[Jimmy Brunger]

Or you could make up a grid template in Photoshop (using ‘select>grid’) and then import that PSD with guides as a composition and set ‘snap to guides’ then pull all your footage in and size each layer to fit – should be a piece of cake.

*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
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Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Or you could make up a grid template in Photoshop (using ‘select>grid’) and then import that PSD with guides as a composition and set ‘snap to guides’ then pull all your footage in and size each layer to fit – should be a piece of cake.

*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

I think something like a Flame comes into play when your main work is high-end compositing/VFX and you have a client sat with you constantly on a very tight deadline. (ie: Music video, high-end TVCs, etc.)

AE (plus rest of Adobe s/ware, Combustion, FCP, etc) is great for more mograph work or jobs with less time constraints, because you can have several seats working on a job at a time for the fraction of the cost of a single Flame suite.

We do mainly low-mid budget TVCs and my PC-based s/ware collection set up works just dandy. If we were to start chasing high-end FX stuff and heavy compositing I’d push for a Flame. I know a Post Production house down the road with a Flame that just sits there barely getting used most of the time, because the type of work they generally do doesn’t call for it, or clients don’t want to pay the premium.

We’ll be getting a Smoke or Nitris DS to replace our Quantel Editbox fairly soon I imagine, because our work calls for the speed and flexibilty they provide. But for GFX, software based variety is the best fit.

Horses for courses as always…

*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

If that’s all one guy then he’s very good I’d say. I’m guessing it’s a team of designers/modellers/animators/compositors that have worked on that stuff.

*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Or create path in Illustrator (or PS then copy/paste or save path to Illust) then stroke the path in Illustrator as a dashed line, then either save AI file for placement back in PS or just copy as paste as smart object direct.

I’m amazed there isn’t a dashed line option in PS (or is there?) but this workaround is pretty quick.

*Production Studio Premium – *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / BMD DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation

[Jimmy Brunger]

Brilliant stuff – so should that Silouette plugin enable you to roto and track in AE7.0 as well as you can in Combustion?

That’d be brilliant if so, I HATE the combustion UI and workflow!! Silouette roto looks to have proper B-splines and variable edge blurs..in AE…GOOD STUFF!

Anyone use this plugin at all? For

[Jimmy Brunger]

Or, I think Tinderbox do an old film look plugin? Have a look on the Foundry’s site.

[Jimmy Brunger]

I’ve since been informed that a 2xdrive RAID 0 should hardly register with the processor, so I should be ok.

Thanks for the input though.

*AE 5.5 Pro – *PS CS1 – *Combustion 3
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Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / BMD DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation

[Jimmy Brunger]

Or for a ‘vertical light’ or metallic shine effect using masks, look at an old trick by Aharon for putting a shine through text/layers: https://www.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/text_wipe_on/CC_Wipe_FullCD.mov

Adapt it for your project using the same principles.
Have fun!

*AE 5.5 Pro – *PS CS1 – *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / BMD DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation

[Jimmy Brunger]

Thinking it through I think I will go for an SATA RAID-0 of 2x250gb disks for source footage/renders and then my 80GB scsi drive for projects/PSD’s, etc. then I would have a backup set up for my scsi>system drive every night.

Does that sound like a good workflow?

I’m presuming Premiere (what I’d be using to capture/playout) can keep a log of certain tapes and timecodes for automatic re-capture, should I lose my footage?

One other thing….my current board only supports software RAID 0 – which has got me thinking…I hear that software RAID can put a strain on the CPU and my CPU is right on the cusp of min spec as it is – will this s/ware RAID make my system go bonkers?

Thanks for your help guys.

*AE 5.5 Pro – *PS CS1 – *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / BMD DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation