[Michael Szalapski]

I work full-time in Tennessee/Kentucky doing motion graphics, some editing and other video bits and bobs for a company under a DoD contract.
I also do freelance stuff; mostly motion graphics and print graphics work, but some web design too.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Try making a new comp and a new solid and apply Particular to that new solid. WIthout adjusting any of Particular’s settings try rendering it out using your same render settings. If that doesn’t work, try doing it in a totally new project.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

You may have seen this post already, but in case you missed it, there was a recent discussion on the After Effects forum on day for night.

I agree with the other posters; TEST IT as much as possible before you actually begin shooting with your actors. Also you’ll have a terrible time of it, if you’ve got sunlight streaming through the foliage. Perhaps shooting on cloudy days would help.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

In the work I do (military contracor working with helicopters, etc.) we have had to put some HD cameras in some really tight spaces. We use the Sony HXR-MC1 and have had good success with it. We were pleased with the picture quality. You can get them with a small preview screen which is very helpful.

We usually just use normal cameras though.
However, one day we ran into a situation where we needed more HD cameras than we had, but I remembered we had the POV cameras so we set them up in some of the secondary locations instead of normal cameras (adjusting the location for the angle of the lens of course). We found that they had surprisingly good sound considering they’re POV cameras. I mean, lav’s will always get you better sound from a person speaking, but if that proves unworkable, these cameras have decent audio capabilities.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

The chair! An oft overlooked item in one’s arsenal. I didn’t realize the importance of a chair until my current job. God bless military contracts! We have amazingly expensive nice and comfortable chairs and my body no longer feels worn out at the end of a day. They’re not cushy; they’re supportive.

I had no idea life could be this good!

Sorry, I’ll stop with with the infomercial. But seriously, Steve’s right; consider the chair.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to accomplish, but I think if you duplicate the torso layer, flip the duplicate and make the original layer transparent for that one frame it’ll do what you’re asking.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

You do not want to do what you’re trying to do. AVCHD utilizes MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 (AVC) video compression codec.
From the incomparable Dave LaRonde:

Dave’s Stock Answer #1:

If the footage you imported into AE is any kind of the following — footage in an HDV acquisition codec, MPEG1, MPEG2, mp4, m2t, H.261 or H.264 — you need to convert it to a different codec.

These kinds of footage use temporal, or interframe compression. They have keyframes at regular intervals, containing complete frame information. However, the frames in between do NOT have complete information. Interframe codecs toss out duplicated information.

In order to maintain peak rendering efficiency, AE needs complete information for each and every frame. But because these kinds of footage contain only partial information, AE freaks out, resulting in a wide variety of problems.

You need to use your favorite encoder (Adobe Media Encoder is a good one) or your editing software to export/render/encode your video as a different kind of file format such as a Quicktime movie.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

You told us good information about your compositios, but not about your output. What file format you are exporting as, what compression, etc.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Quick question just to make sure it’s out of the way:
How are you doing your RAM preview? We’ve been getting this question a lot over the past month and nearly every time it’s because someone’s been pushing spacebar to get their “RAM preview” instead of pushing 0 on their number pad (not regular keyboard 0).

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

If I understand your question correctly, then Roland answered it. If you’re familiar with Photoshop, perhaps this explanation will help. Rendering out your movie is like flattening layers in Photoshop. Everything gets baked together and becomes one thing.

What are you trying to accomplish? Perhaps there’s a way to make it work.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.