Michael Hancock
Forum Replies Created
-
You CAN preview audio in real time via the RAM preview. You’re used to hitting “.” on the keypad to hear audio. Did you know you can add markers using the * on the keypad? This way you can listen and mark where ou want your animations to hit. Saves you having to write everything down while timing it out in Premiere.
Also, you can hit “0” on the keypad to RAM preview. This loads as much video into RAM as possible and plays it back in realtime. It can also play audio with the video. Here’s how:
Open your Time Control window (Window–>Time Control, or Ctrl+3 on a PC, I’m not sure on a Mac). See the little speaker icon in the time control window? Click it on. Now, when you RAM preview, you’ll preview your audio as well. After Effects is still a terrible editor, but it’s not so bad that it can’t play audio and video together for a preview.
Mike.
-
I have no experience with Sapphire 2.0, but I use 1.0 all the time. I assume many things will work the same though.
1. If you’re doing the MakeRGBA, your background will turn black when you put the effect on your .psd layer. Also, don’t Alt+Add the effect (nest it)…just drop it on. Then add your blur, THEN add a composite effect like S_Layer or S_DropShadow. This will return the transparency to your .psd and composite it over your background. If you’re not adding a composite effect you won’t get your background back.
2. You can always step into your .psd on V2, copy the alpha (Alt+C loads it into your source monitor), step out of your effect and put the alpha on V3. Now remove the matte key effect on V2, leaving you with your fill. Now you can put your Sapphire blur on V3, then the matte key effect. Voila! Instant blur, and it shouldn’t effect your background.
3. Read the help files for Sapphire 2.0 and the apply to title/key effect. It has to work somehow–you may be missing one or two steps for it to work.
Hope this helps. Let us know if any of these options work.
Michael.
-
Is your footage already DV? If it’s better than DV, don’t back it up on a DV tape. It’ll compress it and you’ll lose quality.
Also, if the project is finished and you just want to back it up, consolidate your sequence, download an Avid media mover program (like Media Sift at https://www.senkou.com/ or MDV at https://fiool.nm.ru/progz/ . Both of these are free programs that allow you to move all of your media from a project to another drive, or sort into folders, and various other fun things. They’re free, but the MDV site is in Russian. The program, I’m told, is in English. I’ve used Media Sift, it rocks.
Just use one of these to transfer the media of your consolidated project to another drive for backup, or burn that media to a DVD. Then you don’t have to worry about exporting, codecs, compression or finding another program to lay your finished piece to miniDV. Be sure to copy your bins and project files to the DVD and voila! Your project is backed up and can be put back online anytime in the future should you need it, with the original omf files and all. This will allow you to make more dubs, or even change it. Laying it to miniDV will lock it in with new timecode–no changing, unless it’s really easy (adding a super or something).
However, if you’re dead set on wanting to back up to miniDV, just do a digital cut to tape and avoid exporting and the rest of the mess.
Mike.
-
Xpress 5.5 is the latest upgrade of Xpress Pro HD. Avid is dropping the HD because all Xpress Pro systems are now HD (except DV, but it seems like they’re possibly discontinuing that line). Hope I’m not breaking any rules here by suggesting this, but if I were you I’d jump over to the Avid forums to see what’s been posted about the 5.5 upgrade. It’s only $50 bucks, and the forums there are buzzing about the good and bad of 5.5.
Mike.
-
I agree with you–I’d just import the rendered clip into AE, throw on a time remap and rerender. It would be a lot faster than the way I suggested, but now the original poster knows how to time remap with alpha!
Mike.
-
But won’t that destroy the alpha? I assumed bonnfox wanted to speed up just the quicktime with alpha to avoid rerendering it in whatever program it was created in. Plus, if it was going over another shot and you mixed everything down the motion effect would speed up the background too. Or is there a way to make the mixdown retain alpha info?
Mike.
-
Here’s what you need to do.
1. Put your movie with alpha into your timeline–say V2.
2. Step into the movie, highlight the alpha track and copy it to your clipboard.
3. Step out of your effect. Hit the Remove Effect key to get rid of your matte key effect on your movie with alpha (on V2). This will leave you with just the fill.
4. On V3, cut in the alpha you copied earlier.
5. Speed up the fill (now alone on V2) and copy the speed effect onto the alpha on V3. Voila! Sped up movie with alpha (the alpha is simply on a different track).Michael
-
I assume you’re trying to import them, so you need to change your import settings. If you have it set to the top option (I can’t remember what it’s called and I won’t be in front of a system for at least 2 more hours) it will blow it up to fill the screen. You need to import it as Maintain/No Resize or Maintain/Square or something similar (again, I’m not in front of a system and my mind is still numb from waking up at 4:45am). This should keep the video at 320×240 with a black border all the way around them. Now add a Picture In Picture effect, scale to your liking and crop off the black. Repeat with the rest and you’re done!
Mike.
-
Hahaha! If done right, that would be great. I can just imagine now…the lilting music, the giant fake smiles, the “Wow, this pizza is swell!” and “Golly that’s a big slice! Plus a soda pop! Yum.” I like it.
Mike.
-
Andrew–
Allow me to be the first to thank you for the tutorial. Rock on! I have been wondering some of these effects (such as Lens Blur) worked, and I haven’t the time to read the help files and fiddle with it myself. Great tutorial. Helped a lot.Thanks again…keep ’em coming (please).
Mike.