Kevin Camp
Forum Replies Created
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you said you trashed prefs… did you try removing qt components from the library/quicktime folder, and possibly users/username/library/quicktime folder (not the system/library folder). there have been reports that older third-party quicktime components will give ae problems.
you also may want to repair permisions from the disk utility (applications/utilities folder). occasionally incorrect permissions can create unusual problems.
any other hardware on your system? multiple graphics cards, capture cards…?
and just to clarify, ae works fine until you try to import a video file, right? are you dragging and dropping from a folder to your project window, or using import from the file menu?
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
true, codecs that utilize temporal compression will be somewhat hard on ae. any image sequence should remove the chance of temporal compression. photoshop or pict both losslessly compress the image. i think the animation codec can be set not to use temporal compression (click format options and uncheck the key frame every xx frames).
you could render out a single animation to several different output modules and set a post-render action to import each render. then ram preview each to see which preview quicker, that should tell you how hard ae is working on each clip.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
good to know… i hope they respond to the rosetta question. i’ve been requesting nucleo since we got our mac pro.
have you read about some of the issues with ae7 and intel macs?
graham jones has a great article (and thread) here about better ae performance on a mac pro by limiting ram, although it seems if you have over 4gb ram there is less beneifit.
iv’e noticed some issues, particularly with older plugins… i get fequent crashes with some of them, including the cc effects that are bundled with ae pro. cycore does offer updated plugins for a price, but when i asked them about updates to the ones bundled with ae, they made it sound like they weren’t too interested in rewriting the freebies, although i hope they will for the next ae version. if you like cc effect it’s probably worth the upgrade. i’ve also noticed similar problems with many of the pete’s plugins, retrodots and sindots.
there’s another oddity with opengl and opengl accelerated effects. if you apply an accelerated effect (like gaussian blur or curves) directly on a layer, ae will crash immediately. apply them to an adjustment layer and they work great. other opengl accelerated features seem to work fine (motion blur, blending modes…), although antialiasing on 3d layers is rough (2d, ok… go figure).
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
‘page up’ and ‘page down.’ ‘shift-page up’ and ‘shift-page down’ will go up or down by 10 frames. ‘home’ and ‘end’ will skip to the begining or end of your timeline.
type ‘shortcuts’ in ae help window and you find a whole bunch of helpful keybord shortcuts.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
as far as bringing media into ae, the original source is probably prefered if ae will accept that format. you won’t get any any better quality converting a compressed file (say dv) to an uncompressed or lossless file, you’ll just eat up more disk space.
recently, i was working with some footage from a panasonic hvx200. it records to an mxf file system with dvcpro100 (hd) compression. ae will read the dvcpro100 codec, but it can’t decipher the mxf file structure. but fcp will, and, it will put the dvcpro100 codec in to a quicktime wrapper upon import, which ae can read. i didn’t even export the footage, i just pulled the files directly out of the capture folder where fcp places its footage. i’m not re-ecoding or converting the dvcpro100 footage, just stripping the mxf file stucture and placing it in a quicktime wrapper.
the only time i would look to export to a losseless or uncompressed codec is when ae won’t accept the native file format or codec. then, i use losseless animation (i’m mac based).
now, for rendering out of ae, generally i will always try to render to lossless animation… it’s losseless and supports alpha. also, if the peice is going to get edited on an nle that will compress the footage, i try to create pieces that can composited within the nle, over the compressed footage, rather than rendering in ae to a lossless codec which then gets recompressed in the nle at import (plus you can avoid the yuv-to-rgb-to-yuv color shift). sometimes you’ll have to compostie it all in ae, then it’s either lossless animation or the compression that is native to the nle (if the piece is lengthy, and the nle is going to convert it anyway, why not save some drive space).
i do the same thing for dvd, if the piece is short, i’ll render to lossless and let the dvd software handle the mpeg-2 encoding, if it’s long, i’ll render to mpeg-2 in ae.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
here’s a thread i found at gridiron, it’s about a 64bit windows machine, but they disucuss having at least 1gb, prefereably 2gb, of ram for each core. so at least 8gb could be used to render, the rest could be used for other apps and the os.
https://64.62.177.148/webx?14@393.gILDa1ZbbPk.2@.ee7de2e/0
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
i know i saw a post here just a week or two ago, asking a similar question about a pc workstation, but i can’t find it… the response back was that nucleo pro would use up to 3-4gb of ram for each processing core.
i think the mac may only be able to grab 3gb per core, but if you’ve read about ae and intel macs, you’ve probably heard about issuses with rosetta only allowing about 1.25gb of ram for non-universal apps (like ae). i’m not sure exactly how that may effect nucleo pro, but most people seem very happy with it.
you might look at gridiron’s site, or send them you’re question, although steve forde frequently answers questions here.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
well i have found a way to create custom pixel aspect ratios for new comps and new layers, but you’ll have to write a script to do it.
i’ve been interested in learning more about scripts and expression this week and i’ve been spending some time on dan ebbert’s motionscript.com. and i just read his section on ae scripting where he creates a script to create a layer in a comp, and then also creates a script to create a comp. both scripts discuss defining pixelaspect. there is no mention of aspect limitations, so maybe you could create a simple script to create a 720×486 comp witha custom pixel aspect ratio.
however, i think i would probably work in the large square pixel comp, then drop that into a d1 comp and scale to fit.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
not really… the only thin i can think of is to try and play with the shatter effect and define the shape as a custom layer (say text or logo), remove the forces and gravity (otherwise your text or logo will fly appart and fall off the screen). then play with the depth, camera position, lighting and material options. but i don’t think it will look really glassy.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
if your video card option is available, it will be in the video preview prefs in ae as a pulldown for output device.
premiere? i don’t know.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW