[Jan Sherlink]

first, work uncompressed !

Second, the problem will stay, no matter what you’ll do.
If you want a top-quality SD-movie, you’ll have to make it in SD.

Something similar;
Let’s say you have a nice HD-comp and use 4 pixels anti-aliasing (as in 3D apps) you’ll have a nice sharp anti-aliased image. When you scale this down to SD (/5) the benefits of anti-aliasing will disappear and you’ll end up with a “too sharp aliased image”
When you start working in SD, your anti-aliasing will be, and will stay 4 pixels. So Image Quality will be better than the HD-scale-down.

There’s probably some nice converting software somewhere, with fancy algorithms to make high quality conversions, but it will cost you.

AE’s downscaling even with PreserveEdges enabled with interlaced footage works ok but is far from perfect.
Maybe a selectable scaling algorithm like in Photoshop would be the answer but until then, using the 1 pixel blur when scaling down, is what I use the most too.

I’m still spending too much nights on doing a perfect downscale 🙂

cya,

Jan

[Jan Sherlink]

take a look at your shortcuts file;
you can bind keyboard-shortcuts to 20 scripts

“ExecuteScriptMenuItem01” = “()”

cya,

Jan

[Jan Sherlink]

The only thing “new” i can think of;
if you hold your mouse over a precomp in your timeline end press shift you’ll see a flowchart-overlay.

cya,

Jan

[Jan Sherlink]

Since the file is a wmv you’ll need Windows Media Player or Flip-4-Mac for quicktime.
Flip4Mac should do fine !

cya,

Jan

[Jan Sherlink]

You can also use Shape Layers.
Draw your line-shape with 90 degree angles,
Add: Rounded Corners
Add: Trim Paths

That saves a lot of handles and control points !

cya,

Jan

[Jan Sherlink]

[Mark Walczak] “but fear the color bar errors”

The last CS3 update fixed that with me.
installed it ?

cya,

Jan

[Jan Sherlink]

Found your post while i was looking for a “force render” button in Premiere too.
the only thing that works for me is dropping an effect on the Image Sequence (like crop) but without changing the values, so there’s nothing to crop.
And there’s the red line, waiting to be rendered 😉

they should make a force-render-button !!

cya,

Jan

[Jan Sherlink]

just to make sure…

uncheck the “Remove field jitter when video is paused”
if it’s checked, the BM-card will deinterlace the AE signal,
even if it’s proressive.

Are your movies ok when you render them and play them in FCP ?

cya,

Jan

[Jan Sherlink]

With The BM intensity there’s a setting in the card’s control panel.
“Remove field jitter when video is paused”
that will probably do the trick with the HD Extreme too.

cya,

Jan

[Jan Sherlink]

It doesn’t look like they used a particle system for the text,
just place all text in your 3D space,
create a lot of elements that go with your text to get that depth of field.
You can use particles to create spots and dust in your screne.

cya,

Jan