[Mike Smith]

Multiband compressor provides some control over your audio, and can be applied at clip or track level: for a consistent sound, using it at track level may work better for you.

You can apply it in the usual ways – for a clip, drag it to the target clip or its effect control window, for a track, open the audio mixer window, use the small triangle about an inch down the left margin to open the Effects and Sends panels, and use the channel drop down to select and load it.

From the track-level version in audio mixer, you can open the customr set-up as usual by double-clicking the effect name. If aplied to a clip, you’ll have to use the little triangles to twirl down custom setup.

The custom setup window shows a graphical view of the various settings. The effect allows you to divide your sound into three frequency bands – you can alter the boundaries of these by dragging on the middle dividers. You can change the amplification for each band by dragging on its middle handle. Use threshold and ratio to control when the effect tapers off, and attack and release to manage how quickly or softly it cuts in and out.

It’s useful for compressing a track overall so that soft sounds are brought up for playback in noisy environments, and also for bringing voices to the fore. Listen carefully to playback before accepting – often in audio, if you have a decent source, then the less filtering the better ….

[Mike Smith]

Guess you’re going to have to key the footage and then color-correct the composite, either as a nested layer or as a pre-render, unless you can prevent the color correction from happening before the key. Of course you’re already applying the key before the color corrector …

[Mike Smith]

Alternatively, you could try creating a mono submix, and routing all of your source sound tracks to the submix. The submix would then route to master out.

[Mike Smith]

You might want to look for some clues at https://www.ayatoweb.com/ae_tips_e/ae40_e.html#

[Mike Smith]

You don’t say what your composition screen size is, nor whether you’re going to spring for a hi-def-capable plasma.

If your screen is standard def only, then mpeg2 is it, really, at PAL screen size 720×576, wide screen or not.

If you have a high def screen you could try outputting to a high def (screen size and) codec. We’re still a way away from the arrival of Blu Ray or HD DVD, but short programmes can be compressed with HD playback codecs and delivered from a standard DVDROM or hard disc.

For codec choice, Quicktime’s H.264 looks good, and Microsoft’s WMV compression choices include both decent mpeg4 and Video 9 – an mpeg4 variant – both very similar to H.264 quality.

Good luck with it.

[Mike Smith]

What does your preview to external monitor from the AE timeline look like?

[Mike Smith]

Are you running AE alone? And does this issue come up whether there are any AE composiions open or not? I guess I’m asking if this is linked to a specific plug-in in an AE comp which might be slow, resource-hungry or misbehaving with memory.

If this is a system-type issue and you haven’t recently installed new software / hardware, a checklist might include:

Check that you stiil have plenty of disc space on system and video data drives.

Try task manager to ensure that no-one has installed a “grid computing” app or a peer-to-peer file share without your knowledge. Check that you know what any running apps are.

Run your virus checker.

Check the windows / temp directory, and empty it. Do a search for *.tmp files and see if there are some large unneeded file fragments on your discs – if so, consider deleting these.

Consider defragmenting both your system drive and your data drive(s).

If at this point you have made no progress, you might be considering using system restore to roll back your system a couple of to where it was before the issue began.

Otherwise, Norton Utilities includes a number of useful system maintenance and optimisation tools.

[Mike Smith]

What happens if you create the desired effect, copy it, select all the target clips, and then paste …?

[Mike Smith]

You will need a film facility to handle this for you – your best bet may be to identify a suitable local facility and contact them for just what they need from you.

As an aside, quite apart from the impact on the visuals of large-screen projection, the sound may want attention. We all get quite used to minimal soundtracks on TV and video, but expect a richer and fuller sound when watching projected film.

https://www.zerocut.com/tech/vid_film.html may be of interest.
https://www.digitalfilmgroup.com/

[Mike Smith]

I’d vote it depends a bit on your target audience.

If it’s a Mac-using community, you can rely on Quicktime – in QT codecs some people like animation as wel as photjpeg, and sorenson has its admirers, and h.264 is excellent but does require the user to have QT7 installed.

If it’s a more business-oriented section of the market, you might want to think about windows media output. Their V9 codec is a good mpeg 4 variant so strong for distribution (if not for later reediting).

If you’re going on to the web, the Flash player is on a significantly higher percentage of systems than QT, WMPlayer or ReelPlayer. Flash 8 supports excellent compression from On2 in streamable flv files – google’s using this format.

And if you’re wanting a sendable reel, why not compress to mpeg2 and send out on DVD – very good portability, cross-platform, supports stand-alone players. PAL and NTSC might be an issue for DVD if you want to send it across regions …