Kevin Camp
Forum Replies Created
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has anything been installed on both systems recently? any new codecs or effects?
i will say that 496 mb of ram isn’t very much, but if it was working previously, i would start looking at third party effects and codecs.
i would start by trashing the pref file, it should be called ‘adobe after effects pref.’
then pull out any third-party plugins from ae’s plugin folder.
i could tell you where the third-party codecs are for quicktime on mac (library>quicktime and users>username>library>quicktime), but i’m not sure on windows. often, installing video players or other media software (nle, etc) will add third party codecs, so if you can think anything that may have bee installed recently you may be able to track those down easier.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
i used to see a lot of image buffer errors with ae7 on a macpro (2x3ghz, 4gb ram), but since upgrading to cs3 i haven’t seen them too often… i did get one weeks ago that i hadn’t seen, saying something about due to possible fragmentation, and suggested increasing the disk cache (which actually worked).
it’s very interesting that removing ram helped… i wonder if restricting ram in the memory settings of the other systems to match what was available to the g5 with 1.5gb of ram would have any effect. checking at the adobe forum may be helpful… i may do a search there if i have time. i wouldn’t be surprised if there is technote regarding image buffer errors.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
glad it all worked out in the end…
the only thing i can figure for the render time would be if ae was really trying to generate a bunch of frames between the actual frames… a situation where it needed to generate frames to generate more frames. but i’m not sure.
i’ve uploaded a preset, EZFrameRateConverter, that should do Andrew’s frame rate conversion technique without needing to use the interpret footage window to modify the original frame rate or enter values for the source frame rate or target frame rate. i had actually tried this before, but it only worked in one specific situation (oops)… this one should work much better. it uses and expression on time remapping to ‘see’ all the frames in the footage, then uses timewarp to create the new framerate, giving you all the interpolation and fine tuning options in timewarp.
the only oddity is if you want to decrease the frame rate, you should change the time measure in the timeline to frames (rather than timecode). just command-click (mac) or ctrl-click(windows) the timecode in the timeline to switch measures. but if you want to increase the frame rate, then you should use the timecode measure.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
as steve mentioned, in addition to altering the frame rate, you can set the preview to skip frames in the time controls panel… and that’s probably a bit easier than calculating a new frame rate….
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
that would be normal when ae runs out of memory for the ram preview.
you may be able to render more if you hit the spacebar for previews… this will render the preivew to disk, however, play back may not be in realtime depending on the data rate of your dirve and the data rate of the file (high frame rates and large frame sizes can greatly effect the data rate needed to play the preview).
alternately, you may rather reduce the reslution and magnification on the the preview or even the frame rate of the preview in the time controls, this will allow you to fit more of your preview in the ram available.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
check on one of the dvd forums, but i’m pretty sure that you can burn a 16:9 dvd that (based on the dvd player’s settings) will display either 4:3 letter box or 4:3 panascan when displayed on a 4:3 tv.
as far as giving them 3 different renders, that seems fine… work in 16:9 and render that, then import the 16:9 drop it into two different sd 4:3 comps, one will crop the video, then set the other to fit the footage width, which will scale giving it the letterbox appearance, and render those 2 comps.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
if you are using video in the ‘light wall,’ applying posterize prior to ball action to limit the number of colors may be helpful (those displays usually have a limited number of colors). posterize time could also be useful to mimic a lower frame rate. and glow could be useful if you didn’t want to go the 32 bit per channel route.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
it would be good to know how much ram you have… for multiprocessing, 1gb per processing core is suggested, 2gb is recommended…. (4cores x 2gb ram = 8gb ram).
also what are your memory & cache settings..? is the crash during ram preview, or final render? and are you openning cs3 as native intel (default) or are you forcing it to open under rosetta (an option in the get info panel from the finder)? there is a problem with multiprocessing running cs3 in rosetta, adobe has a work around, if needed.
my suggestion would be to reset the memory & cache settings to the default. then enable multiprocessing (ae will say how many additional cores will be used, take note, but don’t make changes to the ram cache or disk cache yet if it sugests to). set opengl to interaction only, if it is enabled (for testing you may want to just disable opengl at this point).
see if that helps at all… if it does, then we can tweak settings based on what’s you’re seeing in the multiprocessing pref and the ram you have.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
particle world will let you use a custom partcle (in particle type, any particle with ‘texture’ in the name is refering to a layer or precomp that you define as the particle).
so you will just need to create a small dirt splat animation to use as your custom particle… if you have illustrator you can try to use some of the splatter brushes and separate a splatter to paste into ae, or you could just try to create a mask shape that looks like a dirt splat and animate that shape (the animation will only be a few frames, but you will want the length of the particle comp to be as long as the main comp so the drops won’t disapear).
bring that particle into the main comp. create a layer to apply particle world to, and set the producer size to be the size you need, set velocity and gravity to 0. and set particle type to textured square (you can try any that say ‘texture’ to see how they differ). then from the texture option select the dirt splat layer, and set the texture time to ‘from start’ so it will play the animation as the particle is generated.
from there it’s a matter of adjusting parameters to try and best match your rain particle system. using blending modes on the particle system, like multiply, can be used to blend the particles with the dirt layer (to use multiple your particles would need to be dark).
with particle world, if you wanted variation in the particle’s shape you would need to create a new particle and new particle system. or, if you could live without the few frames of animation, you could create a particle comp with as many different splat shapes as you want, and set the particle system’s texture time to ‘current,’ which would pull a new particle from each frame of the particle comp. that might be a better way to go…
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
is the 1:42 length the length of the footage after altering the frame rate in the interpret footage settings, or prior to altering the fraem rate? once you change the frame rate from 30 to 25 the duration of the clip should increase too (by 120%, if my math is right). so when you drop that on the make comp icon, it will create a comp witht the false length. then when you apply andrew’s frc it should conform it back to the original duration.
you can do this another way too, without timewarp… so you can compare results, first duplicate your footage and set the interpret footage frame rate of the duplicate back to the original frame rate (30). then drag that to the make comp icon. set the comp’s frame rate to 25fps, then enable frame blending with the method set to pixel motion.
you won’t have as much control over the frame interpolation as you would with timewarp, but this can produce pretty decent results.
looking back at your numbers, things aren’t adding up…. 1’42” and 56″… 56″ is nearly half of the original duration… i think somewhere there may be a wrong value…
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW