[Filip Vandueren]

You get the error because you also applied the expr. to layer N

[Filip Vandueren]

There’s no one-on-one comparison table at adobe.com, but there are two pdf-files on the site.

Also, from the online documentation:

What you get with the Professional edition The Professional Edition of After Effects includes all of the effects available in the Standard Edition, as well as the following effects: Adjust Color Stabilizer 3D Channel 3D Channel Extract, Depth Matte, Depth of Field, Fog 3D, and ID Matte Audio Flange & Chorus, High-Low Pass, Modulator, Parametric EQ, Reverb, and Tone Channel Alpha Levels Distort Bezier Warp, Bulge, Corner Pin, Displacement Map, Mesh Warp, Optics Compensation, and Reshape Keying Color Difference Key, Difference Matte, Extract, Inner/Outer Key, Linear Color Key, and Spill Suppressor Matte Tools Matte Choker and Simple Choker Noise Fractal Noise Paint Vector Paint Render Advanced Lightning Simulation Particle Playground Stylize Glow and Scatter Time Time Displacement

If you take a look at the TOC you’ll see (Pro Only) appear next to Motion Tracking, so that’s about it.

[Filip Vandueren]

That doesn’t work with 3D layers, sadly.

[Filip Vandueren]

Do as Barend said in his first post.
effectively you’re scaling the video in height untill the black ‘falls off the top and bottom edges of the screen’.

When you create your DVD indicate to the authoring program that the rendered movie is “anamorph”.

A DVD-player hooked up to a 4:3 TV-set will atomatically add black bars.
One hooked up to a 16:9 will display at full resolution.

You’ll loose a little bit of clarity because of the initial scaling, so that’s the downside of not starting from anamorph footage.

[Filip Vandueren]

Also, what connectors are used to get it on the screen. And if it’s a DVD, how good was the mpeg encoding.

Anyway lik Barend said, if we do the math:

a 50 inch screen is prob. about 43×24 inch that gives you about 16dpi horizontal and 20dpi vertical.

By no means razorsharp.

Add to that the inherent fuzziness of those bigscreen-plasmas.

If it’s for a presentation you should think about HD or data-projection if you really need a clean look.

[Filip Vandueren]

Don’t forget that having sound in the Flash adds a lot to the filesize, especially for longer anims.
So try as low a bitrate as you can afford (go mono if that helps.)

I get the best results using Illustrator Layers, It depends on their complexity if you need the “flatten Illustrator layers” option or not, try both options to see if there are any flaws.
Also start out using the ‘ignore unsupported features” and see if that wroks for you.

If you don’t use any plugins, 3d etc. you should be fine.

However, if your anim is very complex with a lot of layers, parenting, motionscripts etc.
Forget about trying to import it into Flash, it will just freeze or crash.
I tried with this anim to no avail, I left it spinnig the beachball al night, but nothing.

https://www.uilenspiegel.nu/flash/vlo.html still 697 Kb But there’s no way I could have done that in Flash in just a few hours.

[Filip Vandueren]

should the bars actually be 3d or are they flat layers in a 3d environment ?

look into “Profound Effects Useful Assistants” to combine multiple flat layers into a box.

I would use solid-layers in 3D and parent them to a 3D null-layer, then animate the scale of the null in one direction.

[Filip Vandueren]

should the bars actually be 3d or are they flat layers in a 3d environment ?

look into “Profound Effects Useful Assistants” to combine multiple flat layers into a box.

I would use solid-layers in 3D and parent them to a 3D null-layer, then animate the scale of the null in one direction.

[Filip Vandueren]

Here’s one possible recipe:

• try precomposing your masked animation,
• speed up the layer 200% so you have one mask-keyframe per frame.
• render that comp with alpha to a movie
• import the movie and use it as an aplha-trackmatte on the original non-masked layer,
• stretch the alpha-movie 200% slower and enable frameblending.

Here’s another:

• pre-compose the masked animation
• duplicate the layer and shift all the mask-keyframes one frame to the right
• set both layers to opacity 50% and alpha-add mode
• use that pre-comp as an alpha-tracmatte to the original footage.

[Filip Vandueren]

You should use Photoshop without any Color Management.
Even if a file doen’t have profile assigned, it’s possible that Photoshop still alters the way the file is viewed on your monitor.

In Photoshop open the Color Settings window (Command-Shift-K or Ctrl-Shift-K for PC)
Select Color Management Off
Working Space RGB should be set to Monitor RGB

There’s some discussion about After Effects (non-existing) Color Management options in Chris&Trish Meyers’ book:
“Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects: Volume 2: Advanced Techniques”

They offer a plugin on the cd that can do Profile conversions inside After Effects: