[Matt Riley]

I tried that and it mostly works. It’s not a great solution, as the filter is only 8 bit and is slow to render. I really want to take advantage of the improved motion blur in AE CS3, so I need a solution that can make it work the “right” way. 😉

There has to be a relationship between the data. I’m just not smart enough to write an expression to figure it out.

How does AE’s 4 point tracker figure out position data? Or rather, what’s the relationship between the position data it generates and the corner pin effect it applies?

Any ideas, anyone? I can’t be the only one with this problem. 🙁

-Matt

[Matt Riley]

Outside of AE, in the Finder (I’m on a Mac).

It’s not an OS thing, though. These are the same kind of icons Photoshop generates unless you turn off the option in Photoshop’s preferences. So, these icons are baked-into the files by AE as it renders.

I like the icons OS X’s Finder can generate better if I need to have icon display turned on, so I would love to be able to have AE *not* create icons for the files rendered to an image sequence.

Right now, if I get really annoyed, I use a contextual menu plug-in to nuke all the icons when the render is done. This, however, seems silly as it just feels like a preference ought to be able to be set somewhere to stop this behavior in the first place. 🙂

-Matt

[Matt Riley]

[lasvideo] “Unfortunatley our Avids set the standards and expectations our clients (and us) have for SPEED (long renders in SD and HD projects for extremely simple Motion 3 effects) and
reliability (render caches dont ever disappear on the DS).”

I can only assume that bit about Avid DS never losing render cache files is either coming from someone who has little experience with the system or it is a joke.

I can tell you first-hand that DS has more than done its fair share of “where’d it go?” with render caches for me. And considering the type of rendering I’m generally doing on DS (lots of compositing/fx means long render times) it can be infuriating to open your project and see all that time was for not even though it was just there. I think maybe having a red line for needing to render is just asking for trouble – I see red alright when it loses a couple hours of renders. I hear taupe is soothing; maybe render needed should be changed to taupe color as a general rule for all software packages. 😉

I’m not saying FCP/FCS is perfect but Avid DS is a far cry from perfect as well. The second the perfect editing/fx package is compiled, I think we’ll all switch to it. But much like the old saying for expecting a G5 in a laptop, I think we can expect the perfect editing/fx package to be released around the time the sun dies. 🙂

-Matt

[Matt Riley]

You can, in fact, copy the trapcode filters from one AE install to another, even on different machines. Just copy the whole trapcode folder from the plug-ins folder of your AE7 install to your AE3 plug-ins folder and you should be set. You will need to grab your presets folder as well. If you are moving from machine to machine, grab the trapcode preferences from your home/Library/Preferences folder as well (this is what contains the serial numbers for your trapcode install).

If you are moving to an Intel machine, PPC plug-ins will not load (i.e. not even show up in the effects list) when AE CS3 is running in Intel native mode. You can, however, get it to load PPC plug-ins (such as the current trapcode plugs) by running AE CS3 in Rosetta mode. Rosetta is what Apple calls their PPC translation layer. You can run AE CS3 (or any other Intel native app) in Rosetta mode by getting info on the application (ctrl- or right-click on the application icon, select Get Info) and then ticking on the box for opening the app using Rosetta. You’ll see a mighty big slowdown but your trapcode plugs should load up fine.

-Matt

[Matt Riley]

Why are you rendering footage coming out of FCP to go into AE? You should be using the Export command in FCP rather than Export using QuickTime Conversion (in most cases). If you use the Export command in FCP, it can make a reference movie of your edit, which is generally much smaller than a full export because it references the original media (and avoids transcoding issues). Then, AE can import this and work with it like you would expect. Unless there is some reason you need to work in the animation codec in AE, you are probably just creating more hassle (and more GB of media!) for yourself than you need.

If you plan on doing a lot of FCP to AE type of workflow, I would suggest investing in Pro Import AE from Automatic Duck. It’s one of those “magically delicious” products that makes life so much easier you can’t imagine not having it after using it once. This is what I do on a regular basis: Edit P2 material in FCP, export to xml, use autoduck to import the edit/sequence into AE and finish there. It’s actually a pretty fantastic workflow.

-Matt

[Matt Riley]

I work with P2 footage in AE all the time (it’s my online/finish tool for P2 projects) and it always looks great. Perhaps there is something wonky with your AE install. Have you tried reinstalling, just to see what happens?

If you want to post a small clip, I’d be willing to download it and look at it for you on my systems (AE CS3 beta and AE 7 pro).

-Matt

[Matt Riley]

I’ve imported somewhere around 500 GB or so of P2 material into FCP 6 running on an Intel and a PowerPC system and have had zero issues. So, I don’t think P2 import is borked for everyone.

I agree with the previous posts: Always always always make a complete backup of your P2 media as it existed on the card for situations just like this. I know it doesn’t help much now but it might save you some headaches in the future.

-Matt

[Matt Riley]

[David Roth Weiss] “Forget that, check out Apple’s new internal xraid mini with the wireless xsan option – gives you uncompressed HD with WiFi SAN that allows you and everyone at Starbucks to collaborate seamlessly on those big History Channel projects. “

Ah… I knew there was a reason Apple hasn’t updated the XRAID in years, seemingly ignoring this strange phenomenon known as “4 Gigabit fibre.” Now I know what their engineers have been putting together for the next gen. of their RAID…

-Matt

[Matt Riley]

At this p[Joe Murray] ”

It is a very simple thing and should be possible in Final Cut, but After Effects renders scrolling type much more cleanly than FCP.”

Since his type was done in Photoshop, we are really talking about moving one graphic element over the top of another (it’s not “type” any more). I agree, FCP should be able to do this but like you said AE is the better choice if it is available.

Are you rendering in fields in your FCP sequence? If so, try setting up a sequence that is frames and rendering that way. Also, splitting up the render might help quite a bit (i.e. render the moving text by itself, export the rendered piece, then import it and lay it over the background and see if that will render correctly).

Do you have motion blur enabled on the scrolling type graphic? If so, try turning it off and see if that helps. If not, try turning it on and see if THAT helps. 😉

If you have easy access to AE, I would strongly consider using that instead as you’ll probably spend less time fighting things like this.

-Matt

[Matt Riley]

Agreed: FCP is frustrating to take from offline to online in the traditional sense (capture, edit, recapture).

Avid DS makes this rather easy, allowing you to have multiple resolutions and compressions of your clips and awesome media management to let you purge and recapture whatever you want at any time, either from the timeline or from bins.

Then again, if you are working with P2 or another file-based format (which FCP does rather well) then there is no need for an offline/online model, which is a beautiful thing. 🙂

-Matt