[Jim Arco]

I have found that effects like “…Particular, Shine and Starglow, Colorista II, Magic Bullet Looks, 3D work and motion blur…” can each be real render hogs. Combining them will only make matters worse. I have also found that some effects do not use multiple cores, so your CPU may be loafing along at 15-20% utilization. Check for CPU utilization (is there an equivalent to Task Manager in Mac?)

But my biggest suspicion is Dynamic Link. For me, D-L slows things down so much that it is not useable with anything other than the simplest compositions. My i7/WinVista PC is still using CS4, but even with SSDs and 12G of memory, it seems to take forever. You might want to try importing a small section of the project into AE and comparing render times.

IF all else fails, I suggest rendering to an image sequence, so that you can resume the render if there is a power outage or other glitch.

Jim

[Jim Arco]

If the text is white, you can key it, then replace it with a blurred version of nearby pixels.

So… put a blurred or offset version of your video below the original. On the original, luma-key out the white lettering to let the offset video below show through.

Jim

[Jim Arco]

I have sometimes used Photoshop to work on video in CMYK or LAB.

Some concepts can get really complicated in PS, but it’s great for “non-video” colorspaces.

Jim

[Jim Arco]

AVCHD is supported natively in AE CS 4, according to Adobe’s website.

However, I now remember there were some decoding issues with footage from certain model cameras. (Some cameras do not flag their streams correctly or add additional, non-standard data that confuses AE.) These incompatibilities were fixed in various updates.

First make sure you have all the current updates for After Effects. Otherwise, the workaround is converting the footage to another format. Google “AVCHD converter” and you’ll find a ton of applications that do just that.

Jim

[Jim Arco]

AVCHD uses some ‘very interesting’ compression techniques to record HD video and you need a hefty processor to get any work done. After Effects CS4 on my system (8-core i7) will open .MTS files with no problem, although sometimes a little slower than I’d like.

You may just need an appropriate codec to play .MTS files. Can you tell us a bit more about your pc? Operating system? CS4, 5 or 6? etc.

Jim

[Jim Arco]

Mocha comes free with After Effects and can stabilize footage quite well. If your chief complaint is that results tend to be a little softer than the original, remember that any stabilizer program has to move and rotate (maybe recalculate?) the existing pixels. This may result is a very slight softening.

Jim

[Jim Arco]

“…a fuss to make it work?” Yes! I got so frustrated, I was about to send it back (Actually I was about the throw it out the window and run over it with the lawnmower.) From another forum, I learned that rolling back to an earlier version of the software sometimes solved the problem. I was able to eventually get it working. And I eventually got it to work with Photoshop.
In fairness, I did not have the ‘recommended’ USB3 card. I assumed USB was USB, but B-M needs to work with a specific chipset. Additionally, I was in a hurry and was looking for a low-cost plug-and-play solution to get analog video INto my PC.

I have heard of folks taking the Shuttle out of the box, plugging it in, loading software, and it worked the first time. If you have the correct motherboard and USB chipsets, maybe it will be the same for you. In my case, the video you see on the monitor connected to the Shuttle is out-of-sync with the audio from the PC. If you use the Shuttle to monitor audio, audio/video sync is correct.

One of the first video capture cards I bought (early 90s) was made by Pinnacle and it captured huge files using MotionJPEG codec. It took me over three weeks to get it to work. I’ve probably had 8 or 10 other capture cards/boxes since that time and NONE of them were ever plug-and-play. I had heard such good things about the Shuttle that I guess my expectations exceeded the reality.

Jim

[Jim Arco]

Adam,

I answered your question in an older thread a few hours ago, but in case you didn’t see the answer:

The Shuttle works well for me to get After Effects (and Premiere) out to an NTSC video monitor. Note that it only outputs the main window. Color Finesse and other add-ons that have their own ‘monitor window’ still need to be viewed on the PC monitor.

When you are comparing costs, remember that the standalone Shuttle is connected via USB3 – unless you have a very current computer you’ll also need to purchase a USB3 card. The recommended card is not very expensive, but it will use up one more slot in your PC.

BM’s software seems picky about which card it will work with. I had to use an older version of Black Magic’s software to get the Shuttle to work. …and BM wasn’t very helpful telling me about the workaround on the phone. We still use the Shuttle for analog video capture, but I’ve gone back to an old firewire box for video-out because the Shuttle does not seem to output from Photoshop.

It still surprizes me that almost every analog video-out/in device I have used is so fussy to get working consistently. It might have been understandable in the late ’90s, but seems like things should work better by now. (sigh)

Jim

[Jim Arco]

Adam,

The Shuttle works well for me to get After Effects (and Premiere) out to an NTSC video monitor. Note that it only outputs AE’s main window. Color Finesse and other add-ons that have their own ‘monitor window’ still need to be viewed on the PC monitor.

When you are comparing costs, remember that the standalone Shuttle is connected via USB3 – unless you have a very current computer you’ll also need to purchase a USB3 card. They’re not very expensive, but it will use up one more slot in your PC.

In case you haven’t read the whole thread above: I had to use an older version of Black Magic’s software to get the Shuttle to work. …and BM wasn’t very helpful telling me about the workaround.

It still surprizes me that almost every analog video-out device I have used is so fussy to get working consistently. It might have been understandable in the late ’90s, but seems like things should work better by now. (sigh)

Jim

[Jim Arco]

Thanks, Joe, for your response.

I had found that thread during my search, but that technique doesn’t seem to work with Audition CS4. Shift-F8 does nothing – I can not even find “CD Track Cue” in the help file.

I can insert a Flash Cue Point marker in the editor window, but the only ‘mixdown’ commands available are ‘multitrack mixdown’ and ‘clip mixdown,’ where the only choices are the audio codec to use.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I must be the only person left making CDs from audio files and that Adobe simply forgot to include this function in Audition CS4.

Jim