[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi Ernie –

It depends partly on what software you’re working with – I use Camtasia Studio 6 to do software tutorials for a varied customer base, and there are features within Camtasia which will allow you to automatically put highlight circles (of varying styles) over mouse clicks, and even move and zoom in and out on the area of the screen on which you’re working. It automatically keyframes these highlights, and then you can go in and edit for timing.

I think you’re referring to the rougher type of circle which is drawn on the screen live (telestrator, I think they call it) during sporting events. Depending on what software you’re working with, I would make an attempt at somewhat automating the process by creating (in After Effects) an animated circular or elliptical paint stroke which I would render off in several versions and sizes as keyable motion graphics. Then it would be a simple matter during the edit (I use Premiere CS4) to drop those circles into the timeline on a separate video track, using them where needed, and sizing and moving them around as needed, since they have an alpha channel. By the way, render them as Quicktimes using the Animation, Millions of Colors+, and you’ll get a version with an alpha.

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi James –

It may take a bit of a search, but if you go to Archive.org, there is a monumental collection of old films, which can be downloaded for free. Many of these have the real thing – old, cruddy sections of dirt and noise, countdowns, and more. As I say, it takes a search, but it’s worth it.

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi Arash –

Here’s the word from Adobe:

https://help.adobe.com/en_US/PremierePro/4.0/WSF5D5D2E0-C96D-4565-AE9A-A68CB39F0D98.html

As far as installing ONLY the Media Encoder, I would think that you could put your install disc for whatever CS4 (you don’t say which versions of Adobe products you have) product you own, then just choose to install the media encoder. The site noted above calls it a “standalone media encoder”, but it also has hooks into Premiere, AE, etc.. It should work.

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi Seth –

My first suggestion would be to find a stock photo of a wrecking ball (I looked on Artbeats for wrecking ball footage, but no dice) and then animation the POV move. Since it’s going away from the viewer, there should be no problem with the move looking fake.

The other option would be to do it in 3D, which wouldn’t take a whole lot of time. Modeling the ball (which these days seems to be a sort of pear shaped concrete thing) would be easy, and the move would be a snap.

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi Marc –

Here’s my take on it – you need to create the text in Photoshop at the resolution which will make your text look its’ best when you zoom in on it. So your Photoshop file should be at the very least twice the size of your comp, and probably more.

For my money, a better way to go would be to create your org chart in Illustrator, so that when you import it, you will have the option to turn on the “Constant Rasterization” switch that’s in each layer of your comp. With that turned on, you can zoom in to any magnification and your text will look great.

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

I think I remember a tip I read a while back about using crop marks in Illustrator to control the size of what imports. I know that this works with importing to 3D Studio, and I think it also works with AE. Good luck!

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

Gerardo –

This is from:

https://generalspecialist.com/2007/02/troubleshooting-after-effects-7.asp

If you are getting rendering errors it might be the codec that is hogging RAM. If you enable “Purge every 20 frames during Make Movie” you will probably get around the problem. You can do this in the Secret preferences by holding down the Shift key and then select Preferences… from the menu. In the Preferences dialog box you can then choose the “Secret” option that will give you hidden features (they are hidden since they will cause AE to render more slowly.)
Don’t enable the other checkboxes, just write “20” in the text field. Also, make sure you enable the “Prevent DLL Address Space Fragmentation” under “Memory & Caches” if your on a Windows system.

This may help you out – good luck!

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

Welcome to the Pasture!

You’re making a mistake which all of us have made at one time or another – you’ve exported a movie file with no alpha channel – hence the animation over black.

You must use a codec (or stills sequence, for that matter) which supports alpha channels. I generally use Quicktime, Animation, Millions of Colors + (the plus indicating the bits set aside for the alpha channel, which cuts the hole, so to speak).

You could also use .PNG, .TGA, or .TIF formats, as sequences of stills – these support alphas as well. Welcome to rudimentary mistake number one in the world of compositing! There will be many more, but just remember to ask at the COW. We won’t beat you up for your mistakes. Good luck!

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi Andy –

While I’m by no means an expert, here’s what I’ve gleaned in my research (mostly on the COW), and how I’ve set my machine up. I’m running CS4 Production Suite on a Dual Quad machine with Vista 64-bit, and I have four internal drives:

My C: drive is a 500GB SATA drive reserved just for the OS (I know it’s overkill). My D: drive is a 500GB SATA drive (all are 7200rpm) and is reserved just for APPS. My E: and F: drives are my media drives, and both are separate drives (no RAID) used for project media. I’m doing 3D (Max 2010), graphic design, motion graphics, and editing on this setup, and have had luck so far with HD (1920 x 1080) projects shot with a P2 camera. It’s not all realtime in Premiere, but close enough for me. Renders are almost realtime in Premiere, so I can’t complain – the longest projects I’ve done so far are about 3 to 4 minutes long (I consider this shortform), with some footage and lots of Camtasia 6 screen captures (at 1920 x 1080). At some point in the future I plan on adding a RAID array to my E-SATA connector on the machine, and possibly a tape backup drive as projects get larger and more frequent.

I’m extremely pleased with the setup, and, as I said, most of the info that guided me to the choice was gotten here. Good luck!

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

Here’s a link to some useful Adobe info in PDF format:

ftp://ftp.panasonic.com/pub/Panasonic/business/provideo/whitepapers/Editing_Avchd_AdobeCS4.pdf

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com