[Jimmy Brunger]

3D Warps..I think it’s shipping. http://www.zaxwerks.com

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[Jimmy Brunger]

I use AE as an online gfx/vfx tool..though the integration isn’t quite as elegant as Auto Duck/FCP!…I capture/output mattes & masters to/from an editbox.

With eventually a bit more hardware power for AE and a new online NLE with a filebased system/alpha support and a SAN/NAS I reckon we’ll be cooking on butane. Does Automatic Duck offer any integration between AE/Smoke do you know?

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[Jimmy Brunger]

Actually, I think you want ‘composition WITH cropped layers’…just importing as composition will cut off whatever is outside the original comp’s area and will also make rotating individual layers a pain, cos you’ll have to reset all their anchor points.

I’ve asked this before…but in what situation would you import WITHOUT cropped layers? It seems pointless. That said, you’d think WITH cropped layrs would well…crop them, but it seems the opposite!

Or is my version of AE just dyslexic!?

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[Jimmy Brunger]

You can do that by just hitting the ‘0’ key on numeric pad again though?

So, with spacebar saving previews to disk…where exactly is this getting saved and how do I rename it and save an AVI from it? It seems my spacebar render is pretty much as fast as RAM preview, as it’s using my RAID 0 I guess? Last question – does this disk render purge itself at any point, or does it just keep clocking up megabytes somewhere indefinitely?

Sorry for any stupid questions..I guess I never used spacebar since the old days when I had a 5,200rpm drive running EVERYTHING! It was so slow it’s not funny. I am intrigued by not having to re-render a RAM preview that I’m happy with..It’d be nice to not have to say to clients “OK, that’s what it will look like..now I just have to render it” and they say “but I’ve just seen it, why do you have to do it again!?”

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[Jimmy Brunger]

No, no joy I’m afraid. Thanks for the suggestions though. Seems a bit rubbish this!…I’m sure I accidently made it work yesterday by pre-comping it on an already animated null, but then when I went back to set it up from scratch it wouldn’t work!!??!

Any other thoughts guys?

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[Jimmy Brunger]

If you set the RAM preview to loop then you’ll see it as Dave mentions…you may have it set to play+stop. As said before – Shift+RAM preview options are a good way to speed things up and get a rough idea of how large chunks of your comp are looking in motion.

Other than that – get a 64-bit OS and fill up with RAM. You should be able to access 4GB RAM in XP64 and anymore you get after that Nucleo will use to speed up the portion you can render.

Out of interest – what exactly IS the space bar for in AE? I never use it.

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[Jimmy Brunger]

I noticed this only the other day…very strange omission, especially when all the other text options from Photoshop made it over to AE…why not this one?!? Have you tried setting the type in PS and importing>convert to editable text?

Hope you don’t mind me asking…why do you use AE to design stills for the web, rather than something like Photoshop or Fireworks?

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[Jimmy Brunger]

Does your FX 1500 have an SDI out? If so plug your monitor into that..I know the 4500 has an SDI option, not sure about 1500 though.

Your best and cheapest option if not is a Blackmagic Decklink card from about

[Jimmy Brunger]

This was discussed briefly a couple of weeks ago…

My understanding of it (and what I am suggesting to my boss) is you can get very SIMILAR results to a Flame with a RAMmed upto the max 8-core machine, very fast drives, a decent GFX card and AE + Nucleo for mograph and then buy a PC node of Eyeon Fusion for more complex FX/compositing and 3D.

for a mac – maybe Shake isntead of Fusion? But it’s not made anymore and I think lacks some of Fusion’s 3D capabilities.

I’m not saying that will ‘beat’ a Flame as such, but for a fraction of the cost you’d have something that would certainly compete pretty well for most projects. It will be MUCH easier and cheaper to keep your machine/software upto date aswell! For high-end client attended 2k/4k work maybe Flame still has the edge..I don’t know?

Let me know how it works out. We’re thinking of teaming up a new Smoke with a Windows XP64 system like this for GFX/FX, so I’d be interested to see just how quick it could be.

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[Jimmy Brunger]

What like a Zaxwerks type plugin for Motion?…Or Motion being a full 3D compositing environ? Blimey. Are they bumping up the price tag aswell then?

Not heard a peep about Motion tbh, but to be fair I’ve not really been looking.

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