[Jim Scott]

I really enjoyed the matte filter tutorial – great job Harry. I got a download error warning with the camera shake tutorial, but the Maya one came up fine.

Thanks for your efforts.

[Jim Scott]

See the PI Help files, Tutorial 4 – Replacing an Emitter:

First, select the library emitter that will replace the stage emitter. Then R-click on the stage emitter and select Replace. You’ll be asked to confirm the replacement:

After clicking Yes, you’ll see the Replace Emitter Options dialog which allows you to determine which stage emitter properties to save, and which to replace with the library emitter properties.

Checked properties will preserve the values from the existing stage emitter, unchecked ones will use the property values from the library emitter.

[Jim Scott]

Unless you can find a separate FCP 5 for sale elsewhere Apple is now only offering FCP 5 as part of the entire Final Cut Studio. As a FCP 3 owner you can upgrade for $699.

https://www.apple.com/universal/crossgrade/

[Jim Scott]

You may be able to just return them for a refund – worth a try.

[Jim Scott]

MacMall still shows Motion 2 Upgrade available for purchase. According to Apple you’ll be able to get the full Final Cut Studio for $199 as an upgrade to Motion 2. https://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/topquestions.html

[Jim Scott]

I’ve run a few more tests and they just confirm that the speed-up is definitely dependent on the type of project. Using just AE’s radio wave effect for example, Nucleo will accelerate the RAM preview by nearly double on my dual 2GHz G5. Trapcode effects seem to do very well, while the project I mentioned earlier with animated high-res digital photos and composited video only got about a 20-25% speed-up. So far I’m pleased with the results, and as I mentioned their tech support is superb. I’m just a hobbiest, so you pros will have to put Nucleo to your own tests and see what you think.

Jim

[Jim Scott]

Renato – so far all I’ve really tested is the Trapcode benchmark projects from the GridIron site so I can’t yet give you much more info. I did run a little test on my last project which was primarily made up of faces and bodies extracted from digital photos and parented together and animated in AE. The faces then had video clips of singing mouths composited on to them. A ten second work area that took 11:35 minutes to render without Nucleo rendered in 9:03 with Nucleo enabled. Not a great big difference but still very noticeable. As always, different projects and effects will give different results. You could download the demo and see how it works for you. Just remember to disable “Show tips at Start-up”.

Good luck, Jim

[Jim Scott]

Sorry, but no, I haven’t used Sitegrinder myself. I came across it a while ago when I was looking into web design software and it seemed like a great program. I still haven’t gotten into web design so I have nothing to compare it to.

Good luck, Jim

[Jim Scott]

Have you checked out “Sitegrinder”?

https://www.medialab.com/sitegrinder/

It uses Photoshop for the whole design.

[Jim Scott]

I can’t think of a way to easily remove the transitions but here is a possible work-around.

1) Set default transition to cross-dissolve with minimum duration (1 frame).
2) Move playhead to beginning of sequence.
3) Select all the clips.
4) Drag all the clips to the canvas and drop them on the “overwrite with transition” overlay.

This will replace all your transitions with a 1 frame cross-dissolve which will effectively look like a pure cut. Again, it won’t actually remove the transitions, but the look will be the same.

Hope this helps, Jim