[Michael Szalapski]

You said: My resulting TGA-sequence is flickering like the old movies from 1920. Only solution I found out, is to convert the whole QT-DV Material…

I’ve thought of another solution:
Make your design like the 1920’s old movies. That way it’s supposed to blink and flicker like that. No worrying about expressions, the Wiggler or ANYTHING!
It’s not a bug; it’s a feature.
😉

– 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]

There are several reasons that your graphics, strokes, particles, etc. look patched onto your video and not the seamless gorgeousness that you require.
The first thing that comes to my mind is that your video quality may not be of the most excellent standard. It may be a bit blurry, noisy, and/or washed out, so the crisp graphics would look startlingly sharp on top of it. The best solution for this would be to get better video… Barring that then you could try to match its blurriness and noise on your graphics.

Also if your graphics are too white, too red, or too anything they’ll look out of place. Try going for more subtle looks. Try making some more organic motion too. That might help.

Consider the design. Sometimes poor design just looks bad. Put some thought into the typography, the colour scheme, the timings…all of it. Sometimes something as little as changing a font or colour can make a world of difference.

Without actually seeing what you’re talking about I can’t help much more. Let me know if my piddly little attempt has actually assited 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]

I’m not sure I understood you fully, but I’ll try.

If I were going to create an effect where something broke apart and reformed into something else I would use shatter. Twice. Let me explain:

Take your first thing in its own composition and shatter it.
Take your second thing in its own composition and shatter it.
Make sure to use the exact same settings for both of the shatters. I would make it shatter into lots of little pieces with no gravity.

Now import both compositions into your main composition.
Put them one after the other overlapping somewhat.
Time remap your second composition so that it plays backwards.
Now you should be getting close.
You just need to fade from one to the other.

If I were doing this I’d try to create (in Zaxwerks or something) a piece that looks like the shattered pieces and make it fly close to the camera at the time you make your switch.

Is this what you were looking for?
Does it make sense?

– 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]

If you want the shadows and stuff then you’ll have to use 3d layers and set up lights and everything.
The easiest way to create a cube involves a bit of maths work. (For what you’re talking about it wouldn’t need the top and bottom part, which makes this a lot easier.)
Right.
Let’s assume that your pictures are all 600 px wide. I’m sure they’re not, but that should make the maths easier to get, also the height doesn’t matter because we’re not making the bottom or top.
Plop all your pictures into the composition in the same place and add a null object in the exact same place.
Let’s say that your pictures are called Picture1, Picture2, etc.
Take Picture1 and move it 300 pixels forward in Z space,
Take Picture3 and move it 300 pixels backward in Z space,
Take Picture2 and move it 300 pixels left in x space,
Take Picture4 and move it 300 pixels right in x space,
Rotate Picture2 and Picture4 90 degrees on the y axis.
Parent all 4 pictures to the null.
Now whenever you rotate the null you have 4 evenly rotating pictures!

Now all you have to do is to set up the lights and cameras to make it look pretty.

See? All you need to do is to move the pictures exactly half of their width one way then the other parenting them to a null to get lovely cubic shapes!

If you plan to show more than 4 pictures in total then there are several ways you could do it. I would reccomend importing all your pictures at once and putting them on the same cube then just adjust the in and out points for when you want each one. (I hope that made sense)

– 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]

The decimal point on the number pad of the computer keyboard. It looks like this . 🙂

– 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]

This shouldn’t be too hard to do. You’ll probably get close to perfect quite quickly.

Create a Null Object.
Select your video layer.
Go to Animation>Track Motion
Get it tracking!
Then, before you click apply, click ‘Edit Target’ and choose your Null to be it.
Then apply your tracking.
Then all you have to do is parent your halo to the null.

You could cut out the null and just apply the tracking to your halo layer, but I prefer to do it with the null in case I want to do some other transformations. Read your manual or the help files for more assistance with layer tracking.

– 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]

Just render out your video as stills and import them into photoshop and apply your filters there, then re-import them into AE.

For more help on this tTry a forum search for filmstrip, or even Photoshop.

– 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]

Why not just use a lens flare and keyframe the brightness down for when it goes behind a bar?

– 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]

Just add a random opacity expresssion to your adjustment layer.

– 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]

Just add a random opacity expresssion to your adjustment layer.

– 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.