[Joakim Dalfors]

Thanks for the input Kieran.

I think I can get the zaxobject to follow a 3d layer (the invigorator has a function for tracking AE layers) but I am not sure how that would help me since the interaction I am looking for is not the movement but to use the invigorated object as the wall to bounce/slide/stick particles against/along/to. E.g. let smoke come through the 3d text only where there is no “material”.
Can I do that with a dummy layer? As I understand it Particular uses the layers alpha channel (if I choose that option) as a wall through witch the smoke only can pass at the transparent areas in my example. How would the dummylayer “be aware” of or”contain” the information in the alpha channel from the invigorator layer?
Or am I missing something?

/Joakim

[Joakim Dalfors]

I see your point and I wont argue against it. The reason I am (was) looking at spaceefficient archieving options is that the project at hand was just a few hundred Mb short of fitting on a single DVD and it contained quite a few clips of a person keyed out from a green background. I do not expect to use these clips ever again (this is just some private amateur stuff) but by using the Photo-JPEG on the clips I was able to get a backup of the whole project on a DVD and still the keyed out footage looked better than when compressed with the DV codec (on a project like this I saw no reason to save in lossless and all raw material except for some picture was shot with a DV-cam). So for me there are situations where I do not need to archiev in full quality but I guess If I expect to reuse the footage or if I should do some more professional work, full quality backups are a must.
And as you point out, storing space is cheap these days.

Thanks again for your input David.
best regards
Joakim

[Joakim Dalfors]

Hi!
Thanks for the input David.
I am really trying to save diskspace so for my archiving purposes that is not a better option. However, for intermediate work in AE that seems like a good codec to use and was recommended by others as well. For archiving I got a suggestion on the AE forum to use Photo-JPEG compression in QT and that seems to be the ideal choise for me since the quality is better and the diskspace required for greyscale clips are much lower.

best regards
Joakim

[Joakim Dalfors]

Hi again Steve!
I am obviously not good at using the right terminolgy because I meant rendering/recompress when I said pack/unpack. And what my former knowledge (or lack thereof) said was what I think you are trying to tell me (i.e. parts with no effects or changes are just “copied” with no loss when editing with the DV codec)

So thanks a lot for all advices and info. I am definetly going to start using the Photo-JPEG codec for my AE projects.

Since its is late night here in Sweden I will go to bed now.

best regards
Joakim

[Joakim Dalfors]

Thanks for your input Steve.

As you might have guessed I am a newbie in regards of compression and in my “world” as a hobbyist I have only “encountered” DV, mpeg, mpeg2, divx and lossless encoding formats.

Using a DV codec will give the same filesize regardless of information in the picture since it is kept at the same bitrate (3.4 MB/s i think) but I tried the Photo-JPEG you suggested and then the alpha channel was about1/3 or even less in size with the same quality setting.

The funny thing is that as you indicated, the RGB clip looked better than the corresponding DV version although the bitrate (and thus total file size) was lower, about 2MB/s.
Whats the drawback with this compression?
I have been tought that with the DV codec, although not initially lossless, the files can be packed and unpacked time after time with no loss in quality. Is this the case with Photo-JPEG? (I would guess not since normal jpeg pictures loses qulity in repeated pack-unpack)

Would it be a good strategy to use the DV codec when editing in PPro when there is not to much altering of the clips (especially since most of my raw material is DV footage) and use the Photo-JPEG codec to save all renders from AE?

Maybe to many questions at once but any input is welcome and your input helped me a lot Steve, so thanks again.

best regards
Joakim

[Joakim Dalfors]

It makes sense what you are saying and it works just fine now.

Thanks again to you both (and sorry Aanarav for writing your name as Aaron in my last post)

best regards
Joakim

[Joakim Dalfors]

Hi again!

I see. Maybe you were referring to prerender the main sequence where the nested comps are placed because that seems to get the job done!

Thanks Aaron.

best regards
Joakim

[Joakim Dalfors]

Thanks for the input but it does not work for me.

In my main sequence I now have six or more clips that are nested sequencies.
As I mentioned above, for some reason, the first two of them shows the waveforms (i do not know why and they did not do it when I put them there) and these sequencies are not rendered, i.e. they have red bar on top.
I tried prerender some of the other sequencies as you suggested but it makes no difference, still no waveform showing up in the main sequence.

best regards
Joakim