[Kevin Camp]

as long as the format is uncompressed (or losslessly compressed) and you can get it into ae you should be good. you can search the ae help menu for supported file formats (or the manual) if needed.

if you can get 16 bit scans that may help, it will give you more color information; i noticed that keylight is now 32 bit but i’m not sure that you will be able to get a 32 bit scan, i think it would need to be multiple scans that then get combined to create a 32 bit hdr image. i know tiff and cineon both support 16 bit, i’m not sure about targa.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

th more i think about your avi issue, the more i get confused…

you mentioned that ae worked slow with an avi… ae isn’t a realtime app so high data rate formats rarely make much of a difference speed wise, its generally just the frame size or frame rate that effects rendering rather than file size (mega/kilobytes). are you transfering the avi to your hard disk or working from the dvd? i could see a speed issue if you were working from a dvd.

if the problem is that ae can’t read the avi then i think the free flip4mac player that i mentioned before may help.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i understand now… without being able to use expressions to link masks from various layers this would be difficult. you can use expression to link other properties like scale and rotation to several layers or to a slider in varying degrees, but you wouldn’t have the same control as moving vertexes on a mask.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

this could be a lot of things…

is the contiuous rasterization option on? its a check box in the switches pane of the timeline taht looks like a little sun.

are your seeing this on a broadcast monitor or on your computer screen? if it’s on a broadcast monitor it may be an interlacing issue. is it more of a jitter issue on horizontal or near horizontal edges or details? then it probably is a field issue, try a little fast blur, vertical only and repeat edge pixels. if it’s moving, turning motion blur on too may help.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i think imovie may be the problem… i think (i don’t know for sure) that imovie works in dv. when you import the avi, does it take little while, longer than just opening a clip might take? if so, i believe you are converting your uncompressed avi to dv and then converting dv to the lossless animation codec and somewhere along the line your field order is getting messed up.

try going to flip4mac… download and install the free player. it gets installed as a quicktime component and i believe it will allow ae to read avi. that way you can either use it in ae or use ae to convert it, making sure you are maintaining the correct field interpretation.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

has anybody heard any rumors about adobe acquiring nucleo…

i haven’t, and i don’t want to start a false rumor, but i’ve seen plenty of other software packages go on sale and then end up as a standard part of another piece of software. especially when the software package only works with that one specific piece of software.

again, i’m not trying to start a rumor, and i think nucleo and nucleo pro are great additions to ae, but it does seem a little suspicious to me. but i must admit, nucleo included in a future ae won’t help me now, and nucleo for $49 would.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you may also be able to remove the jitter by checking the interpret footage settings for your clip… select your clip in the project window, go to file>interpret footage>main, make sure the fields are separated correctly (lower first is probably most common for ntsc these days if its set to off), and check the preserve edges box.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

sorry, i just re-read your post… you using the animation codec (lossless, i assume) in quicktime.

i’m confused by your work flow… originally i thought you were outputting two file types of the same comp, one avi and the other mov and seeing differences. but i’m not sure why you are taking an avi into ae, rendering it out as a mov, importing that back into ae (for effects presumably) and then rendering out to avi? if you’re able to work with the avi in ae, then just keep working with it and output your final back out to avi.

i’m not sure what you’re trying to gain by converting to a mov in the middle?

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

make sure accept shadows is on for your background layer and that casts shadows is on for your light… if that doesn’t work, disable opengl rendering… not all graphics cards will render shadows in opengl (its a newer feature in opengl 2.0).

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

what are the render settings for your avi vs. your mov? what codec are you using for your avi vs. mov (mpeg-2, lossless, uncompressed, etc.)? are you creating a progressive dvd or interlaced?

i suspect your field dominance may be incorrect on your quicktimes. it’s also possible that you’re rendering progressive on your quicktimes, both of which are set in the render settings.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW