[Matthew Woods]

I am actually in a similar boat here. I have a program that is all high res stills that I edited at SD resolution in final cut so that I could edit it without rendering, but now I need to render the sequence at a high resolution (portrait oriented HD), and preserve the relative placement and movement of the stills. I discovered that when I change the sequence settings, it is analogous to changing canvas size in Photoshop. I would like to change the sequence settings as if I was changing “image size.” I tried nesting the sequence in a higher res sequence and scaling up the low res sequence, but it just looked like a SD res scaled to HD when rendered. In After Effects there is an option to preserve the resolution of footage within a nested clip when rendering, even if that clip is scaled up. Is there a similar thing for Final Cut? Another trick I might try in AE would be to parent all my stills in the original sequence to a solid, and scale the solid up. I couldn’t find a way to do that in FC either.

Any help?

Thanks

[Matthew Woods]

I would max out on the memory upgrade, but it should run that software fine once Adobe gets around to making universal versions of it. Currently all of the Adobe software has to run under emulation on the intel macs because Adobe isn’t releasing universal versions until their next round of upgrades. So if you are planning on using a lot of Adobe software, and can afford to wait a little bit, I would hold out on buying a new mac until the universal versions are released. CS3 is supposed to be coming out early 2007. I don’t know when the next version of AE is coming out universal. Anyone else know that?

[Matthew Woods]

I had this problem on one of our machines and following this advice from one of the two articles you found fixed it:

You’re missing a scripting file called Adobe Unit Types. It belongs in a folder called ScriptingAdditions, which is found in the root level library on your hard drive. The path would be [your hard drive name] > [Library] > ScriptingAdditions. Check this folder and if you don’t have Adobe Unit Types, check your Previous System folder’s root library from your clean install. If you find you do have Adobe Unit Types, first quit all applications (especially Adobe apps). Then just drag Adobe Unit Types from your Previous System Folder’s Scripting Additions folder to your new ScriptingAdditions folder. (And if for some reason you don’t have a ScriptingAdditions folder, you can create one. Be sure NOT to put a space between the two words — make the name ScriptingAdditions.)

After you’ve done this, I’d restart your machine

[Matthew Woods]

I was all excited for a moment there Mylenium, but I can’t seem to get this effect to behave like a track matte does. It doesn’t seem to take in to take into account any transformations, effects, or masks on the matte source layer. I have tried checking and unchecking the “premultiply Matte Layer” (which sounds like it should fix the issue I am having) but it doesn’t seem to do anything. By unchecking “Composite Matte with Original” I can clearly see that the Matte it is pulling is not reflecting these factors. Checking and Unchecking “Stretch matte to fit” moves the Matte, but neither option reflects the matte’s transformations.

-Matt

[Matthew Woods]

I was all excited for a moment there Mylenium, but I can’t seem to get this effect to behave like a track matte does. It doesn’t seem to take in to take into account any transformations, effects, or masks on the matte source layer. I have tried checking and unchecking the “premultiply Matte Layer” (which sounds like it should fix the issue I am having) but it doesn’t seem to do anything. By unchecking “Composite Matte with Original” I can clearly see that the Matte it is pulling is not reflecting these factors. Checking and Unchecking “Stretch matte to fit” moves the Matte, but neither option reflects the matte’s transformations.

-Matt

[Matthew Woods]

If you are on a mac, I have had good luck with DVDxDV. https://www.dvdxdv.com/ Be aware, that it will not work on copy protected DVDs.

-Matt

[Matthew Woods]

Hi Brian,

I have been experimenting with your suggestion, but can’t seem to get it to do anything. The “Line” wave shapes seem to me to be pretty similar to the “Ring” shapes, just with a slightly elongated center. Using two emiters doesn’t seem to do anything for me either. They just create weird interfierance patterns between them. The best results I have gotten, have been by moving the emitter. This would be fine for a locked background with the boat moving through it, but in this case, the camera is locked on the boat, and the background is moving past. The angle isn’t top down, but I have a 3d layer in perspective to simulate the water surface.

-Matt

[Matthew Woods]

Hi Brian,

I have been experimenting with your suggestion, but can’t seem to get it to do anything. The “Line” wave shapes seem to me to be pretty similar to the “Ring” shapes, just with a slightly elongated center. Using two emiters doesn’t seem to do anything for me either. They just create weird interfierance patterns between them. The best results I have gotten, have been by moving the emitter. This would be fine for a locked background with the boat moving through it, but in this case, the camera is locked on the boat, and the background is moving past. The angle isn’t top down, but I have a 3d layer in perspective to simulate the water surface.

-Matt

[Matthew Woods]

I have found for this sort of effect, that some photoshop filters look better than anything I can get directly out of aftereffects. Have you tried rendering a file sequence out of After Effects, and creating an action in photoshop to batch render a photoshop effect on all your frames? Also, adjusting the brightness and contrast of the image before you apply any stylization filters can help reduce noise.

-Matt

[Matthew Woods]

It probably isn’t as full featured as other morph programs, but I have gotten some good results with morphx for mac. Best of all, its free!

https://www.norrkross.com/software/morphx/MorphX.php