Joseph W. bourke
Forum Replies Created
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Rob –
My guess is that your guess is right on the money. Although I haven’t seen Legion, the tracking marks would make a lot of sense. I have used them on blank TV screens in a grid (I just used green sticky dots you buy at Staples) to facilitate using Combustion’s motion tracker to add video to the screen in post-production.
You would think someone would have caught that during post, but it’s also possible that they did, and figured no one would catch it during realtime playback. My guess is that you were frame-by-framing it to check out the effects. Good catch!
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com -
I would try the page turn plugin, included with AE. I think it gives you more control over how much curve there is, the angle of the curve, and several other parameters. If you have AE CS4, just use the search panel in effects and type “page”. It should show right up. Good luck.
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com -
Hi Dan –
Here are the specs on my machine that I configured (with help from the Cow members) about 6 months ago:
Intel Motherboard – DP45SG – this has an ESATA connector for a RAID
Quad Core2 Q9550, 2.83GHz, 1333MHz, L2 12M
8GB of PC3-10600 CL9 DDR3 240p DIMM RAM
GEForce GTX 260 – EVGA graphics card
2 – 500GB Seagate SATA2 7200rpm hard disks – one for OS, one for Applications
2 – 750GB 7200rpm 32mb SATA2 hard drives – for media files – this is NOT striped – at some point I will probably add a RAID array for doing HD – I haven’t tried editing true HD on this pup yet
600watt silent fan power supply – this thing is really quiet – I can probably do audio recording in the same room with this running.
Case – X-Cruiser Black system chassis – this is a gamer case with plenty of room for expansion.That’s about it, other than that it’s running Vista Business 64-bit. I was originally going to go with XP Pro 64-bit, but I think the upgrade path to Win7 will be smoother, plus Adobe recommends Vista 64 for the CS4 production bundle, and so far, I can see why. This thing screams! I just loaded 40 minutes of cloud footage I shot yesterday in 1080i; it loaded fine in .mts (Canon native format) format into AE, and I was able to speed it up 2000 times, giving me a really nice, smooth time-lapse effect, without the usual light stutter you get when you use the intervalometer setting on a camera. It will render about one and a half minutes or better to RAM with the current 8MB of RAM.
UPDATE: I have finished a three minute HD project in Premiere CS4 working with HVC200 P2 footage, shot at 1920 x 1080. Working from my single 500gb media drive, I have had absolutely no problems handling the footage at full res. That said, I do have to render a few things here and there for realtime playback, but I’m very happy so far, and it rendered for distribution sizes in no time. And this machine cost me 1600 dollars! Next on the docket is a RAID array.
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com -
Why feel stupid? There are literally hundreds of controls and features in AE, and many times it’s pure coincidence that we run into them. I didn’t know that particular feature either until I needed to figure it out, and that was years after I started working with AE. I could have saved myself a lot of time knowing it, but that’s the way it goes. And that is what these forums are for.
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com -
I’m on a PC, but there is a setting you can check which should be the same on the Mac. In the Playback settings, you can choose either “from current time” or turn off the checkbox, which will RAM preview the workspace to where your end is marked (by pressing the N key where you want it to end). If you play from where the CTL is with “from current time” on, it continues right through the end of the comp. I have found it useful to just use the B and N keys (beginning and end)to mark the section I want to preview, then leave the “from current time” switch off. Just remember to set them back when you render. Hope this helps.
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com -
Hi Beau –
My feeling toward pre-made libraries such as Digital Juice and others is that while they look great (some of them, anyway), they do absolutely nothing toware advancing your craft. There are some projects, usually the lower budget ones, where you really can’t put in the time to create original graphics, and this is where they might come into play. If you have no qualms about using graphics created by someone else, go ahead and spend the money – by the way, DJ has regular sales where they practically give them away.
As far as plugins go, you can’t go wrong with any of the Trapcode plugins (Shine, 3D Stroke, Particular, Form, and Starglow are my favorites – it depends on the type of work you’re doing whether they’re of any use to you). The Sapphire set by Genarts, although pricey, contains just about everything you would ever use in one package – check it out. It also works within a number of NLEs as well as AE. The Tinderbox plugins by The Foundry are truly amazing, and have controls beyond what many of the AE plugins offer (learning curve, though). There are also a large number of free plugins – checkout Toolfarm’s list. Knoll Lens Flare is a standard useful plugin, but check out what Video Copilot is working on before you pull the trigger on that one. BorisFX has quite a library, although having worked with the Boris plugins in early versions of Edit and AVID NLEs, I found the interface clunky and performance unpredictable (they may have fixed the problems – this was 7 or 8 years ago). Both Digieffects and Digital Anarchy make great plugins as well.
You have to decide based on the type of projects you’re doing, your budget, and whether you want to spend your time learning your craft, or being productive right away then learning under fire. Most of the plugins I’ve listed above can be done with just AE – there are many tutorials out there (VideoCopilot is a great source) that will teach you how to do the plugin effects from scratch. Good luck!
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com -
Andy –
Another thing to try is the AE “secret preferences” which you can get at by holding down the shift key while starting preferences. Here’s some more info that has proven to be very useful:
https://generalspecialist.com/2007/02/troubleshooting-after-effects-7.asp
I think changing the settings to “purge every 10 frames” (or less, if this doesn’t work) may alleviate the problem. Good Luck.
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com -
That’s just the answer I was looking for, Tam. I knew there had to be a way other than through AE (although with Dynamic Link I suppose it would be rather painless). AE was not made to be an NLE!
While I was waiting for an answer I discovered that I could output QT uncompressed at 1920 x 1080, and it holds up pretty well in Premiere (considering that it originated at 1280 x 960). The only things I’ll be doing now in AE will be the endslate and whatever other animations I will need for the project.
You’re right about PS Extended – it has some really amazing video capabilities, few of which I have tapped at this point. I just bought the Lynda CS4 PS tutorials, though, so I’ll be chewing through those when I have the time. Thanks again.
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com -
Dan –
If my memory serves me correctly, AE7 (and AE in general) did not play well with AMD processors. I am sure someone more knowledgeable than I will weigh in shortly, but check out the system requirements on the Adobe site in the meantime – there should be guidelines there.
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com -
I would suggest using Camtasia Studio. I just started using it recently, and am impressed by it’s array of tools, from full editing capabilities, to tools to do callouts, automated animations for mouse clicks and the like, and the ability to do HD.
I don’t know what platform you’re on, but it just came out for the Mac at an introductory price of about 89 bucks. I paid over 200 for the PC version, but so far it’s been well worth it. I am currently creating software tutorials for an industrial manufacturing company, and it makes it really easy to zoom in on key areas of the screen as I work with the software, then output it to a variety of formats, from Flash to AVIs.
Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com