Kevin Camp
Forum Replies Created
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there are actually a couple of bad tv signal animation presets in ae7 that you could look at and try to modify or pick apart. they are in the one of the image presets. try typing ‘tv’ in your effects and presets panel.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
if its a scrambled tv picture like you might see if you tried to watch a cable channel that you weren’t paying for… i think displacement map with fractal noise as the map layer, and a wiggle expression on the amount of displacement so it jumps around a bit might work. you may also need motion tile, so the image will wrap as it goes off one side of the screen.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
i’ve found a lot of people export rather than render, i think its from working with other software that doesn’t need to render.
there are times when you may need to export. i’ve worked on some machines that require dv but don’t work with quicktime dv files and you have to export as a dv stream.
as far as ae7 issue… i can’t say that i remember encountering the image buffer wall previously, but i just recently started working in hd resolutions since ae7 came out… so it may be that the demands of hd and the limitations of 32 bit addressing are creating the problem. maybe when everything is 64 bit this will go away.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
if its just the areas that are supposed to be transparent that look muddy, rendering with rgb+alpha, millions of colors+ and then setting color to straight (unmatted) may help. but i would also check your comp and make sure the alpha looks correct. in the preview window, click the color circles and select alpha to see jus the alpha.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
if you watch your ram usage as you render, and it hits the maximum ram cache that you set and quits (default is 60%, i think you set to 100%), setting the purge ram to even fewer frame will most likely help.
pre-comping some of the layers in your comp that are using more effects and then pre-rendering those pre-comps with a post-render action of import and replace usage, can also help to lighten the render demands on the final comp.
also you mentioned ‘export’ as opposed to ‘render.’ i would recommend that you use ‘add to render queue’ function in the compostion menu rather than export. you will have more render options available, more output options (like straight with alpha) and the post-render options i mentioned earlier. in addition, if your render fails at some point, it will create a new render with all the same settings but it will start at the point that the other render stopped. you can then put the 2 (or more) clips together and render the full clip, if needed.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
i have never used premiere, but if you can get a reference movie out of premiere and into ae that may be your best option… you won’t have to render the clip out to another format or worry about recompressing the file. i thought that adobe had been working on a way to join premiere and ae together with a smooth workflow, but i may be wrong.
as far as lossless vs dv, youbetcha it’s bigger. dv compresses at a rate of 5:1, so it will be significantly smaller than an uncompressed or lossless codec.
whether premiere and ae can work together via a reference movie or not, i would imagine that premiere will be converting the ae render to the same format/codec that it was working in before, so i don’t think you will be losing much if you go ahead an render to that codec out of ae.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
512mb of ram is pretty limiting for ae, most people are using 5-10 times that amount, although ae can only use 2-3gb of ram, having more allows the os and other apps to not take it away from ae.
that being said, i do think that enabling disk cache in the memory prefs would be a good idea. it’s not going to hurt anything, it just allows ae to use some disk space when it runs out of ram. additionally, you may want to use the secret pref by holding down the shift key while selecting any pref, then, at the bottom of the pref pulldown will be ‘secret.’ select that and enter a value for the purge every xx frames to about the frame number that your systme is crashing (if it crashes at 13 frames, set purge to 10 frames). all this does is tell ae to clear ram at designated intervals, it may increase render time, but it won’t hurt anything.
i would also suggest, rendering via the add to render queue function from the compostion menu. this will put your render in the render queue, which, aside from giving you many more render options, will allow you to continue a render where the last render failed. so if your first render quit on frame 13, ae will create a new render in the queue that starts at frame 13. you can then edit your renders at the end and render out a complete animation.
you may also want to set up pre-comps of some of the layers in your comp. you can then pre-render those pre-comps, and throught render queue, you can set up post render actions (twirl down the output module to find) that will import and replace usage of the pre-comps (it won’t delete the pre-comps, just replace them in you main comp). that should allow your final comp to render much easier.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
there is a free effect that creates halftone like dot patterns… not sure about color halftones, but you may be able to separate your color channels and apply to each… its been a long time since i used it.
https://www.philipp-spoeth.de/aftereffects/retrodots.php
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
you can have shapes grow a number of ways. you can key frame the shape property of a mask, you’ll have the best control that way, but it may get a little tedious and it will only work on masks. you can also animate other properties of masks, like expansion and feather that can help create this effect.
with non-mask layers you may be able to use or combine some of the transitions, like linear wipe, radial wipe and gradient wipe. additionally, animating simple choke can create a growing or spreading effect similar to mask expansion.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
yeah that’s starnge and frustrating…
have you tried rendering out to the omf format (rather than quicktime)? in the output module, click lossless, then where it says quicktime, pulldown to omf. then you can set the format options to match your avid settings.
likewise, i think you can render out from your avid to the same omf format, this way maybe you can eliminate any possible scaling that may be happening in the conversion at both ends.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW