[Mstleger]

That’s a huge composition.
You could always lower the resolution to work, then bump it up to render. Try custom resolution setting, render every 10 or 20 pixels in each direction.

You could work in a smaller composition, one that is sized for your output.

You could scale down your map and elements in illustrator (to under 1000 pixels in each direction), then animate small in AE, then select continuous rasterization switch for the layers and scale them back up. They will maintain quality because they are vector-based.

AE tends to freak out a little when it sees giant images. Anything bigger than a 2k film plate tends to slow down my machine at home.

[Mstleger]

Yes, the problem is that masks are 8 bit. When heavily feathered, banding and posterization sometimes appears. One solution is to precompose the feathered solid and apply a blur to the precomp layer. Or, you could make a gradient in Photoshop, save it at a high bit depth, and use that as a matte in AE.

[Mstleger]

cool, thanks.

[Mstleger]

That makes sense.
I remember hearing alot about problems with QT 7 and AE. Was there ever a patch or fix available? I searched the posts, but found 100’s of unrelated quicktime problems.

[Mstleger]

Even if you could go with the Quaddro, the open gl support for that card with AE on a Mac is limited. Not worth it until software takes advantage of the card on a Mac platform. However, if you have a PC around, the 4500 is really worth the pricetag.

[Mstleger]

Thanks, all. I’ll look into both packages, and of course, I’ll post links to the finished tutorial! The first tutorial will be for roto and paint, because it’s the spackle that fills the seams in vfx work. That, and there are not a whole lot of in-depth tutorials that detail the many approaches to manual matte creation.

[Mstleger]

Thanks. Is there a way to toggle the overlays in AE? What software do you use to capture the screen action itself?

[Mstleger]

Hey, the graphics card supports it, just not AE for Mac. Next upgrade probably will, though. The card might accelerate open gl for other software on the mac.

[Mstleger]

Hey, I had the same problem at a job. The client just bought the system, and just didn’t understand why it didn’t take advantage of open gl2. Fact is, AE and this card work like a dream- on a PC platform. Apple Mac systems don’t let AE take advantage of this. Yet. I assume you have one of these systems. IF that’s not the case, I would ensure that all the proper drivers are installed.

[Mstleger]

Hey, that’s a cool variation on a really old trick. We used to do it in high school photo class. Take a 35mm camera and set it up on a tripod to use a bulb exposure, hold open the shutter, and let someone take a flashlight or lighter and draw in the air. Hit your flashbulb and clost the shutter, and you’ve got a really cool light. Then you can take it apart and push it around in AE.