Kevin Camp
Forum Replies Created
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if you are only going to make a dvd from the comp, then you could work in the ntsc dv widescreen comp preset (or the ntsc dv widescreen 23.976, if you wanted 24p).
if you wanted to also have an hd version of the comp, then work in the hd standard that you prefer, and then to make the sd media for a dvd, you could just drop the hd comp into the dv widescreen comp and choose, layer>transform,>fit to comp width and then render that sd comp.
for codecs, ultimately the dvd will use mpeg-2, but i’d suggest rendering to a high quality codec like prores 422, and then let the dvd authoring software convert that to mpeg-2.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
would need to know more about how you have your dice constructed, but dan ebberts’ ‘layer invisible when facing away from camera’ expression might help.
you’ll find it here (with a good description of how it works):
https://motionscript.com/design-guide/invisible-facing-away.htmlit will only work if you are using 3d layers to create your dice ‘outlines’.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
this may work for you…
try adding a gray solid (128 for all the rgb values, if working b-bit) and hide it.
then add these effects to your ball-action layer (after ball action):
- channel combiner
- set channels
- channel combiner
things will look really crazy, so first set the ‘from’ property of the second channel combiner to ‘rgb to hls’ to get them looking back to normal.
now in the set channels effect, set the ‘source layer 2’ property to be the gray solid.
it should flatten out the luminance of the balls, but leave the colors. changing the luminance of the gray solid (in the solid settings) to make it darker or lighter can help to fine tune the values of the colors if needed.
you could also try just using the color balance (hls) effect, increase lightness and saturation and see if that can get you close, pretty simple, but i don;t think it will be as successful.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
in windows you can create a restore point, then install the update. if the update breaks things, then you can restore back to the restore point.
however i agree with dave, if everything is working well why risk messing it up.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
I don’t think you’d notice it, but I have not tested a setup like that…
the traditional model was to separate your data onto separate buses to avoid data bottlenecks. since disk caching can become a constant flow of data and reading and writing of media is another (video i/o and graphcis card are another), it was common to want to separate those onto separate data buses… so you’d have a media on one bus, os on one bus (the system defaults to using the os drive for disk caching as ram fills up, and in osx, i don;’t think you can re-assign that, so that bus will always handle that cache), and then if possible, you could have a third bus for the ae cache (though many used the os drive). this allowed data flow more freely on separate lanes. and it’s a model that i feel more comfortable recomending…
however, the new SSDs and PCIe buses are much faster that the older setups, and I think for most projects a single SSD for the os disk caching, ae caches and media will likely not see much of a data bottleneck.
if you did start to see a data bottleneck, you could simply add a small thunderbolt or usb 3.0 ssd to your system and use it as an after effects cache (disk cache and/or media cache). the smaller ones aren;t too expensive, so having that as a safety net, going with a large SSD will likely be fine.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
i will say all the option you list are good options, so i doubt you’ll be disappointed with what you choose.
for ram, i think you are likely fine with 32gb, but with 4k frame sizes you might see some benefit in ae with 64gb. adobe is overhauling the way ae handles multiprocessing, so 64gb may help future proof your system, but i’d lean a little towards 32gb personally (i’d wait until i knew the extra money was really going to help…)
for your second question, i’d lean towards option A. i like having the data distributed on multiple drives and buses, rather than leaning hard on a single drive and bus. that being said, the ssd in the new imac is really fast and i think anyone would have a tough time hitting a data bottleneck working off just that drive.
the imac actually has 2 internal ssd slots (search ifixit and/or owc or others for a tear down, owc even mentions a possible future second ssd upgrade for them), however, getting to that slot is a complete tear down of the machine that would keep most users from even considering as an option, but it would be a nice cache location for ae.
an external option is not a bad option either, though i don’t think there is an external thunderbolt or usb3 ssd that is as fast as the internal ssd at this point. however, the loss in speed of the external source may be surpassed by having a much larger cache in the long run.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
take a look at cc particle world.
set the particle type to quadpolygon or tripolygon.
and, you can make the react to the floor in the physics>floor>floor action settings (none, glue, bounce, ice). if your particles are rotating (which quad and tripoly are by default glue is kind of goofy, in that the particles will continue to rotate after they stick to the floor. you could try seeing rotation speed of the particles to 0 to try to overcome that issue.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
those settings seem pretty good for your machine…. i’m still surprised at the low ram usage and the slow render times.
you might open the activity monitor (applications>utilities), click the cpu tab to view processes and start a render and watch the ‘aeselflink’ processes and see how much cpu usage each is using. you would hope to see numbers over 100%, if not there may be a data bottleneck somewhere in your system (or you maybe using an effect that does not work with ‘render frames simultaneously’, there are a few).
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
if you have a victory layer(s) in the pre-comp that have ‘continuously rasterize’ enabled (the little sun-like icon in the timelines’ s layer switches, next to shy layers option), then you’ll also nee to have that option checked in the main comp for that nested comp layer.
note that can change the behavior of that nested comp and effects on that netted comp in the main comp to some degree.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
Dave’s right about not upgrading the OS… CS5 does not work for me on Yosemite. Interestingly, CS4 does with just a few minor hiccups.
As for your RAM usage, do you have multiprocessing enabled in CS5 (preferences>memory & multiprocessing, checkmark for ‘render multiple frames simultaneously’)?
if so, what are the other settings on that panel?
if not, you may want to enable that, and here’s a few links you might want to take a look at to help with understanding the settings to get you started:
https://www.video2brain.com/en/lessons/using-render-multiple-frames-simultaneously-multiprocessing
https://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2009/12/performance-tip-dont-starve-yo.html
https://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2010/03/performance-tip-dont-oversched.html
also, with your comps with 400-900 layers with masks, are those 400-900 layers typically an image sequence or are they layered together, overlapping each other in the timeline?
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW