[Mark Hatch]

I’m often the first one to reply to my posts because I forget to mention a few things.

I didn’t mention that the software I am using to view test the DVDs and in which I’m seeing this problem is DVD Player. It should also be noted that I am seeing the problem on two different MacBook Pro screens (1440×900) and not on the Dell 24 inch monitor (1920×1200) connected to my Mac Pro. I have no idea why there is a discrepancy there.

Any takers?

Mark Hatch
Cosmic Pictures

[Mark Hatch]

Jay-

I think this has been caused by several things. As I recall, one of the things was having the AJA Uncompressed Codec installed on your system, if you have AJA products. Under HD > Library > Quicktime, you should see this codec. It is called “AJAUncompressedCodec.component”. If you move it to your desktop, then restart, you can see if it makes a difference. Anyway, worked for us…

I can’t recall what other issues may cause this.

Good luck!

Mark Hatch
Cosmic Pictures

[Mark Hatch]

Dave, I believe you were correct in your first statement. I’m not sure what versions of After Effects are affected by this problem, but I know that with CS4 and AJA, there were gamma shifts (or something similar) when those AJA codecs are installed. As I recall, it affected the rendered files. We removed these codecs on several of our systems and it immediately fixed the issues. I’m a little hazy on all of the details, but it was fairly well documented.

Paul, your problem seems slightly different, but it could be the same issue. So you could try moving those codecs onto your desktop, then restarting after effects. I’m not sure if you need to restart the computer. So many variables on this issue…

Mark Hatch
Cosmic Pictures

[Mark Hatch]

Paul-

What versions of AE are you using? Also, do you have any IO cards like AJA or Blackmagic?

Mark Hatch
Cosmic Pictures

[Mark Hatch]

Uninstalled the Wacom and still didn’t help. Thanks for the idea.

This “hitting save” issue really seems to be my problem. I have now dropped multi processing down to 4 processors, leaving 4 for other applications and leaving 5 GB of RAM for other applications. 2.09 GB of RAM for the 4 I am using for After Effects. Once I make any change to the project and then hit save, the very next thing I try takes a long time. Like 25 seconds. Even going to the Purge All takes 25 seconds. Good thing is that once I hit it, it makes things fast again.

Strange?

Mark Hatch
Cosmic Pictures

[Mark Hatch]

Thanks for the help guys.

Brian, I haven’t tried your advice yet, but I will. Dave, I’ve read those links you sent and tried some of them. I think they are helping, but I’ve run into a strange issue that may be new or not because I don’t recall trying it before.

As I mentioned, doing basic things have been very slow for me. For instance, dropping footage (Footage that has a Proxy) into a composition, takes about 25 seconds of beach balling to even show up on my mouse so I can start to drag it to the composition. So, after changing those processor settings that Dave recommended, I restarted and tried it again. Seemed to work fine. So I did another one. That one also worked fine.

I tried about 5 of them that all worked okay, then I hit save. After the save, I tried the sixth one and it had the 25-second lag again. So did all of the ones after that. So I did a Purge All and I was back to normal. Then when I did a save again, things got worse again. Does this mean anything? Do I need to drop down to 5 processors? (I’ll try that.) Do I need to stop saving so much? 🙂
Thanks.

Mark Hatch
Cosmic Pictures

[Mark Hatch]

Sorry, I included that in my first reply. Here it is…

8-core Intel 3 GHz (Xeon, I believe. Early 2008.)
16 GB of RAM

Also, the footage is 23.976 and so are the comps. And the main reason I did ProRes 4444 is because it is green screen material and I have rendered out the keyed footage to hopefully speed things up.

Mark Hatch
Cosmic Pictures

[Mark Hatch]

forgot the OS and storage…

OS 10.6.4 with Apple Xsan

Mark Hatch
Cosmic Pictures

[Mark Hatch]

Sorry. Forgot to include that.

8-core Intel 3 GHz
16 GB of RAM

Also, the footage is 23.976 and so are the comps. And the main reason I did ProRes 4444 is because it is green screen material and I have rendered out the keyed footage to hopefully speed things up.

Mark Hatch
Cosmic Pictures

[Mark Hatch]

One last thought. I tried just using the outline of some keyed footage of a person. Then I added alpha blur to feather the displacement map. It worked great, but the body is displaced the same amount regardless of whether it’s the hand or the leg. Is there some type of way to have an alpha blur, or any other blur, account for the thickness of the area around it? Or perhaps a combination of filters? I’ll keep working on this, but if anyone has any thoughts, let me know.

Thanks.