[Kevin Camp]

the uncompressed setting should be the best quality, and yes, they will be huge. the shift in color may be due to a conversion between yuv (wich your camera and nle work in) and rgb (which ae, and possibly some of your other software work in).

you may be able to find some setting to try and compnsate for the shift either at import or export/render. in ae, if you were to bring in the dv straight from capture, you can use the interpret footgae window and select expand 601 luma levels, to bring yuv footage up to rgb values. if you can work with rgb or convert it back at the next stage then you are ok… if you can’t convert it, you can create an adjustment layer at the top of your comp and add levels, setting the white output to 235 and black output to 16 to convert back to yuv (or 601) color space.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

if you are only using ae6.5, i wouldn’t bother with using opengl for rendering or previews. ae6.5 doesn’t support enough opengl options, like anti-aliasing, motion blur and blending modes, to make it worth while. even upgrading to ae7, which will enable using opengl 2 features mentioned above, will only provide about a dozen opengl accelerated effects, and most people are happier with adaptive resoltion, and never use opengl.

if you do get a new card, make sure it is opengl 2.0. ae won’t use many high end features designed for 3d applications, so the really expensive pro lines probably won’t offer enough to justify the cost.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

there are two things i would look at… third party plugins and third party quicktime components. if you have installed anything new recently, try removing those first. you can find the pulgins in the ae application folder, i’m not sure where the quicktime components would be installed in windows.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i would bring the dv straight to ae… in ae i waould check the interpret footage settings (selec the footage in thte project pane, then file>interpret footage>main…). make sure the separate fields (usually lower-ntsc), frame rate (usually 29.97-ntsc) and pixel aspect (usually .9-ntsc) are set correctly — ae usually gets the settings right, but its good to check. if you are going to render out as progressive, also check the preserve edges button, if you are going to render out back to fields you can leave that unchecked.

now when you effect it in a comp, it will use progressive frames (de-interlaced). in fact you can set the comp frame rate to double the footage frame rate (usually 59.94) and see the de-interlaced upper and lower fields. or, use frame blending to composite the “missing” data from the other field — this can help smooth some motion, but can create problems too, it just depends on the movement.

if you are going to render back out to fields, you may want to use the double frame rate method, and then override the the frame rate in the render settings, setting it back to the original footage’s frame rate and enabling fields (usually lower).

if you are going to render progressive, then the frame blending may help, or it may be unnecessary, you’ll be able to see in the ram preview if you like it or not.

by-passing your extra de-interlacing step will save you time, disk space and data/quality loss of compressing you footage on more time. if you do think you get better results de-interlacing externally, use a lossless or uncompressed option, rather than dv.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you might also try adding noise to the gradient, either to the same layer or on another solid above the gradient and use a blending mode to mix them.

i’ve seen similar problems rendering to dv25 and adding noise has helped smooth a subtle gradient blend… it wasn’t perfect, but better. it will take a little experimenting with the amount of noise and blending (if its on another solid) to get it right.

warning on h264… it is a geat looking codec, but it is very demanding on procecssing… if you are using it to post on the web, many people won’t have the processing power to decode the file in realtime.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i created an ae preset that uses that expression and added a control to disable field friendly movement (forcing even numbered increments) allowing it to provide smoother motion for progressive rendering (allowing odd or even increments). i also added controls for padding.

you can download it here:

http://www.mercuryjones.com/aepresets.html

unzip it and drop it into your ae presets folder and open ae. it will be located in the effects & presets pane under animation presets>presets. position you credit list where you want it to start, you don’t need to add a keyframe. then apply the preset. movemnt will be based on the length of the list and the duration of the comp. if the movement is too fast or slow, change the duration of the comp and the movement will be adjusted by the expression. the credit list can be updated too and the expression will again recalculate the animation.

it should be resoultion independent and work in sd or hd, ntsc or pal… even film if you wanted.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i am curious what they are using to play out of and what kind of display they are using… 60 frames per second is pretty darn fast and i wonder if that kind of progressive frame rate is necessary.

but, dave, i think your method may be flawed… taking 30i and making it 60p can work surprisingly well.

but, i think, if you take your 24p, convert it to 30i with a pulldown. then take that 30i and try to do the same process as true 30i, but removing the pulldown, you’ll just be creating 24p again. and stretching that into 60p will produce duplicate frames.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i think this should work, no matter what…

if you have an hd comp or footage, be it 720p24 or 1080p24, and drop either into a widescreen sd, 24 fps comp, hit fit to comp and then render with the render settings changed to use 29.97, with fields and a pulldown. you should then get a widescreen sd 29.97 interlaced ntsc broadcast standard render.

if you have an hd comp or footage that is 720p60, you should be able to drop that into a widescreen sd, 29.97 comp and render that either with fields (smoother) or without fields (a little choppier), but both should look good. if you have problems with fields with that method , try a 59.94 widescreen sd comp and set the render settings to render 29.97 fps with fields.

if you have 720i or 1080i (29.97) footage, if everything is interpretted correctly, you should be able to drop that into a widscreen sd 29.97 comp, fit to comp and render 29.97 with fields or without. if you do see problems with field render, again try a widescreen comp with 59.94 fps and use the render settings to render it as 29.97 with fields.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

spacebar preview is probably not writing to your raid, it is most likely using the system drive. that may be the performance hit… also, if you are using windows the file is probably written as an uncompressed avi, and i’ve seen several posts mentioning performance issues playing uncompressed avi’s in ae.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i seem to be wrong about spacebar preview… you can’t seem save it any faster than a ram preivew. i’m pretty darn sure that when i first started using ae that was a feature…

this is going to bug me for a while, and i’m probably going to end up spending hours trying to dig up an old ae3.5 manual.

but you can save a ram preview (or spacebar preview) from the composition menu.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW