[Jonathan Miller]

Paulo, I noticed in your profile that you also have a G5.

If you have Compressor 2, then I understand that it can convert between NTSC and PAL (either direction) for you.

Haven’t had the need to try it out yet, but you might want to give it a shot.

Here’s what Apple’s website says about Compressor2:

Pristine scaling and encoding
Optical flow image analysis for advanced conversions
Scale and encode HD to SD MPEG-2 in one step
Convert interlace to progressive
Convert PAL to NTSC or NTSC to PAL

Good luck!

Jon
TreeLine Productions
Fort Collins, CO USA

[Jonathan Miller]

You should listen to the COW podcast, episode 14.

https://media25a.libsyn.com/podcasts/cowcast/cow14.mp3

They talk about Toronto, Ontario.

Jon

[Jonathan Miller]

Hmmm. Too bad, I was hoping that would be the A-HA (hand to forehead) solution…

I don’t think it’s the deck then. I’ve used the firewire preview on one of my stations for years now with no problems. Although, I am on a Mac so I can’t really help you troubleshoot any further.

As far as Photoshop, I believe you need CS2 for the firewire preview.

Have you downloaded the EchoFire demo and tried that? It’s good for 72 hours so there should be plenty of opportunity to see it it works for you.

https://www.synthetic-ap.com/products/echofire/winindex.html

I hope you can find a solution before having to buy any additional hardware. The video preview is so essential, especially with interlaced material.

Jon

[Jonathan Miller]

Just so we can eliminate the obvious…

Your DSR-11’s input is switched to “DV” and not “S-Video” or “Video”, right? It’s right on the front of the deck.

Sometimes these simple checks can save the day.

Jon

[Jonathan Miller]

Cool. Just want to make sure you get it to work.

Jon

[Jonathan Miller]

I agree with Chris, not too sure where the problem is here.

Have you places items in 3D space, added a camera and moved the camera along the z-axis?

Your Comp should remain at whatever size your final, rendered movie needs to be at. When you move layers or cameras around inside, say, a 720×540 comp, you’ll always see a 720×540 cropped view of your little “world.”

If you need to pull way back and still have a graphic, movie or PreComp’d animation fill the frame, then any of those specific items will need to be wide and tall to begin with.

Is any of this helping?

Jon

[Jonathan Miller]

PreComp the entire thing and then add CC Sphere to that PreComp. The Shine rays might not look right, though, after you sphereize the PreComp, so you might want to add it afterwards (maybe PreComp the Precomp before adding shine.)

You will probably also have to work on the seam where the edges of the wall come together on the globe, but still, this is probably the easiest way to go.

Good luck!

Jon
TreeLine Productions
Fort Collins, CO USA

[Jonathan Miller]

Great tips, Aharon. This stuff is so important it’s amazing how little it’s discussed here on the forum.

2 years ago I took over all video projects from another production company. I’ve had to complete many updated versions on dozens of old projects. On the simple ones, I’ve lost hours trying to figure out what’s what due to their lack of project organization. On the complex projects, I’ve literally lost days re-organizing things and renaming all the layers so it all makes sense to me and anyone else who’d need to open the projects.

As an addendum to your great tutorial, I’d suggest people try and come up with specific nomenclature within their company for naming the files themselves. How many times have we looked at our old projects, or someone else’s, and scratched our heads trying to remember what “second part fix 2 darker.mov” really was all about or inside the project, what “Comp 5 Precomp 4” was?

When I start a project, I do exactly as you suggest and use a project template with a folder structure that is always the same. Then, as I create and name elements and Comps, I try to name them as if I was sending them into a time capsule. In the years to come, when we’re on AE 12.5.1, will complete strangers be able to figure out what the heck I was doing? I sure hope so.

Thanks again, I really enjoy your reports and tutorials.

Jon

[Jonathan Miller]

Mike’s right, it should do the trick if you crank it way up.

Just don’t be surprised when you start scratching your head and looking at the render time.

You may ask yourself, “Why is this 10 second animation taking 2 days to render?”!

Jon

[Jonathan Miller]

Can you say, “Animation Preset?”

I’m glad you got it going!

Jon