Kevin Camp
Forum Replies Created
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what are the edge problems (aliasing, field issues…)? where are you seeing them (ie, ram previews, nle…)? and, what is the logo doing (static, scaling, slow move…)?
if your logo is slowly scaling or drifting and you are rendering to fields (actually you can get problems without fields, but fields amplifies this), then you are seeing problems as the edges of the logo are getting rasterized from one field (or pixel) to the next.
i don’t have a great way to just remove this asside from experimenting with new rates of change (scale, position…), although cranking up the motion blur can help. bluring the alpha slightly may help if the problem is only the outer edges.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
what codec did you render too?
my guess is the data rate of the movie files are too great for your disk to playback in realtime. your original files will play back fine, if the data rate of those files fits your drive specs… dv, many mpg settings, etc. are low data rates; uncompressed or losseless codecs are higher data rates, and may be causing problems with a normal drive.
ram previews will play in realtime because they get rendered to ram, rather than disk, and thus more capable of high data rates.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
you may be able to recover from this… but it will depend largely on the footage they gave you. you said dvcprop60, which would be 60 progressive frames at a frames rate of 59.94. you said the footage was showing a frame rate of 29.97. so i’m a little confused as to what you actually have, but i’m going to assume you have 29.97 interlaced, that had a pulldown added to bring a 24p project up to broadcast frame rates.
if that is the case, and everything was done correctly before the footage came to you, you should be able to tell ae to interpret footage as 29.97 interlaced (lower field) and remove pulldown (guess order should work). now in you comp you need to set the frame rate to 23.976.
this should work in most cases, but with a wide misunderstanding of 24p workflows (and possible dvcpro codec issues), i won’t guarantee anything.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
i created a similar expression and added an option to advance it in even numbered pixels to make it field friendly. it will create the move based on length of the credit list and duration of the comp… so if the credit list changes, the move will be adjusted. likewise for comp duration.
i saved it as a preset that can be downloaded at http://www.mercuryjones.com/aepresets.html. there are instructions, if needed.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
you can try trashing ae’s pref file… but i have a feeling it is somehting else.
has anything new been installed? particularly codecs? some older third party codecs have been known to create problems for ae. try removing third party codecs.
also, some third party plugins can cause problems. although ae usually won’t crash during startup because of plugins, you may try removing those too.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
the trick is to have the credit roll move in whole pixels (even whole pixels if interlaced).
dave laronde gave a great explanation of how to calculate a move to accomplish this in the ae forum. i created a expression based on his explanation, and posted it as a downloadable preset for ae 6.5 and above.
you can get it here: http://www.mercuryjones.com/aepresets.html… its called flickerfree credit roll. there is also link to dave’s explanation, its worth reading.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
i created a simple expression to have the drop shadow direction (from the standard drop shadow effect) remain constant when the layer it is applied to rotates. i saved it as a preset that can be downloaded here:
https://www.mercuryjones.com/aepresets.html
it is really easy to use… once applied, just set the shadow properties as needed, including the direction. now when you rotate the layer the expression will recalculate the direction of the drop shadow to make it relative to the comp, rather than the layer.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
if you are using the dvcpro hd 720/23.98 comp preset in ae and your render settings are set to best (and you’re not render fields), then those settings should be good.
are you rendering to the dvcpro hd codec or lossless (or another)? if you are rendering a quicktime dvcpro hd, you may need to make sure you set the compression type to dvcpro hd 720p and manually set the frame rate to 23.98 fromthe compression settings.
are you using the dvcpro hd 720p24 easy setup in fcp? in fcp you will need to make sure that the settings jive with you ae output, the easy way is to use the easy setup presets from the fcp menu.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
yeah, for ae plugins, mesh warp can work… it’s not the easiest tool around, but you can get it to work for this. you may want to apply it to both layers, so the disolving in layer appears to be morphing from the first layer, and visa versa.
also, using gradient wipe, setting the layer that fades in a the gradient map can help… it will allow portions of the disolving layer to appear first, ie, if it was a face the eyes and hair may appear first, followed by the lighter tones.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
if you need to capture compressed (and that’s not that big of problem), you don’t want to have to recompress it to get it into ae or any other software. you would really like to find a codec and format to capture in that will go into ae with out needing to recompress it.
divx is a very problematic codec, one form of divx may work in one app but not another, as you’ve found. photo jpeg, dv or mpeg would probably be better options.
the black frames you are seeing are probably due to the hard disk not being able to keep up with the data rate that you are capturing at. not knowing the specifics of your system, dv may be a good option since it uses data rates that are within firewire400 standards, and most computers from the past several years are capable of that. you may want to look into an external firewire drive for you media, if you continue to get dropped frames.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW