because of the way the colour is encoded in DV at half resolution.

All the other usual caveats apply: not too small, no serif-fonts, render in fields if there’s a lot of motion.

check out this tutorial too:

https://www.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/page_wrapper.cgi?page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/hodgetts_philip/titles/index.html&forumid=2

[Filip Vandueren]

ATM is not available for osX AFAIK, and the OS should handle font-smoothing for you.
Besides if it was a font-problem; it would look crappy on the monitor too, not just on NTSC.

How are you previewing to NTSC ? Through a DV camera or through some sort of BreakOut Box.

I remember my Matrox rtMac BoB only used to give half-res no matter what settings I used.

[Filip Vandueren]

There’s a thread called “old television / vhs dubbed effect”, like 10 posts earlier.
Please do a search before you ask a question. 8-/

Anyhow
Tinderbox 3 is recommended there and in other posts:
https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/pkg_plugins.aspx?ui=5DD2A940-1D4B-4884-AE22-3FCC03D7530A

But do a search for “old tv”, “bad tv”, “tv look” etc.
and you may find some others.

[Filip Vandueren]

CInema 4D will import Quicktime movies for use as a texture on an object or as a background layer fro compositing.
There is no chroma-keying in C4D (for removing the green)

So maybe import video in C4D for reference on where to position your 3D elements, and for adjusting your virtual camera & perspective, but render without the video and with alpha.
Then bring the rendered files into After Effects for compositing and greenscreen.

I remember there’s also a videotutorial disk for sale at DV-garage that not only explains the Lightsabers but also how to use greenscreen and a virtual set created in a 3D program.

Sounds like what you’re going for, no?

Here are some examples tutorial movies from that CD:

https://dvgarage.com/prod/prod.php?prod=ctk&sub=samples

[Filip Vandueren]

do a search for “lightsaber” for all active posts,

there’s a great thread with links for tutorials etc.