[Jimmy Brunger]

I *think* it’s something to do with keeping stuff like the cropping of layers,etc. constant with either the comp you started in or the new one you’re making?…

Although I’m not totally sure myself! Come on veterans, lets have a definitive answer!

By the way..just downloaded AFX 7.0 Pro and played with it for about an hour – it’s blummin ace compared with 5.5 Pro! I’d buy that for a dollar.

[Jimmy Brunger]

Cheers.

Masked? Who? ME? Never..

Yeah, luckily I’ve found a reseller who is willing sell me a new boxed card and if it doesn’t play ball in my system they’ll give me a refund, so that’s a backup if it all goes wrong.

I should be bumping up to a 3GHz p4 proc and possibly get another gig or 2 of RAM to give myself a head start..Hopefully we’ll be getting all-new equipment soon (fingers tightly x’ssed), so I won’t have to worrry about out-of-date gear too much longer!

——————————
**On a side note – anyone know where I can find a 3.2GHz P4 proc (478 socket, 800MHz FSB) ?? Can’t find one anywhere!!**

[Jimmy Brunger]

Select the vector mask with the direct select tool, then go to the mask/path/shape options on the top toolbar and select add to shape area/subtract from shape area, etc until it’s behaving the way you want.

I usually keep a copy of the layer at the bottom of my palette with it’s vector mask intact, incase I need to tweak/edit it later on after I’ve rasterized it/applied it. Horses for courses though!

[Jimmy Brunger]

Yes, I’ve just been wrangling with the same thing – not ordered it yet (Prod Studio Prem) but have been sending emails back and forth to Adobe and not exactly getting 100% consistant replies.

Basically, I’m wanting to upgrade to Prod Studio Prem on PC from AFX 5.5 Pro. However, we might be switching over to Macs in the next few months so I was checking with them about cross-platform switches and was informed I could do it at no extra cost (other than postage) but only ONCE, which is fair enough.

One thing I’ve just realised is that the Studio package (and half the apps within it) don’t exist for the mac!?! so what are they talking about? I’m concerned I’ll lose a bunch of stuff when the switch comes about.

As far as multiple machines goes – I didn’t realise you could split the apps over 2 PCs – I thought they all had the same serial no. or were all installed at once? This is another thing I was asking them but didn’t really get a reply on. That might solve the problem for us, as we also have a dedicated GFX station and then a separate MPEG editing & DVD station, so splitting the apps up (if legal?) would be a viable option for now.

If anyone gets a solid anwser to the ‘running the whole package simultaniously on 2 stations legally’ question, please let us know on here. That would definitely make me go for the purchase.

Didn’t Adobe used to have a multiple machines licence that you could buy for 1-5 machines, etc? Have they now scrapped it in favour of having to buy a whole new package for each seat?

And what’s all this about NEEDING dual procs, etc to even install Prod Studio? I’m a lowly single P4 user at the mo…am I screwed?

[Jimmy Brunger]

>What you might have in such a low-spec pc is that doing a RAM-preview might >introduce flicker/black frames on the output.
>Also, you will lack some CPU power to do complex stuff in AFX, unless >waiting is no problem. And with that amount of RAM, you won’t have a big >cache to do your RAM-preview. There is some tricks to extend it to disk, >but I guess disk-speed will be slow too.

Thanks for your reply. Hmm..interesting. We run AFX on our Toaster machine aswell, which is a pretty similar machine to mine (only with 1GB RAM, but a 3GHz P4 proc) and that handles AFX fine from what I can see. I don’t know whether the VT[3] card adds some kind of hardware acceleration or not (?) but that has a live SDI output and RAM previews seem good.

2GB seems to be serving me pretty well so far – we do mainly 30″ commercials and rarely do I have a client sat over me on anything with a longer duration. I can whack upto 4GB in my 32-bit Windows machine can’t I? Isn’t there some kind of programmable switch to force AFX/Combustion to use more than 2GB of RAM? That might be a temporary help?

[Jimmy Brunger]

…My Motherboard is an ASUS P4C800 Deluxe. Any ideas if that will do the trick? I think it’s only got a 33mhz slot.

Cheers, Jim.

[Jimmy Brunger]

Thanks for your reply Yves,

Yes, I know – a bit of a rubbishy system at the mo…Basically I moved onto PC/Adobe s.ware from Quantel Paintbox a couple of years ago and my machine never got properly configured to run AFX,etc to it’s optimum. So I’m stuck with this machine until we move to Hi-Def and probably Macs/Discreet kit sometime in the near future.
So no massive upgrades for me until then. But I figured a DeckLink would help my workflow until then..

So, with Photoshop I will see the full file (PAL 720×576 16:9anamorphic for instance) on my b/cast monitor? And the image on the vid monitor will not refresh as I paint then?..Is it instead a case of assigning a hotkey to do the export to video action and then you just keep tapping the key to update the file’s video output? I can live with that.
That’s much faster than flattening, saving out a TARGA and then uploading to Clipstation, then patching my old Paintbox monitor everytime I want to check a frame!!!

Also, with AFX (I should hopefully get 7.0 when I get the DL card) will the DeckLink just mimic what’s in my viewport and refresh each time I change something, or scrub the clip then? Or is it only active when I hit RAM preview?

Thanks for your help. So *hopefully* I can install this card on my current system then!? Phew!

[Jimmy Brunger]

Thanks for your response Chris.

Yes, as you can imagine..I am slightly frustrated by the situation, but I think installing a Decklink card will mean the need for a new motherboard, dual core proc, etc, etc (?)…Which obviously doesn’t make a great deal of sense if we in a few months time decide to turn to Macs or Discreet Systems. (However, I didn’t think the Blackmagic stuff was as cheap as that, so I will double check my specs…)

Really, I need something that will run with my current system, with the minimum of fuss, but work well. Have you any experience with the DataVideo stuff Chris?
I don’t neccessarily need a new I/O because I have that. It’s just realtime TV support I’m lacking.