[Kevin Camp]

there may be a plugin that can do a good job of this… but you could probably get close to a stained glass window look by creating a new layer, setting the mode to overlay (or something similar) and applying cell pattern (adjust cell size for resolution needed).

you’ll probably need to blur the oirginal footage some to decrease detail. create a new adjustment layer over the top and try cc threshold rgb to try to flatten the color within the cells (you may need to adjust the blend property, otherwise it’s kind of freaky). duplicate you cell pattern layer and apply find edges and set the blending mode to multiply – this should give you black edges around the cells. adjust with levels if needed.

this will probably get you close. i’m not sure how well the effect will work with moving footage, it could be cool or just plain strange.

you could also add an emboss to the black edges and even the glass pieces. cc light rays or shine might as an adjustment layer over the top might help pull this off.

[Kevin Camp]

possibly… this could take a while to troubleshoot.

a few other things: have you repaired permissions recently? generally it good practice to repair permisions before and after any install, particularly system updates (use the disk utility app, select first aid and the drive)… it’s also recommended to download the combined os x updates, rather than the automatic software update method. i don’t know if any of these may be contributing to your problems.

i think i’d start with the hardware test off the os x install disc, run the extended test. if all is good, i’d safeboot, repair permissions, reinstall ae7 and install the update to 7.0.1. repair permissions again and try ae. if that doesn’t work, you may be looking at re-seating the ram, re-installing the os, reconfiguring the hard drive array… before i did all that i think i’d call adobe, then apple to see what they say.

[Kevin Camp]

the timewarp effect will create intermediate frames with interpolation, but i’m not sure it will be the effect you want.. there are two options for interpolation, pixel motion and frame blending. but i think you’ll want to re-shoot. if you have to do stop frame animation shoot a ton of frames, you can always use time remapping to spped it up with, good results.

[Kevin Camp]

i’m not familiar with cold case, but if all you’re looking for is a transition between interview and reinactment, you could try something as simple as a disolve, then add an adjustment layer over the top, add a glow effect and animate the glow amount over the disolve.

with some tweeking you can get some nice effects, you may find that animating other effects in the adjustment layer can help, like many of the blurs, or a subtle ‘shine’ effect.

[Kevin Camp]

from what i can tell, apple didn’t create a dvcpro50 codec for qt for windows… just mac. i read that both matrox and pinnacle (now part of avid) have free dvcpro50 codecs, but all links that i could find were broken, and i could not find anything on there sites.

even if you found those codecs, they probably won’t be available to render to thru qt, so you would mostlikely need to convert them in fcp. you may need to use an intermediate codec, like qt animation (lossless) as the go-between. however, fcp will mostlikely need to convert (render) to a realtime codec.

panasonic should have a dvcpro50 codec as well, but again, if you can’t render it thru qt it won’t have the qt wrapper, and fcp will probably need to render it to get realtime functionality anyway.

[Kevin Camp]

i have ae7 on a g5 with 5.5gb ram ae can access 3gb of ram, i’m sure more ram is available but it will only grab 3gb… oh well, its better than 2gb.

i’m also using osx 10.4.8, if that makes a difference.

[Kevin Camp]

i had the image buffer problem problem last week, also on an intel mac (macpro 3ghz, 4gb ram)… i had never seen this on g5, i wonder if this a negative of powerpc emulation under rosetta…

i did the same settings adjustments you did, but i also pre-rendered about 75% of the final comp in 3 pre comps, all of which contained large images, prior to final render. you may need to break up your earth into several prerendered images that are cropped to more manageable sizes and disolve between them as you zoom in.

i also kept purging everything before rendering.

(i may pull my project over to an older g5 and see if i encounter the same problem)

[Kevin Camp]

you could try duplicating the footage, bluring that and setting the mode to screen (or lighten, add… experiment some) and adjust opacity and blur to see how close you can get. you may want more than just one blurred layer with a different transfer mode applied, but i think you can achieve this.

[Kevin Camp]

i think this may be an import issue… you may be better posting this in the avid forum for a more informed solution. but i have provided graphics to avid editors (i have not used avid myself), and i worked with a guy who seemed to be having a similar issue with a still graphic (a jpeg, i believe). what i noticed when he imported the file was that he was not importing it as rgb, and while the image looked ok at first, when he rendered it it looked like crap (jaggy edges, color was bad).

ae works in rgb and avid works in 601 color space, so you need to tell avid that the file you are importing is an rgb file so it can convert it, and i think that is done in the import settings window.

i hope this helps. if not try posting in the avid forum.

[Kevin Camp]

if you are seeing the problem in the preview pane then switching to 16 bits/channel color should fix it. if 16 bits isn’t an option then adding noise can help (it sounds wierd to add noise to clean something up, but it does usually help).

if the problem is only in the render, try a different codec… animation – lossless.