[Jeff Kay]

Please don’t use film grain, its incredibly overused. If you do use it, make it as subtle as possible. If you do use it, don’t use a free one, those are immediately recognizable, create one yourself (or at least modify an existing one such that it isn’t recognizable). But don’t use a film grain, as the end result typically doesn’t look retro, it looks like you are trying to look retro.

Wiggle should go a long way. I’d have to try it to know for sure the particulars. Try making the wiggle so subtle that you only notice it when you are specifically looking for it. Also try it with the effect posterized so that rather than it moving smoothly it jumps, not sure if you’d want to set it to check every frame, ~24 times a second (simulate film frame rate), or some other rate (posterizing might not work at all, just an idea).

Though I think the biggest thing is going to be your color. Everything from back then was done on film which is going to have differences compared to digital. I’m not specialized in coloring, so I have no specific advice, but I do feel that getting your footage to look more like film than digital will go farther than the wiggle.

I’d consider putting in a cigarette burn at the end of the sequence. That might be too tacky.

I think the difference between something looking retro and something trying to look retro are in subconscious effects, as in things that affect the viewer, but the viewer is not consciously aware of. Most all viewers won’t notice the wiggle, or the difference in film and digital, but will view it as “not quite right” when absent or apparent.

[Jeff Kay]

Depends on your time, budget, current resources, and skill/efficiency in sound design.

If you have access to Adobe Audition, then you should be able to download a decent library of canned effects from the adobe content download (it used to have the whole library built in and you could preview everything and then only download what you needed all inside the software; it was beautiful and yet they discontinued that [/rant]). Your teacher/university/classmates might have access to sound libraries. If you have a studio suitable for foley, you can record your own. Also the more you know about design and layering multiple effects to sound like one effect can greatly improve quality. In a pinch freesound.org is a decent resource, though I’m a little hesitant to recommend it. While everything is supposed to be creative commons licencing, there isn’t anything stopping someone from uploading someone else’s copyrighted work and you’d still be responsible if you used it.

Music is a whole mess. If you have a budget it gets much easier. GMP Music has tons of bed and background music at fairly reasonable rates. Other things such as Audio Juicer have options for quickly creating tracks at particular lengths as well as instrumentation used. However, both of those will require paying per track or per album/volume (there are several other professional sources, Pond5, AudioJungle, someone else feel free to chime in). For free music, the best I could say is ask local bands if you can use their recordings (original works, not covers). Maybe someone else has a better lead for free music, but I’ve found that trying to find free music takes more time than the cost of the licences from something like GMP.

Actually, if it doesn’t already exist, having a list of places with readily available assets for production, would be rather nice.

[Jeff Kay]

Might be late to the party, but I think the two things Michael pointed out are going to be by far the biggest time increases.

Export an intermediary from AE and then encode in Media Encoder (or preferred encoder program). I can safely say that creating the intermediary and then encoding is significantly faster than a direct export from AE (also you still have the intermediary if you need other encodes created). At this point I believe that there are only two different types to export from AE, either raw avi or PNG sequence. This is basically how I export from AVID, except its a DNxHD transcode rather than raw.

Absolutely check for “smart objects” in the PSD’s, those can behave awfully funky with certain commands/use (certain things can’t be done directly with smart objects). AE handles rasterized layers far better and its possible that AE is converting the smart objects every frame. If you aren’t using the individual layers in AE, then you could get rid of those as well. Should be able to just save over the existing PSD files (manually or batch), then in AE select all of the PSD files and hit “reload”. That should work, though if anything happens, just close AE and replace the newly saved files with the originals and it will revert. If you don’t like the idea of messing around with the linked media itself, then you could always just re-import all of the PSD’s as footage rather than layered PSD (or import the modified PSD’s) and then replace each in your comp.

Do those two things and the render time should be cut significantly.

[Jeff Kay]

That is going to depend entirely upon the template. Some templates can make changes to timing very easily, while others are going to require more changes which may involve every layer.

I can’t say without having the template in front of me, but this should work. Grab every layer (make sure no layers are hidden by being ‘shy’) and move them all to the right about 30 seconds or so to give you some handle (I hate how so many templates don’t give handle). This may mean that you need to increase your comp duration.

Grab and drag the left of the insignia1 layer. Then grab both of the in-point keyframes to move them to the desired length. This *should* work, though can’t really tell without looking at the actual project. Typically that’s how it goes with the AE templates, if you want to change the timing of something, you have to move everything else otherwise the rest of the comp won’t line up. Some templates can make timing changes easy, but I’ve found those to be in the minority.

[Jeff Kay]

Definitely agree about the RAM. There is just no such thing as too much RAM for AE. I’ve worked with 6 and 8 GB over the last couple of years and its doable, but I would often have to make custom viewing resolutions of 1/8 or lower as well as having to export instead of RAM preview as the RAM preview couldn’t handle much more than a few seconds for large HD projects.

I can’t remember offhand, but I do recall seeing notes where some of the professional softwares don’t play well with any Windows edition other than professional.

Though I too would recommend a backup or full reinstall. Its not that the slowdown couldn’t be fixed, its that almost certainly it would be faster to reinstall than it would be to diagnose and correct whatever issue there is.

[Jeff Kay]

I guess that can work. Though I was hoping there was some sort of toggle or modifier key that would let me make that decision on a clip by clip basis rather than a setting.

[Jeff Kay]

[Oliver Peters] “If you haven’t bought it yet, the best way is to download the trial, go through some of the Ripple tutorials and see for yourself. Test it with a “real”, smaller project (not just junk media) and see for yourself how it works. I think it becomes clearer that way. It’s enough different to be very confusing when dealing in the abstract.”

This is very true. I haven’t specifically stated it, but I currently only have a PC infrastructure, so a simple trial isn’t nearly as simple in my instance. This is reason behind the thread as I even if I do not personally have access to it, I would like to be more familiar with how FCX works and what it can offer.

[Jeff Kay]

[Oliver Peters] “Yes, in concept. Basically you have two types of data files – projects (edited sequences) and events (source media metadata). Edits can also be stored in events if you use compound clips. The folder structure is a bit more visible than in Avid, but the design concept is similar.”

I really need it to hold more than just edits. It also needs to hold effects (basically anything that would end up in an Avid bin, such as a title template, CC effect, etc), or is all of that included when you say edit?

My fear is that the FCX “project” is one file. Each show I do is one Avid project that can span multiple seasons and transferring an entire project of that size becomes cumbersome to say the least. What I need is the ability to send piecemeal individual elements (sequences, clips with metadata, effects, CC, titles, transistions, audio effects) which is easily done with Avid bins.

Saying the folder structure is more visible than in Avid is a bit confusing to me. The Avid projects folder has a folder for each of my projects and inside is the same exact folder/bin structure that exists inside of Avid. I can make changes to this structure inside of Avid or even just in the base OS. I’m not really sure how it could be ‘more’ visible.

[Jeff Kay]

Didn’t realize that was a limitation of FCP.

I haven’t touched Premiere’s multicam since 5.5. It didn’t seem to have any restrictions over multicamming of clips. Of course the 5.5 version of Premiere’s multicam was awful. Too difficult and time consuming to set up and manipulate, while having significant limitations (maximum 4 angles, superfluous audio cuts, no commit edits, no method of cross NLE export), but multiformat was not one of those issues.

I’m working with some Avid multicam clips that are in mixed format right at this moment. It most certainly will handle mixed codecs. You can’t have a multicam with mixed framerate/resolution, but that isn’t specifically a limitation of the multicam. An Avid project won’t let you have media that is in different framerate/resolution than the settings of the project (you can AMA link footage with different resolution/framerate and multicam, but you shouldn’t AMA link footage different from project settings). This is a common criticism of Avid, but after having worked in a few highly mixed footage environments, I’m most likely going to transcode everything to the same standard regardless of the NLEs ability to work mixed.

[Jeff Kay]

[Oliver Peters] “If this is how you are sharing elements in Avid (and not using Unity/ISIS/Interplay), then you can use FCP X in a very similar manner. There are a number of approaches and some of this depends on the type of SAN you have. Best approach is to keep Projects/Events on the local drives, with media on a SAN linked to the Events. This way it’s easy to send an Event or Project to another editor and both work simultaneously with common media.”

I currently work exclusively with independents or freelancers. We aren’t in physical proximity to have any type of network. I’m just wary of having to send/receive projects in the old FCP/Premiere format where the project has to be sent in its entirety and simultaneous changes from two different people are a pain to integrate. From what you said, I am gathering that events work in a similar manner to Avid’s .avb bins.

[Oliver Peters] “Nearly all of the commands are mappable, so you can work almost entirely from the keyboard, once you map it the way you want and get used to where those are. Obviously some functions are different, so some retraining of muscle memory will need to happen.”

Good to hear. I have a highly customized set of keyboard shortcuts, more than half of my keyboard has been remapped and I use a very similar set of customizations for every NLE. I do realize that many people are mouse driven in their work, but that is not how I like to do it. There is a bit of a disconnect when every feature is demonstrated in a mouse driven fashion.