[Justin Vaillancourt]

Thank you Dan, you’re the best!

[Justin Vaillancourt]

Just make sure you precompose all of your text, then you can make a folder with all of your text comps. In your lower third comp, highlight the text comp layer, hold the alt key and then drag the new text comp from the project panel that you want to replace it with. As long as you keep all the text comps the same size and length, you should have no problems.

If the rest of the lower third is underneath the text and there are no layers on top of the text, you can pre render or make a proxy of the whole lower third minus the text, this will speed up render time significantly.

Also a trick I picked up for rendering. If you think that the client might want changes to the lower thirds, set up all your lower thirds in the render queue with all the correct settings and destinations. Instead of hitting render in the queue, close the project and then import the project into a new blank project. You render queue will still be there. When you hit render, it’ll do the job, but it won’t be affecting the original project render queue, so if you need to re-render everything at a later date, you don’t have to set up the entire queue again.

[Justin Vaillancourt]

Background renderer does do the same thing, but Nucleo has some extra features such as instant previewing and such. Just watch the movies on their website to view all the features. After a long debate, I just went with BG Renderer to save money, plus I’ve heard of people having some problems with Nucleo.

[Justin Vaillancourt]

If you’re speeding footage up, you shouldn’t need to use frame blending because you’re removing frames, not creating them. You can also try using the pixel motion setting by turning the frame blending to best quality.

[Justin Vaillancourt]

Trapcode Particular would be your best route, but if you don’t have it, you can get realistic results with CC Particle World.

Change the particle type to ‘faded sphere’ change the colors to white, crank up the size and turn down the opacity to around 10-15%. Make sure the opacity map is fade in/fade out and lower the gravity and velocity.

Play around with the settings enough and you should get something you’re happy with.

Justin

[Justin Vaillancourt]

Hi Daniel, thanks for the input. I tried replacing the codec, it didn’t make a difference. I’ve removed all AJA components as well and that didn’t make a difference. I decided to run another quick test and came back with the same results. I took an Animation Compression clip with a photo and some graphic elements in it and brought it into After Effects, then rendered and viewed in Quicktime.
– Animation render as expected exact copy
– ProRes Render lighter gamma

When I bring the ProRes render back into AE, the graphic elements of the image seemed to get pretty jaggy compared to the original and the gamma switches when I go from 8 bit to 16.

Any other suggestions?

[Justin Vaillancourt]

I do have AJA I/O codecs installed, but on my MacPro at home I have the same problem with no AJA Codecs. So when you bring a ProRes file into AE and switch between 8bit and 16bit, you don’t see a gamma shift?

Thanks for the feedback!

[Justin Vaillancourt]

As far as I know, KLF is seeing the Invigorator layer as a comp size solid, not a 3D object with an alpha channel. I would try precomposing the 3D layer into a separate comp and importing it back into your main comp, then just hide that flat precomposed version of your 3D layer and use that as the obscuration layer. What this is doing is making KLF see the obscuration layer as a true flat AE layer with alpha rather than something generated by a 3rd party plugin.

Cheers
Justin

[Justin Vaillancourt]

Thanks Kevin! I’ve also read that FCP doesn’t take advantage of the GPU so I’m probably better off investing the money in lots of RAM.

I’ve looked into Nucleo Pro 2 as well, seems like a great advantage for AE. Outside of that, it doesn’t seems like there’s much more I can do to beef up AE. Any other suggestions?

Cheers
Justin

[Justin Vaillancourt]

If your using CS3 or up you can use Layer Styles (same as Photoshop) to create a very complex gradient, right click on the layer and click Layer Styles. I find it’s easier to precomp any layer you add a layer style to because they behave very weird with other effects.