[Matthew Woods]

I’m willing to bet, that you are trying to export to a drive formatted with FAT32. The FAT32 filesystem only supports files less than 4 gigs in size. If you try to write a file larger than that size limit on a FAT32 drive it will fail and the file will be corrupt. Many usb sticks still come formatted FAT32 by default. Use Apple’s disk utility to reformat them. If you need the drive to be cross platform go with ExFat. If it is Apple only, go with APFS or HFS+.

[Matthew Woods]

I guess I’m a hoarder. I still have a bunch of them on my bookshelf. I liked that magazine.

[Matthew Woods]

You are not alone. Watch this. It is cathartic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeopaTW16kA

I’ve used AE for over 15 years. I used to love it. Now it is painful to use and I try to avoid it when I can. It really has no good all around competition for everything it does, so I keep returning to it.

Best alternatives I know of are :

Fusion or Nuke for compositing.

Apple Motion or Cavalry for Motion Graphics.

Hit Film Pro for being the most similar in interface.

If anyone has others I’d love to check them out.

I’ve switched from Premiere/AE to Final Cut/Motion for the most part. I still use AE for a lot of things though. Motion is weird and lacks polish. It works best if you think of it as a development tool for Final Cut plugins.

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[Matthew Woods]

Hi Roger, Can you elaborate on the CCC monthly fee? I don’t see anything about a fee on their purchase page. I have been evaluating it as an FCP backup solution and was just about to purchase.

[Matthew Woods]

This has been a long running issue for me. I have been using AE for over 20 years now. I used to love it. Now it is an exercise in frustration. See this thread started in 2016!

https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/ram-preview-not-in-real-time/td-p/8353465

Have you tried the M1 Native Beta of After Effects? I am hoping Apple forcing Adobe to rewrite their code will fix finally this issue. I haven’t had consistent realtime playback in AE since I got my 2017 iMac Pro. Interestingly my old 2013 iMac (last iMac with a NVIDIA card) plays back in realtime just fine. Unfortunately, it will no longer run the latest OS or AE.

If the Beta runs any better for you, please report back. I am interested in getting a mac Studio. AE (and Element 3d) are what is holding me back.

[Matthew Woods]

Have you tried using a Stroke Layer Style instead of the shape’s stroke? That will maintain width regardless of position in 3d, but only works on the alpha outline of shape. If you need to control internal strokes, you will need to separate your shape into multiple layers.

[Matthew Woods]

Did you try duplicating the project, and opening the duplicate?

[Matthew Woods]

We have also been frustrated with Adobe’s performance/stability. Sounds like you are on a Mac so you could try switching to Final Cut Pro X. We made the switch about a year ago and haven’t looked back. FCPX seems wacky if you are used to Premiere or other NLE software, but you get used to it. FCPX absolutely blows premiere out of the water in terms of speed and stability. We just finished a 9 screen show in Final Cut that would have taken multiple hours and crashes to render. Final Cut renders it in ~20 minutes. There is a 90 day free trial: https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/trial/ and you can use this tool to convert you’re premier project to FCPX: https://intelligentassistance.com/sendtox.html. It does a surprisingly good job of transferring most of your edit (minus effects and color correction). I don’t think I would have fully realized the benefit of FCPX enough to get over the learning curve if I hadn’t started by transferring a weighty Premiere project for comparison. Best of luck.

[Matthew Woods]

Try this: Make your text one color. Apply a “Stroke” effect to the text layer and set its path to the same path as your text. Make the stroke your second color, set its paint style to “On Original Image” . Adjust the brush hardness to get your gradient correct. Last apply the “CC Composite” effect with Composite Original set to “Stencil Alpha.

Cheers,

Another Matt

[Matthew Woods]

I thought about making everything a compound clip but that gets unwieldy. I have a lot of files, and a lot of layers, and I find compound clips also make headaches when we go to export audio to post, so I try to minimize our use. I wondered if there was something I could do with the proxy workflow treating the placeholder clip as a proxy, but final cut seems to only want to work with its own proxies.

So far, the best way I have found to do this:

1. Lift the placeholder clip from the base storyline if it isn’t already.

2. Place the playhead at the beginning of the placeholder clip (to keep track of the in-point).

3. Drag out the in-point of the placeholder so it starts at beginning of the clip

4. Place the master clip in a layer on top of the placeholder.

5. Copy the placeholder clip from the timeline.

6. Paste the attributes from the placeholder onto the master.

7. Drag the in-point of the master back to the playhead (see step 2)

8. Drag the out-point of the master to match the outpoint of the placeholder.

9. Copy and paste any transitions from the placeholder to the master.

10. Delete the placeholder

11. Drop the master back into the base storyline if necessary.

It works, but it is a lot of steps for something I feel should just be a keystroke for swapping the files. We made the switch to Final Cut from Premiere about six months ago, and I really appreciate its speed and stability. It handles and plays back our crazy many layered projects with ease. I have washed my hands of Premiere. There are a few weird oversights though that seem to require complicated workarounds for what should be simple tasks.