[Howard Zryb]

I am guessing that since the new features available in CS4 are not compatible with CS3, you can’t open a CS4 project in CS3.

What would be nice, however, is that a project would be able to open, and would give you placeholders or warnings about missing features or effects used. This way, if there is nothing CS4ish in your project, it could open in CS3 and work correctly.

I know that filters behave this way; you’ll get a proxy with the missing filter info.

It’s forcing me to shell out another 2 grand to upgrade, even though there are no must have features for me in the Photoshop, Illustrator or After Effects upgrades. Some nice twesks, yes, but nothing that I can’t live without.

WHITE ROOM PRODUCTIONS, INC.
Broadcast Design and Animation
(516) 546 2098

[Howard Zryb]

Not sure what piece of equipment does BBC’s graphics, but I can tell you from experience the major pieces of equipment that is used in the U.S. (’cause that’s my buisness!)

The Chyron Duet and Avid Deko are two of the character generators that handle a lot of the sports graphics production here. It seems that Chyron has made more inroads (or Avid has faltered, depending on your perspective) in the last year or so. Both devices basically do the same thing – allow all types of graphics to be displayed and updated and edited quickly and in real time. Clips & audio can be part of the mix, and animation can be created in the box (not necessarily relying on After Effects for the animation, although AE will probably be used to create the elements. The strength of these 2 devices are flexibility and relative ease of use. Weaknesses include 3-D capabilities.

VizRT is used by CBS, ESPN and NFL Network for its graphics…it is not a character generator, per se, but functions as one in these networks scheme of things. You cannot easily change a template on the Viz (unless you are capable or authoring and scripting the scenes). It has a much, much higher learning curve than the Deko or Duet to program successully (although playing stuff back on the Viz is rather easy, since you can’t do much with it, other than play it out, and play it off the screen). In other words, if it aint in the template, it aint. One of the strengths of the Viz box is its live 3-D rendering capabilities. One of its’ weaknesses is flexibility.

WHITE ROOM PRODUCTIONS, INC.
Broadcast Design and Animation
(516) 546 2098

[Howard Zryb]

I have a project set up for just this purpose… I do it a lot… I render the HD clip at whatever the full resolution of the particular project is (720p or 1080) and import the clip. I have a couple of comps set up that are scaled to the appropriate sizes (SD 720, SD anamorphic, etc)

The original footage goes in the first comp, and I can automatically render out in any flavor of output that I need.