[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

Some of the other responses to your post may be more on the money, but I’ll throw my 2 cents in just in case it helps.

I have a very similar system to yours (3Ghz, 16GB RAM etc) I have occasionally run into painfully slow renders which I have later discovered were due to reading and/or writing to an almost full RAID. Most RAID systems’ performance plummets dramatically as you reach 90% full. I have seen renders from AE that should take a minute or two end up taking over an hour as the RAID fills up.

Good luck,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

The 23″ Cinema Display is a 16×10 monitor and will show a small amount of buttons below the video if you open up a quicktime file. When you use the full screen playback in AE, it should display your animations pixel for pixel with a little room on top and bottom but none on the sides. There is no need to get a 30″ to make sure you are seeing everything.

Obviously in normal working situations, you won’t be able to see the entire frame at full size, but this is rarely an issue and you can always toggle the ~ key to view the main window. I use a 30″ monitor and I still rarely see the whole frame at full resolution while I’m working. The larger screen is definitely worth it, but it is not necessary. I would say that the 23″ screen is the minimum size I would want to work with for HD.

If you can afford a RAID, get it. A lot of memory is probably more important as it speeds up your rendering and helps in RAM previews, but you should be able to play back your final animations without skipping. Also faster disc access makes life happier.

You can get a simple Port Multiplier box with the appropriate eSATA controller card relatively cheaply at macgurus.com. I have a couple of these and with 5 drives striped in a RAID 0 I am able to play back full size, uncompressed HD. You might also want to consider an SAS RAID if you have a MacPro. Highpoint RocketRAID with an Enhance drive enclosure seems like an inexpensive way to go.

There are others who can answer the question on graphics cards better than I can, but my feeling is that unless your software is specifically optimized to utilize the GPU, a high end graphics card isn’t going to make a huge difference in your work flow. The less expensive one is likely to do just fine. Just make sure it will support a 30″ monitor if it is likely you will get one.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

My guess is that the people are holding up greenscreen cards with tracking points on them and then the additional footage is dropped into each square. There may be something more complex going on here, but it seems like a fairly simple process so long as it is carefully story-boarded before shooting.

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

Automatic Duck does a very good job of translating the timeline.

https://www.automaticduck.com/products/

I just started using it last week and I am quite happy with the results. It is a bit pricy, but considering it took a few seconds to do what took me a couple hours to do previously, what you save in time makes up for thee cost.

I believe if you want to translate the AE timeline back to FCP, you would need to buy another version of Automatic Duck so if you need a great deal of flexibility, it can be quite costly, but again, the speed gain may be worth the cost.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

In a situation where someone asks you a question that you don’t know how to answer, it can be extremely helpful to simply ask for clarification.

I was once given a job to edit a kinescope using a list of edge numbers so that an optical house could create a trailer from the conformed film. I had no idea what I was doing and when I talked to someone at the optical house, they were very annoyed at me. It occurred to me that it would be to everyone’s advantage if I didn’t try to come off as if I knew everything and instead just asked what they would need from me so they could do their job. Once I asked that, the person was happy to explain it to me. I learned something and the job got done efficiently.

As has been mentioned in other answers to your question, politeness and decency toward each other is very important. It sounds like you have a lot of people in your class who are insecure and want to prove that they “know more” than anyone else.

It is probably fair to say everyone knows something that you don’t. You can probably learn something from everyone, no matter how rude, and you can disarm their rudeness by treating them with respect. Yes, people will ask you trick questions just to put you in your place. If you were to respond with “I’m sorry but I don’t know the focal length. Could you explain what you need to know and I’ll answer what I can,” there is no way for the grip to put you down. He may continue to try, but if you are polite, it can be quite infuriating to someone who is desperately trying to be rude.

It seems to me that we do not work in a “communication arts” industry. I think it is more accurate to say we work in the “mis-communication arts.” If we are honest and direct in what we say we can work more efficiently. If you set the example of proper respect and politeness, you might be surprised at who follows your lead.

Good luck,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

(I know this is a Shake issue rather than After Effects, but since it’s here, here is where I’ll respond.)

Maybe I’m missing something, but shouldn’t your dilate/erode and blur nodes come after the key? with them in this configuration, you will send a blurred image to keylight which will not be easy to work with.

I almost never use Keylight to do the composite, preferring instead to let it create a matte that I then apply to the original footage using a switchmatte node. This allows me to modify the matte, adding or subtracting portions however I like before I apply it to the untouched original footage.

With the key you have set up here, for the garbage matte, I would be inclined to use one keylight node followed by a very strong erode filter which would then feed into a second keylight node. Pipe the footage into the main input of the second keylight and make a your basic key off of that. From the second keylight node, you should have a dilate erode node that erodes a small amount (or is it dilates? Anyway, a negative amount) This can then feed into a blur node to soften the edges a bit. And then from here use a switchmatte to connect it to the original footage.

Obviously you might want to do something a lot more complex, but that would be the basic setup.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

It sounds to me like the control handles on your motion path may be going off in the wrong direction.

AE is particularly frustrating and counter-intuitive in this respect since motion paths are edited in the viewer while acceleration curves are edited in the curve editor.

Anyway, what you describe could be caused by setting up a motion path, editing your curves and then going back and changing one or more position of an object on screen. For some reason, AE doesn’t change the angle of the motion path’s control point as you move it. The result is that while the object may accelerate and decelerate exactly as you set up in the curve editor, it will also follow a path that may overshoot its final point or veer off in an odd direction before coming to a rest. This can cause no end of frustration in trying to figure out what is causing the erratic movement.

You should set up your screen to provide camera plus side, left and top views. Zoom into each key frame point on the object’s motion path and make sure the control handles are pointing in the right direction. To get a smooth deceleration without odd jumps, the control handle should point into the same direction as the curve.

You may find that some control handles are turned 180 degrees from where they should be and while they appear to point in the right direction, they are actually pointing in the opposite direction. You will need to use the angle tool (I forget what it’s actually called) but it is the one that looks like a sideways V under the pen tool.

I hope this addresses your problem.

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

Gen Art’s Sapphire Jpeg Damage plugin sound like what you are looking for… (At least if money is no object.)

But it sounds like your idea of exporting to some really high compression codecs set to low quality would do what you need at a considerably cheaper price.

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

Here’s the link to Avid’s codec download…

https://avidtechnology.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/avidtechnology.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=75079&p_created=1201627416&p_sid=x2yA4t4j&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPSZwX3NvcnRfYnk9JnBfZ3JpZHNvcnQ9JnBfcm93X2NudD01NzQxJnBfcGFnZT0x&p_li=

You will want to render out as Avid Meridian (Compressed or uncompressed, depending upon what you need.)

Remember that your comps must be 720×486 or else the render will fail.

In any case, these import much faster. The only problem I have seen is that in CS3 if you try to render with no alpha channel,
sometimes the video ends up blank. The only solution I have found is to always render an alpha whether you need it or not.

Hope this helps,

Lars

[Lars Bunch]

Hi,

Copying and pasting doesn’t seem to do the trick as it doesn’t include any of the shape data. (Paste it into a text editor to see what you get.)

This isn’t ideal, but you might be able to export everything as Flash SWF files (under File>Export) and then import those into AE 7 and use the resulting material as track masks. You would probably have to pre-compose each layer into it’s own comp and export each layer separately. Obviously if your masks are complex this may not be feasible. I don’t see any way to modify the shape of the imported SWF file so I’m not sure you would be able to modify them after this process.

Another related approach is to option-replace your footage with solid colors and render each layer separately as a black and white image. You could then bring these in as footage and use them as alpha channels. Obviously this makes it pretty difficult to modify the masks down the line so I don’t know how much help this is.

Another approach is to create a new project, bring in the offending quicktime footage and render them out as Tiff sequences. The logic here is that your quicktime files may have some corruption or some data structure that AE dislikes. Go back to your original project and replace the quicktimes with the Tiff sequences and see if that helps.

Hope this helps,

Lars