[Michael Szalapski]

And there’s always the ever popular duplicate footage, blur, blend mode=darken.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

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

[Michael Szalapski]

I capture my video into the computer as an avi.
I don’t see any reason to render it out as something else before working on it. Surely the more times you end up rendering it the worse it’s going to look.

Of course, I could be wrong.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

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

[Michael Szalapski]

Turn the layer to full quality.

Precompose your text layer, THEN add the glow to the precomp.

These two solutions spring to mind.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

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

[Michael Szalapski]

Or, if you’re really cool/geeky, you could get a TV tuner card for your computer and capture it straight onto your hard drive. That way you could look at it frame by frame! They sell them at Best Buy, and LOADS of other places.

And no, I haven’t done it. I have no tv.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

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

[Michael Szalapski]

What sort of job are you applying for? What sort of message are you trying to get across?

Overall I like the piece from an editing/mograph standpoint. A few things I would mention though, in case you’ve got time this morning:

I wasn’t a huge fan of some of the shots chosen. For instance: the kid with his arms crossed (laughing?) looks like home movie footage. I would have chosen some more interesting bits of cinematography.

I liked the timing of the piece. It seemed to move nicely. Perhaps the shot of the two people in bed is a bit too long. The color is consistent throughout, which is probably good…possibly bad, depending on what you’re trying to show.

Why do the LCD numbers fade out over the incoming footage, it seems they should be cut off before they are.

And WHAT is with that matrixy screensaver thing? I’ve got that screensaver on my computer too, it’s a sweet screensaver, but I wouldn’t put it in a video. Especially here, because it doesn’t fit in. You’ve got shots of people then, randomly, matrix text.

The end with the logo is good. I just want the things in the background to blink on and off occasionally.

Decent piece, pleasant music; overall I like it.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

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

[Michael Szalapski]

Sunday’s not the best day if you need quick feedback on the COW. Some of us are on the COW between renders at work (or similar situations). I’ll take a look at it in a few minutes, but it may be too late for you.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

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

[Michael Szalapski]

Yes, you can set keyframes for the master control. Read the manual, it’ll tell you how.

You could also just keyframe the opacity of your adjustment layer.
I, personally, prefer using Channel Mixer to desaturate footage. You can achieve a custom black and white mix when you click monochrome.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

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

[Michael Szalapski]

Hire a team of people. With 3d skills. Have meetings for a few weeks to discuss design ideas.
Work your bum off for a few more weeks.
Done!

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

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

[Michael Szalapski]

Wouldn’t it be better to render to the Quicktime Animation codec at 100% quality? For all practical purposes it’s lossless and the file sizes will be a lot smaller.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

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

[Michael Szalapski]

Steve’s right – a null is the way to go.

Here’s how I would do it:
Make them 3d layers
Position them back in z space half the width you want the carousel to be.
Animate the up and down motion (every other one up while every other one goes down…or something, you might not want the up and down motion at all.)
Create your null and make it 3d.
Parent one layer to the Null
Rotate the null 180 degrees
Parent another layer to the null
Rotate the null 90 degrees. You should now have two layers moved, one on the left, one on the right.
Parent another layer to the null
Rotate the null 180 degrees
Parent another layer to the null
Rotate the null 45 degrees
Parent another layer to the null
Rotate the null 90 degrees
Parent another layer to the null
Rotate the null 90 degrees
Parent another layer to the null
Rotate the null 90 degrees
Parent your last layer to the null.

Now, when you animate your null’s rotation, all of your layers should be evenly spaced and moving in a circle. You can set them to auto-orient towards the camera if you want.

That’s one way anyway…

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

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