[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Scott,

I understand your frustration and respect that fact that you have been patient with us while we work through this. Thank you for that.

So … I wonder if perhaps the 32 / 64 label that we have been assigning to our product installers for RED might be a little misleading. The option is not OS specific, but rather host specific. Currently, Avid MC is a 32 bit application that can run on 32 or 64 bit systems. For RED 5x to appear in Avid MC 5x, you would need to use the RED 5x 32 bit installer. The current revision of RED 5 is 5.0.4.

Quicktime is not currently supported as a movie type in RED 5 64 bit on Windows bit it is with RED 5 32 on Windows. I would like to suggest that you install and use RED 5 32 on your system.

Regarding the alpha issue, here’s something that I’d like to ask you to try.

• launch RED 5.0.4 standalone
• create a new comp
• delete any existing tracks
• import an rgb image or movie clip
• create a text element
• twirl down the image / movie track so that you can access the mask track
• drag the text onto the mask and click on the invert mask button on the mask track so that it punches alpha through the image
• add the comp to the render queue
• open the render settings dialogue box for the queued item
• set the movie type to AVI-VFW
• set the compressor to full frames (uncompressed)
• set the alpha pop-up to straight
• click OK and render

Then I’d like you to check the render and see if it includes the alpha channel. It should. If it doesn’t then I’d like to have someone call you directly and go over this with you live. If possible, can you try this now?

Cheers,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Brandon,

No – nothing has come through from you. Did you send them to peterm@borisfx.com? You might want to try using yousendit free ftp service. We have found it to be very reliable and quick.

Cheers,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Kirk,

This is really good and useful information and will certainly help us in our attempts to reproduce the issue.

Thanks for passing this along.

Cheers,

peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Raymond,

We’re taking a look at this internally to see if this is an installer issue and something we need to correct.

Thanks for letting us know of your experience and I’m glad that you were able to figure it out.

Cheers,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Guys,

This is all news to me – I have no knowledge of this happening on any other customer systems but I will begin an immediate investigation into the source of the problem. It could be installer related but then again, it might be something else. We’ll know for sure after we meet internally to discuss it.

Thanks,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Yes, that should work just fine – RED 4 projects will indeed move forward into RED 5. If it doesn’t I’d like to hear about it.

Thanks,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

What’s the split layer command?

• It’s in After Effects – it duplicates the layer and creates in and out points at the split.

How will using the plugin’s camera instead of comp camera affect the objects?

* I’m not sure what you mean by that.

I have the comp camera moving in the space, nothing crazy, a little job move around the front of the scene. But I set the BCC plugin to comp camera so it was in the correct position. Will it still be okay when I change it to the plugin’s cam since it’ll be attached to the null?

• Now this is more information that you originally offered. You didn’t mention that you were animating the scene camera in your original post – and it makes a difference in your approach. Why don’t you send us a copy of your comp and we’ll take a look at it. You can send that to us at support@borisfx.com – you might want to use an FTP transfer application such as yousendit to pass that to us as there is a low limit on the size of attachments for email.

Cheers,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Scott,

The word that I got from release engineering on the issue where you are installing 504 but seeing 502 is that you should uninstall everything RED 5x, then install the 504 version. Could you please try that to see if it helps?

Pure RED 4 projects, not Avid FX projects, should come forward to RED 5. Avid FX projects currently will not come forward into RED 5 … but if Avid FX is updated to it’s RED sibling then your wish would be granted. I’m sorry but what with NDA’s I can’t publicly comment as to whether that is that going to happen.

Cheers,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Scott,

Sorry for the delay in responding.

• RED 5.0.4 for Win 7 64 bit is currently available as a download from our web site. You can access the download here: borisfx.com/downloads/

• Currently Avid FX settings in the MC timeline and RED 5 are not interchangeable.

• AVI – VFW codec should provide you with an RGBA option – it’s not Quicktime but it does support alpha

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Brandon,

The effect that you have in mind may be possible but it’s a lot of work to make it happen using BCC 3D Objects in After Effects. There are basically two problems to solve here:

1. How do we make the text spin in tandem with the other objects that are parented to a null

• in the BCC filter set the camera model to orbit
• add an expression to the orbit spin parameter
• pick whip the orbit spin parameter to the null spin

this will make the spin of the text match that of the null

• in the BCC filter, in the transforms group, modify the Position Z parameter value so that the text pivot fits the scene

2. How do we make multiple instances of the BCC Extruded Text filter appear in the same comp so that as they spin, they correctly appear behind or on front of each other in z space

• use the split layer command and then keyframe the opacity of the layers – it’s a bit of work but that’s the only way to do it

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

Peter.