[John Mitchell]

Noah “So why not just stick with AE? If you do good work with a tool, no one is going to force you to try another. Anyone who knows both AE and Motion will tell you neither is the other and you can easily make your way using a combination of the two or just one depending on what is is you’re doing.”

Noah – I never said they were the same program. I’m forced to use Motion as this job was started in another studio and the templates must match.

Even if I wasn’t I don’t dislike what Motion does and I can appreciate it has a place within my workflow. I’m looking for constructive suggestions on how to improve my workflow. I had 30 odd templated graphics to do that began life in the wrong format (16×9 HD) and wrong frame rate. My question was why can’t I change these things easily in Motion and how do others address shortcomings like the need to render out multiple individual timelines. Some people have said investigate groups and I’ll definitely do that, I don’t need to be spoon fed all the way.

However I don’t think suggesting that I abandon a program because I know AE is very constructive. I’m sure my first trips into AE were similarly daunting.

[John Mitchell]

Thanks Arnie – kinda misses the point though. If you try opening 30 projects in Motion see what happens. Then try to track which one your in and copying and pasting. Then try adding everything to one render queue with the same setttings.

I had to redo all my AE stuff that I did yesterday because it was corrupted (not sure why, there were weird things going on like yellow frames). So I bit the bullet and put the thrity odd motion projects into compressor to render them all out in HD and convert them to 4×3 cropped SD later in AE.

What a nightmare – Apart from being unbelievabley slow to work with (click and wait…..)Compressor must have crashed a dozen times (including those weird yellow half frames at times), when trying to add settings to multiple files. So I started adding one by one and saving – first settings then destinations. After another couple of crashes I at least got it programmed and rendering.

Can’t say I have a lot of love for Apple at the moment..

[John Mitchell]

Not sure about groups – that really does come down to not knowing the software well enough. Still I can’t understand the lack of support for multiple timelines – just seems basic to me. I was trying to do something simple which was the same project with a different text element in each one (35 of them). Because it was based on an 30fps HD template and my final output was 4×3 cropped PAL I ended up saving the project each time with the different text element, renaming them as .movs and bringing them into AE to render.
I’m interested in what approach others might have taken to the above job remembering the final target is Avid and not FCP.

The only crash I got yesterday was accessing the help file (which incidentally is so basic as to be almost useless. For example I tried to search for frame rate and fps and got nothing!) and I got another one when I opened one of my templates – I think I might have a couple of projects open at the same time and not realised it. Anyway the screen went white in the viewer area and the program crashed.

Previously when modifying a template I got lots of crashes – couldn’t tell you now what I was specifically doing at the time, sorry.

BTW I never imagined Motion as a replacement for AE, same as I never see BorisRED as a replacement for AE, just programs to help. But IMO Motion lacks some basic functionality like changing frame rates on projects, and supporting multiple timelines. Motion has some nice templates too – not too cheesy 🙂

[John Mitchell]

Craig is spot on here. Not all DVD media is created equal and you have to be sure you don’t get stufff that says it’s Verbatim or Taiyo but is actually just some cheap counterfeit brand using their code. Around the industry Taiyo Yuden is accepted as the best quality optical media. Verbatim are very good but you can still get the odd bad batch as they use other factories outside their own (strictly supervised) to produce media and brand label it. Taiyo do not use this process. Do not buy of eBay unless you know the dealer to be reputable.

Verifying disks (as you have discovered) is no guarantee that they will still work a week from now. Cheaper brands use dyes that deteriorate over time.

Try using a program like DVD Decrypter on a PC to see if you can do a sector by sector copy of your files. Try a different disk drive – some drives may pick up the data better than others. If the disk surface has been handled at all (they shouldn’t be) try washing the disk in warm soapy water and using a soft cloth to blot it dry. Don’t use tissues unless they are lens cleaning grade as others contain wood fibres which can scratch the disk. Never wipe or clean in a circular motion – always straight across the disk from the centre to the outside.

Apart from BluRay and DVD I see no other viable long term storage for digital data. Hard drives are less reliable than good quality optical media.

Sorry about your problems.

[John Mitchell]

There is also trade in pricing for Meridien to Nitris DX (don’t know if that interests you or not) – check the website for details..