[Filip Vandueren]

Hi,

if you don’t have a background image, your swf will be transparant and the background-color will be set to the same value as AE’s background.

However if you want semi-transparant art-work in Vector-format, I believe it is not possible.
pacity-values do get exported correctly, but if you have for example an illustrator layer of glasses where the glas is 20% transparant and the frame is opaque, then on exporting, the glas will also be opaque.

This is not supported in Flash either (atleast I think so) because when you import An illustrator file in Flash, the samething happens.

[Filip Vandueren]

It looks like a particle system, like in Apple’s Motion, but I think you’d be better of faking it with animating noise:
Basically it is “Fractal Noise”-effect, you can animate a paramter called evolution that makes the noise animate like that.
There are a number of presets for different noise-types, check them out to see which one is best for you.
Then add a “colorama”-effect to tint the greyscale noise to a nice color-palette. (also comes with some built-in colors like deepsea etc.)

[Filip Vandueren]

on Mac os X , in the preferences window, you can choose what file-format to use when importing files (mp3, aac, wav, aiff).

If you set this to aiff, the menu-option wil have changed to “convert to aiff”

Maybe it’s the same on Win ?

[Filip Vandueren]

If I understand correctly,

you mean that if you blur a layer, then apply an alpha track matte to it, the matte may do a sharp cutout instead of a blurred one ?

You can use an adjustment layer on top of the two layers, but it will of course blur every layer underneath it.

You can also apply a second blur to the trackmatte, but that adds to your rendertime, especially with gaussian blur.

IMHO Pre-composing would be the way to go.

Either precompose and then apply a blur to the comp, or precompose with the adjustment layer in the precomp

[Filip Vandueren]

Think ahead though !
If your end-product is going to be fields-based, render in fields and interpret correctly.
If the strokes-anim is then subsequently going to be rotated, moved, scaled etc. in your other comp then the quality will be slightly worse if you stick with the already rendered strokes.

I’d look into Proxy’s, that way you can have the speed benefit will working and testrendering, but still render the long painful, but possibly higher quality strokes on final render.

[Filip Vandueren]

Apple’s wedding themes in iDVD & DSP are nice and sappy 😉

[Filip Vandueren]

The only way to do it is using a script in AE 6.5

The program itself does not offer this functionality. (it only does it the first time as you mentioned)

Maybe there’s already a script to do this on aenhancers.com ?

[Filip Vandueren]

• Make sure your PAL footage is interpreted with the right Pixel aspect ratio.
  A 720*576 file can be either D1/DV Pal or D1/DV Pal Widescreen
• Create a new composition with the NTSC DV preset, again this can also be NSTC DV widescreen
• Drop your footage in the comp and then use one of these keystrokes:
  Command-Alt-Shift-G -> this will make the video as high as the comp (there may be a few black pixels left & right)
  or
  Command-Alt-Shift-H -> this will make the video as wide as the comp (a few pixels up and down are lost)
  BTW: thats control, not command if you’re on PC

There is also the issue of frame-rate, you’re going from a 25 to 29.97 fps standard.

If you can get away with a slight-speedchange, I would interpret the footage as 24 fps, set the comp to 24 fps and then render using pulldown.
There are several other ways, try doing a search on NTSC PAL conversion

[Filip Vandueren]

When you use blur and you have a bright head in front of a dark background, the dark starts to creep into the edges the more you blur.
Also the color and contrast fade away (obviously) on higher settings
Median always seemed to me like a blur that’s trying to ‘hold on to edges’, in this case it gives a nicer skintone, then the grey gaussian-blur.
Might work a charm for those blemishes too, especially at the edge of a face.

-off-topic
(Joey’s girlfriend moves to Washington dc)
Joey: Nonono, I’m in a very delicate place right now, no being sad, okay, I need you to say something to cheer me up
Alex: Okay, remember that video of that monkey riding the dog

[Filip Vandueren]

That’s why in the first (oldest) Star Wars movie, they had plastic sabers with covered scotchlight, they tried to make them so bright that their colors would not change.
Alas, it didn’t work :-/

Film with a very high shutter speed to avoid motion blur, but you’ll need oodles of light to compensate. Besides, the flickery motion of your characters may not be the effect you want.

Oh yeah,

here’s another (Theoretical) non-rotoscoping way: get two very bright marks at the start and end of your sword, motion-track them and apply the dots to start endpoint of a beam filter.