[Ra-ey Saleh]

Thanks Alan, saved me going insane.

[Ra-ey Saleh]

Really great effects – all the best in your new career!

[Ra-ey Saleh]

Hey Kevin,
To be honest, we don’t run Avid Xpresss Pro 5.7.7 on Mac here (and Mac OS 10.7 doesn’t exist did you mean 10.5?).
There could be a change in the new OS which would stop this file from working.
Are you sure you downloaded the correct file?
It should say:
DMN_Transfer_OSX_CW8.sit

Otherwise, I’d download the free demo versions of Sapphire or Boris and use the alternative effects listed in the Tut.

Ra-ey

[Ra-ey Saleh]

Really useful tip Aharon.
Nice to see a new Illusion Tutorial!
Thanks.

Ra-ey

[Ra-ey Saleh]

Cool library Alan. It’s sometimes easy to take these for granted, so just wanted to say: GREAT WORK!

Ra-ey

[Ra-ey Saleh]

No worries, a pleasure.

Ra-ey

[Ra-ey Saleh]

Richard,
we have both Vitascene and Sapphire and you are correct, there are some cross-over effects. You’ll find that a lot of plugins have some similar effects (i.e. Film Grain, Glows, Cartoon etc…).
I find Vitascene is great for transitions (and some filters) as well as being realtime, whereas, to be honest, Sapphire is the Grand Dame of “looks”. You can stack many effects on top of each other – use the ‘one/two track below’ functionality to do some crazy compositing, and it’s a very fast render (compared to Boris for example).
It’s really ‘swings and roundabouts’ when it comes to buying plugins – everyone has a favourite.

Ra-ey

[Ra-ey Saleh]

The bars were created with ‘601’ levels – as they are video in origin – so need to be imported with ‘601’ levels.
You also want to select ‘Non-interlaced’ or else you’ll get a weird black line on the left of frame.

Ra-ey

[Ra-ey Saleh]

With the Training download version (which I think is v7.6) you need keep in mind a few things:
1) After you’ve installed it and created your first project; if you close the program and then go back into it again, it will loose your route for the projects, you’ll have to re-navigate to them on your C drive > ‘DS Projects’.
2) It also has a bug that once you’ve created this first project, closed the program; and try and go back into it, it will flash an error saying that you have too many ‘shares’. Essentially, it is imperative that your ‘DS Projects’ folder in “unshared” and that the ‘DS_v7.6’ folder is “shared”. Problem is that although it might look like this is the case, you will actually have to manually check each one. Don’t just look for the ‘hand’ (this was my mistake!) but go into Properties and check your ‘share’ options there. You will definitely have to change one of them (although, can’t remember which).
3) Big Problem. If you are running XP and have installed Service Pack2 (which you should have for security reasons) you will not be able to import any footage into the DS. There is an update in SP2 that ‘breaks’ the Media Tool. Now, u can uninstall this one update (KB908531), which will fix the problem, but obviously you do this at your own risk. However, without doing something you will be unable to import any footage at all.
Below is the ‘Official’ explanation of the problem on the DS website:

“Windows XP Professional requires Service Pack 2 for Avid DS 7.6.
For better operating system protection with Avid DS 7.5, we recommend that you upgrade Windows XP Professional to Service Pack 2 but DO NOT install Security Update KB908531 to avoid breaking the Avid DS Explorer and Media Tool.”

And, a few ideas of fixing it that do not mean uninstalling anything… – (BUT AGAIN YOU DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK!)

http://www.pinnaclecomputerservice.com/htv-spyware-042406.pdf

Hope this all saves you the 2 days it took me to figure out!

Ra-ey

[Ra-ey Saleh]

Weird. Unzipped file into pI folder and still no image appears.