Kevin Camp
Forum Replies Created
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additionally gausian blur and fast blur both support opengl acceleration, if your graphics card is supported by ae (go to the previews pref and click opengl info, ae will say what is supported by your card).
if it is supported, enable opengl, set to accelerate effects with opengl, and then you need to set your render settings to use opengl for final render. to make a render setting preset (from the render queue) select make template from the render setting pulldown. give it a settings name, like opengl (you can even pick it as the movie default until you’re finished rendering if you’d like). click edit… make sure the settings here are what you want (they should be based on your current default movie setting, usually ‘best settings,’ then check ‘use opengl renderer.’ hit ok twice and if needed use the render settings pulldown to use your new render preset (template).
note, if you are using an intel mac, apply your opengl blur on an adjustment layer, other wise ae will crash as soon as you apply it.
now you’ve offloaded the bulk of the processing from your cpu to your gpu.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
i mentioned that you would render back out to fields… well when you render, set the render settings (from the render queue) to render fields, with the appropriate field dominace.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
i haven’t timed blurs, but by its name, fast blur may be the fastest. in addition it has an option for repeat edge pixels which can be pretty handy.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
i surprised nobody has chimed in on this yet… i may not be the greatest on this subject (i haven’t worked in pal nor used digital beta) but i’ll take a stab.
i would think that the pal d1/dv widescreen preset would be the correct settings to use in ae. it will maintain the 16:9 ratio in sd.
you will need to make sure that the field interpretation is set correctly in the interpret footage settings for you hd clips (particulally field dominace, and i would check preserve edges in this case, since you will be scaling your footage and re-adding fields at render). if you had ntsc hd you would also want to know if the footage was shot 24p and had a pulldown added, but i don’t think this is much of an issue in pal.
if sd widescreen (or anamophic) can be recorded on digital beta (and i think it should be), then you don’t want to ‘fake’ letterboxing, otherwise when displayed on a 16:9 tv you will get letterboxing with black columns on the sides… you would rather the 4:3 gets letterboxed and the 16:9 fills the fullscreen.
as far as format, it depends a bit on what software you are using to lay to tape. but generally uncompressed or lossless codecs would be the way to go if you have fast enough drives… you would just like to know what your software plays natively (decklink card: blackmagic 10-bit would be good; fcp: apple’s lossloss animation codec would be good; avid: omf 1:1; etc.)
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
this is pretty strange…
if you haven’t already done so, reboot… computer can do strange things when they are left on too long, and i don’t know why.
if rebooting didn’t help, how about trying to re-save your tif that you converted from a bad jpg back to a jpg? it seems as if for some reason your jpgs may have gotten corrupt, converting to tif seemed to fix the corruption, i’m wondering if re-saving the fixed tif back as a jpg may fix the jpg corruption. this is really just a shot in the dark, though…
the closest thing i’ve seen to this was when photoshop cs2 on a co-workers mac stopped reading some file types (one of which was jpg). we eventually re-installed ps cs2 to fix the problem.
it may be that your ps is creating bad jpgs and you may need to re-install ps, but it doesn’t make sense that already saved jpgs in an ae project would suddenly go bad.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
generally, you will want to save compression for the last step (pretty much no matter what you are doing). i would render out to an uncompressed or lossless codec. let your dvd software (or other third party software designed to convert media) do the encoding to mpeg2. either will most likely do a better job.
you would definately prefer to not compress to an intermediate codec like dv and then recompress your dv to mpeg2.
i think the previous post asked how long the render was, because an uncompressed file is very large (1 frame = 1mb, not including audio).
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
i found a way to add an expression control, so if you aren’t rendering in fields you won’t have to be restricted to even number increments by just unchecking a box. but, i will have to save it as a preset and find a place to post it.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
i think you’ll want to try using a gradient wipe to reveal the text. try using fractal noise as the gradient (note: you will need to precomp the fractal noise layer to use it as a gradient map).
you might also try an effect like film burn to create a track matte to reveal the text.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
i looked at you project, i didn’t see any flicker due to interlacing or anti-aliasing, but i did think it was moving a little too fast and that was creating a bit of a strobing effect. i lengthened the move by a minute and it looked pretty smooth.
do you think that the effect you are seeing is due to the amount of movement (number of pixels) that is happening between each frame?
also, i created an expression based on dave’s method this morning. it will take the initial start position (y position) and calculate the movement based on comp height and layer (or pre comp) height, but limit the movement to a multiple of 2. the initial start postition, length of the list and the duration of the comp can be modified at any point and the y movement value will be recalculated automatically, no more trial and error.
it is designed to work with any length of credit list or any comp size, so it should work for ntsc or pal, sd or hd.
here is the expression if you would like to be the first to try it, just paste it into the postion property of your credit layer in your credit roll comp… it was written for ae7:
// Position list as desired for first frame, the expression will
// create flicker free movement to fit within Comp duration.// Comp duration and list length can be modified at any point
// and the expression will recalculate the movement.// This expression to create a flicker free credit roll
// is based on a method proposed by Dave LaRonde.
// Expression by Kevin Camp.startY = thisLayer.position[1];
endY = (thisLayer.height * 0.5) * -1;
incrementY = (Math.round((((startY – endY) / (thisComp.duration / thisComp.frameDuration)) * 0.5) + 0.5)) * 2;
frame = time / thisComp.frameDuration;
y = startY – (frame * incrementY);
[value[0],y]it will work if your credit list is a layer, nested comp, or text layer. however if you apply it to a text layer, if you change the length of the list, ae does not update the height value of the text layer. the work around would be to pre-comping the text layer, as you did, and adjusting the size of the pre-comp. the expression will then function as it should.
let me know if this works for you
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
what is the size (pixel dimensions) of the file when you edit in photoshop?
i’m trying to figure out where the the frame size is getting set to ntsc dv (720×480), it could be out of encore, i’ve never had ae change an images dimensions which sounds like what you are describing.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW