[Jerome Thelia]

Thanks for the suggestions. I’m doing exactly that: flat at first, adjust the plasma, then tweak the HD Link. The plasma doesn’t take HD SDI without the addition of the very expensive add-on board, so the HD Link converts from SDI to HDMI. But it seems that without the HD Link there’s no way to get the internal plasma adjustments to get even close to the right black level. What’s also troubling is that bars look wrong when the CRT matches. When I set up to bars the image is way too green. So I’m wondering if others are just eyeballing the plasma adjustments, using color calibration software, or setting up successfully to bars? Thanks- Jerome

[Jerome Thelia]

coincidentally, I’m working on a similar same problem. I need to get a camera move from AE into Lightwave, render a 3D environment, then get it back into AE for final compositing. The advice above makes a lot of sense. In addition, I’m rendering out a grid out of AE, tracking it in PFtrack and exporting camera data to LW. You might consider that too, depending on what you’re doing. Good luck.

[Jerome Thelia]

Thanks, I found Steve Forde’s post and am pasting it below.

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I have seen a recurring theme on the COW about confusion in terms of AE’s use of RAM. I will attempt to explain a couple of issues regarding how much RAM, 32 bit vs. 64 bit, ECC vs. Non-ECC, DDR vs. DDR2, and OS constraints. (will also try and make this as plain language as possible, leaving out as much geek speak as possible)

Question 1. How Much RAM can AE use?

Short Answer: ALOT! AE is what I would call a RAM beast. But there are limitations….

Detailed Answer: Win XP – 32 bit:

AE is a 32 bit application. A 32 bit application can only address a maximum of 4GB of RAM. Hard Stop. No 32 bit application can address more than this.

That said, Win XP 32 bit (Pro or Home) doesn’t allow 32 bit applications to access 4GB of RAM. The reason for this is, Win XP itself is a 32 bit application. It reserves a quantity of RAM just for itself, and one of the ways it does this is to limit ALL processes to fight over the same maximum amount of 2GB of RAM. What this means is, if you have five 32 bit applications open at the same time, they will all fight over the same 2GB’s of RAM irrespective of how much RAM you have.

This is also why Win XP 32bit will also not see any more than 4GB of RAM, no matter how much RAM is “really” there. In fact, adding more than 4GB of RAM on Win XP 32bit can cause the OS to get a little lost in the extra RAM space, and become unstable.

Therefore – Do not add more than 4GB of Physical RAM if you are running Win Xp 32bit (Pro or Home)! Just becuase you have the RAM slots, does not mean that Win 32bit will play nice with it!

AE will attempt to use all 2GB available to it if possible. This is why AE allows you to set RAM usage in the preferences. If you leave the default preferences the way they are, it will max your system. I would recommend not running ANYTHING other than AE when using the defaults. Lower the Max RAM and Image Cache sizes if you want to use other apps at the same time as AE.

One last note – some users will notice that not all physical RAM installed on a workstation is “seen” by windows. Right click on “My Computer” and show properties. It is common to see say only 2.75GB even though 4GB is installed. This is called “The Black Hole”. The reason for this is, PCI-Express. The BIOS of your workstation will take physical RAM away from windows to use as a buffer zone for the data transfer to PCI-Express devices, regardless of whether you have PCI-Express devices or not. The amount the “black hole” takes is relevant to the amount of RAM installed – the more RAM, the bigger the black hole.

Therefore, if you have PCI-Express on your workstation motherboard, you are very likely going to see the “Black Hole”.

[Jerome Thelia]

I spoke to Adobe about this problem. They insisted that it IS the professional tryout (that’s how they label it on the site), but in fact MOST of the professional features are disabled: 32 bit float, keylight doesn’t come with it etc… When I asked them what pro features were there, the only one he could think of was motion tracking. In any case, you’re SOL if you want to try out pro stuff with that download. A friend bought it online then serialized the try out and it STILL didn’t have the pro features. You need to buy it and get the media, so there really isn’t a try out. Good luck-

[Jerome Thelia]

Wasn’t sure where to post this as I’m having a problem with keylight that may be related. I work at a school in which we have keylight and AE on dozens of different machines. We also have production monitors, CRTs and LCDs of varying quality, from Sony’s best HD production monitor on down the line. I heard several students complain about VERY different results from keyligh on different machines. Having worked with keylight and other keyers across different machines, platforms, and never having problems I assumed this was user error. Now that I’ve seen the projects, even moved to a different machine but same platform, version of AE and version of keylight I can tell you that Keylight is changing, particularly with regard to spill supression. I’ve posted on the Foundry forums and haven’t heard anything yet. Anyone else having this problem? Thanks.

[Jerome Thelia]

Thanks for the response. It makes sense. But am I screwing up my levels by outputting -18db tone level and setting to Zero on mixer and Beta 1800?