[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Corinne,

Good to hear that you are still hanging in there, and that you have migrated your masking and tracking to AE, although still on CS4.

Best advice: In AE CS4 you have a free version of Mocha included – nothing like the version that you will find in the latest CS version.

There is a video, amongst many, to get you started here:
“After Effects CS4 Essentials Mocha Tracking Application”
https://youtu.be/bC5hz-Lpfw4

If you want to go really advanced, BorisFX is offering you a 14 day trial of the latest Mocha Pro 2022 standalone:
https://vfx.borisfx.com/mocha-pro-free-trial
PLEASE NOTE THE WARNING: Any Mocha projects created in the trial version, can NOT be opened later in the paid for version.

Also, later versions of Mocha have a lot more functionality, and a steeper learning curve,

With that in mind, give the free version of Mocha inside AE CS4 a spin first, and hopefully that will sort you out.

Good Luck!

Mads

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Roberta,

Out of interest, what kind of work will you be doing on the laptop?

Both the laptops that you’ve chosen looks slightly aged, but should be perfectly fine for video work.

My overall recommendations are:
Check that they can run the latest version of Windows 10?
Will you be able to add a 24′ or larger monitor for work – can the Graphics card handle it?
(Both Graphics cards are older than 7 years, so do not expect too much.)
Is the memory expandable? (64GB is my recommendation – but anything 16GB or above should be fine, depending on what work you are doing?)
The Asus looks great on storage, but it depends on how much the 1TB HDD has been knocked around. Depending on connectors, I use a Samsung T7 1TB SSD as an external extra drive.

I suspect both of your choices are out of warranty. Which means either keep an eye on how to get spare parts, or when you’ll need to buy another one, maybe a new PC.
You may want to have an external back-up, or some kind of cloud storage.

Hope this helps.

Good Luck – and above all, if you have work for it, or something else to use it for, do not sit on the fence, just go do it!

Atb
Mads

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Joe,

There are plenty of websites that offers either film-stock grain movie files, or plug-ins that can re-create it.

You might need to tweak the grade by pushing the highlights and desaturate.

Atb
Mads

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey John, (and Bruce),

Echo Bruce on this, this is great advice. Thank you very much!

Out of interest, do you know if it is best as stand-alone, or is there a plug-in for the video AI, like the photo version works in Light room?

Atb
Mads

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey John,

Thank you – as mentioned, on windows you can make a lot of changes to the monitor set-up. Although, if you go too large, you’ll need a large magnifying glass to read the text…

Just checked over on the BorisFX forum and there is a suggestion made back in ’08 by JP (great guy who was with Imagineer from the beginning), which is to delete your preference file:
https://forum.borisfx.com/t/cant-get-mochaae-to-fit-macbook-pro-screen/736

The other one is to maximise the Mocha window, but I guess that you’ve already tried that?

Atb
Mads

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey John,

What version of Mocha are you using?

Haven’t quite found it on my Mac Mini, but on my Windows PC I can change screen resolution and font size – not perfect, but may do the trick.

atb
Mads

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Curtis,

AE and C4d is one way of resolving the issue.

There is a few AE plug-ins on FX factory that might do the job. But as OSM appears to be very specific for the iPhone. It is going to be difficult to find a like-for-like.

I would strongly encourage you to look at Mocha (and the internal AE tracking tools). This will allow you to take any video of a phone (or animation), and insert footage on it.

Atb
Mads

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Sounds great.

Izotope RX elements has been my secret audio plugin for years – I am currently on 8, which is soo good that I have recently been asked to remove it so one could hear the black cab passing by the presenter. Kind of sounds and looks weird when all background noise are gone.

Will need to go back and revisit the built in tools in FCPX and PPro – all about what one is used to.

Where these tools really works well is when editing interviews from exhibition floors, like IBC and NAB.

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Ann,

There are no links on your “Spam?” post?

Atb
Mads

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey David,

Many, many years ago I worked as a freelancer with training the in-house editor, and editing some of their videos at LDAP (London Deaf Access Project). It was very rewarding. Sadly the organisation are no more.

Just keep going, you are doing fine.
The story and story telling is what is important.
With YouTube, TikTok and other social media platforms, you’ll find that the viewer are a lot more forgiving today, than they were back before Social Media.

As you have soo much mixed media, instead settle for a delivery format that works for you – both in what your hardware and software are capable of, but also what your distribution wants.

I’ve just looked at Topaz – looks interesting.
Just make sure not to drown yourself in shiny gadgets, but instead deliver your film.
If the film works for the audience you might be able to find more funding for finishing it.
And, you’ll also be able to make your next film, hopefully with a bigger budget.

Atb
Mads