[Kevin Camp]

i made a preset that you can download at http://www.mercuryjones.com/aepresets.html. it is essentially just an expression that will generate y movement of your credit layer that is limited to whole pixels (or whole fields if interlacing) with a few expression controls for padding and switching between field friendly movement or just anti-alias friendly movement.

just download the preset (.zip file), unzip if necessary and drop into your ae presets folder. then apply the preset to your credit layer (removing existing keyframes), position the first frame as needed, set ther few expression controls as needed (uncheck the field friendly box in your case), and that’s it.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

ask the editor if lossless animation quicktimes are ok… they should be, i send them to avid adrenaline editors often. just talk to the editor about how you are rendering, particularly if you are making the 601 color space adjustment on your end or if they need to import as rgb color space on their end. you’ll also want to make sure you render as straight (unmatted) for keyed pieces.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

near the top of the ae forum is an area called sticky posts… in that area is a link to using ae7 with intel macs. you will want to look in there for tip to get ae to run better.

also, i would disable opengl with an intel mac… ae will crash every time you try to apply an opengl accelerated effect (like fast blur, gausian blur, curves, etc.) to a layer, unless you apply them to adjustment layers for some reason.

you mentioned auto levels… when i tested opengl on old projects to see the benefits of opengl several months ago, i found that an project that used auto levels took about 5 times longer to render with opengl (i don’t know if this is an auto level issue of intel mac issue), just an observation.

i would suggest turning on disk cache, decreasing the max ram cache, and possibly enabling the purge every xx frames option in the secret menu (hold the shift key, then select any preference from ae>preference menu, making sure to hold the mouse button down while selecting the preference… then from the preference window, click the pulldown menu and at the bottom should be ‘secret.’ chosse it and enter a purge value of around 30 frames for starters).

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

if your ai artwork is not on a background (a rectangle with a fill color or something) then when you bring it into ae the non-vector areas should be transparent.

how are you saving your illustrator files?

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

if you click the opengl info button in the previews preference, ae will list the features that are supported and tell you which are not supported… i assume your firegl does not support opengl 2.0, and thus some of ae’s opengl features are not available (anti-aliasing and motion blur require 2.0, i think).

if you can live with not having those features, leave it on… if not, do what most people do and switch opengl off and use adaptive resolution. you probably won’t miss it much, ae doesn’t use opengl acceleration widely… there are only a hand full of accelereated effects (about 12 that come with ae) and the anti-aliasing rendering is not as good and a is generally more stable with opengl turned off.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i would think that having your 2d cutout rotating around it y axis in 3d with a lot of motion blur, then composited over the same 2d cutout, not rotating, would give a decent illusion of the mask effect… particularly if you speed up the footage as part of the transition.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i’m pretty sure you can do something similar to dan ebberts’s 3d corner pin expression but applying it to the beam effect rather than the corner pin effect. they are both pretty similar in that they have 2d points that can be ‘attached’ to 3d positons. read his tutorial on 3d corner pinning.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

t=time – key(2).time
if (t<0){
value

i'm pretty new to expression, but not bad at math... what i believe this part of the expression says is that until the second keyframe (where current time would exceed the point in time of the second keyframe) just use the current value (i assume for position).

but after that point (else) use the following expression to determine position:

veloc = 18;
amplitude = 60;
decay =2;
x=amplitude*Math.sin(veloc*time)/Math.exp(decay*time)
value+ [x,x]}

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

barefeats.com has done some comparisons to other macs and other versions of after effects.

also, xlr8yourmac.com has had some people post there own results.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

preserve edges may only be in later versions… it shouldn’t make a significant difference.

how are the jaggies doing now?

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW