[Jon Bagge]

When I import a PSD to Avid, put it on a timeline, then update the PSD in Photoshop, how do I get the change to take effect in Avid? With Premiere, any time I make a change in Photoshop and hit save, it is automatically updated. Is it possible to get real-time interaction between Avid and Photoshop or do I need to re-import my PSD every time I make a change?

As mentioned you use Batch Import on the clip. This will update any sequences the clip appears in.

Also, is there a way to have a multi-layer PSD only require one video track in Avid?

Yes you can use the collapse/step-in funcion in MC. If you select multiple clips on different tracks you can click the ‘collapse’ button. That will turn it into a single clip with the sub effect on top. (a triangle) You can step into this effect and see the original tracks.

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https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

With the half price offer on Production Premium, it now costs less than a standalone version of AE.. You may get an upgrade price, but with your version being so old, a new CS suite might be about the same..

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https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

There is a pixel aspect ratio button in the layer window too…

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https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

I’m very happy with my Dell T7500. I don’t know how it compares to the HP’s, but it works for me.

It’s very solidly built and has lots of room. I have a dual 3.2Ghz Xeon 5580. The new ones come with 5600 intels.

I have 5 hard disks in mine. You can probably fit in 6, but it officially supports 5.

My main reason for buying it instead of the T5500 is that the T7500 has 12 memory slots. So I can have 48GB using only 4GB modules. After Effects is very happy with 48GB..

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https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

If you really need to do a very long zoom in/out on a large image, you can split it up into several smaller images. One scaled down copy of the whole image, and a smaller image of a cutout area. You can parent them together in AE and do your zoom. Given the size of your image, you may want to split it into several images.

https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/earth_zoom/
Here’s a tutorial that uses that technique.

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https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

I think Adobe RGB has a wider gamut than sRGB/Rec.709, so it be ok to use as the working space — but it won’t offer any additional benefits unless Ivar is delivering anything in Adobe RGB.

Adobe RGB is much bigger than sRGB, but I thought 709 was similar in size to Adobe RGB, whereas 601 is similar in size to sRGB.
I could be wrong.

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https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

You should use expressions for this. You may not have to do more than alt-click the stopwatch and drag the pick-whip.

But this way you can have a null for each corner point (which is tracking something or keyframed or whatever), and pick-whip each line’s end point to this null’s position. This way you can have multiple lines converging on single points.

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http://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

In addition to the points Walter raised, I would set the project setting to whatever your output will be. Typically 709 for HD. But make sure you interpret the footage correctly (as Adobe 1998).

This won’t look quite the same, but it will give you some idea of what it will finally look like. And it means other elements you create in AE or bring in will look correct even if they’re not in Adobe 1998.

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http://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

I have 5 disks in my computer, and they’re set up as 1 boot drive and the other 4 are in a RAID5 configuration. I think this is a pretty sensible setup.

As the others have mentioned, if you want RAID5 you need a separate RAID controller, you can’t do RAID5 in software (or maybe you can but it’s not recommended).

Also considering the price of these cards, and the price of a whole workstation, you should consider 4x 2TB drives. That will give you about 6TB useable space, and 2TB drives are pretty cheap now.
If you work in HD and want to use high quality (uncompressed or low compression) intermediates in your work, the terabytes will just fly away and you’ll be looking at external drives to compliment your 6TB soon enough… 🙂

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http://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

2GB RAM is also not really enough to do 1080 work in any meaningful sense. Or do any advanced or complicated work.

It is possible that previously when it took 15mins there was just enough memory to complete the render, but with your small adjustment you’ve gone over the limit and AE is swapping to disk which would explain the huge time increase.

It’s a possibility anyway. Restart your machine, and try to close absolutely any unneccessary process on your computer.
When you open up AE, don’t have the timeline or the comp viewer open, just the render window.
Use pre-rendered proxies for sub comps (and remember to turn on proxies for final render).
There may be a way to make this work in a reasonable amount of time.

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http://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects