[Jeff Kay]

Its fairly standard for the inside prong of USB3 connectors to be blue (rather than the black of USB1/2), much like the top of the USB cord has the little USB icon on it. Though I can’t say for certain that every hardware manufacturer follows this (the USB cord for one of my LaCie drives is the opposite, so it always throws me for a loop).

Also the MC7 handles AMA better than MC6. Should have mentioned that earlier. I don’t normally get excited for new versions of software, but I’ve been particularly happy with MC7. Though don’t feel bound to AMA for editing and don’t hesitate to AMA link then consolidate/transcode if needbe. AMA still handles different formats of footage very differently, XDCAM is very smooth, H264 is just not, and most everything else falls somewhere in-between. If your source footage isn’t something MC handles well, don’t try to force an AMA workflow (XDCAM, H264, and NDxHD comprise 99% of my footage, not enough experience to talk about other formats).

[Jeff Kay]

Is the Link Selection Toggle just not working? Alternatively could locking tracks solve this?

I also found this a bit odd at first (came from Premiere/FCP background), but I now actually prefer none of my video and audio to be linked.

[Jeff Kay]

I have never gotten the “relink” feature to work with AMA (or anything else for that matter).

The simple work around that Glenn mentioned is to AMA link the footage as if it were the first time. Make a new bin and then AMA link to the footage. The existing clips should just pop back online and afterwards you can safely delete the bin you just created and/or the clips inside.

Two notes. First, check your AMA settings (settings>AMA>Volume Mounting>When mounting previously mounted volumes…) as depending on what is set, it can overwrite any metadata that isn’t present on the media files themselves (It can also have different sets of metadata on the sets of clips and can have a hard time deciding what it wants if both clip bins are open). Second, a particular AMA volume can only be linked once per MC session. Not really sure why this is the case, as restarting MC resets this.

[Jeff Kay]

I’ve edited for about a year on a laptop with USB3 media drives with no noticeable issues, both imported DNxHD and AMA linked media. I’ve done it with many different brands, models, and qualities of USB3 drives and never had an issue except when it was a bad drive.

Don’t use USB2 for editing, ever. I’m actually rather skeptical that you have been using USB2. USB2 uses a burst transfer (can’t give a full technical explanation) that runs a high risk of bricking the drive. Well, it won’t destroy the drive, but it will cause all of the data to become unreadable and require that the drive be reformated, which of course wipes everything. I’ve experimented with this and it really doesn’t take all that much to do so.

In regards to AMA linking, I’ve noticed that the computer’s specs affect how AMA linked media handles not the speed of the drive’s connection. The same drive used with my laptop is running AMA linked H264 rather smoothly (I know AMA linked H264), when attempting to do so was painful on the laptop.

[Jeff Kay]

Filmed dancers in the location without Usher with cameras overcranked. Filmed Usher on a green screen. Keyed out usher and composited the two.

[Jeff Kay]

I’d kick the production team in the rear for that. Honestly I’d tell them that it would be faster and cheaper to reshoot with practicals than to do this in AE.

With what you have about the best is to use some form of warping alongside 3D movement/rotation to match the picture. There are several effects, but puppet pinning would be my first thought. Going to be a whole lot of tedious keyframing. I hope the throat cut you have is super high resolution (actually see if its possible to get a still/video of the actor with a practical, it should mesh far better).

[Jeff Kay]

Before seeing the example my initial thought was that the effect was something created during production rather than something in post and watching the video confirms that. In this case the effect was created by an in-game engine (or an actual 3D modeling software).

Now the same process can be used in AE with 3D layers and camera movement, but this means that you will have to construct a 3D environment within AE. However this also means that you will need to create depth. At a minimum a background and the characters would have to be separate objects, but as AE is not true 3D everything will still look flat (i.e. you won’t get the change in depth of field or change in perception of the rifle barrel). I can think of a whole bunch of tricks and tweaks that could make it look better, but I hardly believe they are worth mentioning as it will take up far more time than simply filming it correctly in the first place and will still look flat.

For something like in the Matrix where the action slows down and the camera pans around what is going on, this was also an effect created during production. In this movie’s case, the action was filmed with multiple, multiple cameras all being overcranked. The “pan” in the movie is actually an illusion created by jump cutting across all of the cameras along the “path”.

Here is a video from the making-of for that shot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPNBdDNZbYk

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[Jeff Kay]

Good to hear. That’s what I thought was the case, but after mistakingly increasing the number of saves in the attic and the massive slowdown it later caused, I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t something ugly that was developing.

I’ve noticed the thing with the sequences before, but hasn’t been an issue with the normal workflow and organization (part of the reason I have as many bins as I currently do).

[Jeff Kay]

Like Dave said. Make sure the settings on “output module” Channels:RNG+Alpha Color:Straight(unmatted)

Export as RAW AVI. Take that intermediary and import it in AVID with appropriate alpha settings (I’m assuming that is its final destination). Its also faster to do it this way than trying to export as DNxHD from AE.

[Jeff Kay]

EDIT: ugh I used the wrong formatting for the post and it lost half the post

My syntax is off, but Try

create an expression slider for how often it occurs (I’ll call it FXTime)
maybe create a second slider for frame offset (FXoffset) if you want to give control to them being able start on the first frame in a second or on a later frame (set boundaries from 0 to framerate-1)

Opacity
if math.floor[(current frame # + FXoffset) / (current framerate)*FXTime]= [(current frame # + FXoffset) / ((current framerate)*FXTime] then 100
else 0

Might want to put in functions to make FXoffset a whole number and/or having “(current framerate)*FXTime” always return a whole number. This should set the opacity to 100 for the single frame where “(current framerate)*FXTime” is a whole number which will happen every FXTime seconds.

Its not exactly elegant, but it should work.