[Reuben Fink]

I had tried that but still no dice. I’m trying a full reinstall. I wish there was some way to restore all plugins without having to do it manually.

OSX 10.6.4
Equipment: 2.8 ghz 8 core Intal Mac Pro, 20 gig of ram
Aps: CS5 Production Bundle, FCP Suite 2, Avid Media Composer

[Reuben Fink]

I can’t seem to get the point control to work. I’m sure I’m applying it wrong. Can you explain how to do this in more detail?

thisComp.layer("light null").transform.position+ [200,-200]

OSX 10.6.4
Equipment: 2.8 ghz 8 core Intal Mac Pro, 20 gig of ram
Aps: CS5 Production Bundle, FCP Suite 2, Avid Media Composer

[Reuben Fink]

OK I found a FIX. I had to do a little digging but there’s a unmapped command under windows>timeline which if you map it to a key it will cycle to the right. You can’t go to the left but I’ll take what I can get. So as long as you only have 2 timelines open then it should work fine. Another way is to split it into two viewable panels as you described then it will jump back and forth between both even if you have other sequences open, as long as the sequences were opened one right after the other. You’ll have to play with it to see where it’s limited. For some reason if you map a hotkey to window>program monitor it behaves similar cycling through the tabs but if you split a window then this command will not get you to that tab. So keep in mind though that when using this command it will activate the timeline tabs in the order that they were opened. So If you have say 4 sequence tabs open and you rearrange their order then you will jump tabs. But then again maybe there’s a secret fix for this.

OSX 10.6.4
Equipment: 2.8 ghz 8 core Intal Mac Pro, 20 gig of ram
Aps: CS5 Production Bundle, FCP Suite 2, Avid Media Composer

[Reuben Fink]

thanks for the workaround idea. It seems very strange to me to consider this an actual feature. Something that you would have to upgrade your version in order to get. I know a lot of people may not ever care about this functionality but I do about 90% of my editing on keyboard only. I have massive amounts of footage that I usually have to sift through so when I’m culling through it and picking selects no time is wasted when I need to cut and past to a separate selects timeline. Nothing worse then having to reach over to the mouse over 100 times in 1 session. No offense to Adobe I love their products, I use photoshop and after effects daily and have recently been exploring Premiere, but when you’re trying to win people over from say FCP you need to offer at least the same basic functionality. I can understand a different name, location, hotkey etc. but to just not be capable of something so simple. It seems silly.

But alas I will put the feature request in.

OSX 10.6.4
Equipment: 2.8 ghz 8 core Intal Mac Pro, 20 gig of ram
Aps: CS5 Production Bundle, FCP Suite 2, Avid Media Composer

[Reuben Fink]

Thanks for the suggestions. I went ahead with “form” and got it looking really close to what I need. I’ll spend more time tweaking. When I first attempted to twist the grid to make a figure 8 It looked close but it wasn’t really connected at both ends since it’s just spiraling around the x axis. I didn’t get the look I wanted until I created a ring using layer shapes and then assigned that as an alpha matte under the layer maps settings in form. This worked great to get a ring made of particles then I twisted the particle grid which gave me the figure eight shape I desired.

OSX 10.6.4
Equipment: 2.8 ghz 8 core Intal Mac Pro, 20 gig of ram
Aps: CS5 Production Bundle, FCP Suite 2, Avid Media Composer

[Reuben Fink]

I’ve tried this and there’s always a perceptible difference either where the shadows overlap just slightly. Or if I try to match the feathering it never looks quite seamless. After trying many tests I think the only way to do it right is clone out the original shadows so I have a clean wall then generate the shadows back in along with my hand shadow all at 100% black. From there I could control the overall opacity and it all looks like one solid piece.

OSX 10.5.8
Equipment: 2.8 ghz 8 core Intal Mac Pro, 20 gig of ram
Aps: CS3 Production Bundle, FCP Suite 2, Avid Media Composer

[Reuben Fink]

The pan scan ref movie is a good idea.

This project is a labor of love including the VFX so there is no post house and no one to ask, and the vfx guy I’m working with is pretty green when it comes to pro workflow but he can technically do what we need and he’s capable. It looks like I’m basically handling the VFX super position basically because we don’t have one. Even though we could probably get a way with a lot I was hoping to at least emulate a professional workflow. For the training really. If anyone could suggesting what works best for them when roundtripping the footage that would be huge. Or point me to somewhere that has a pretty solid example.

One route I was thinking of is this, let me know if anything looks wacky:

1. Use automatic duck to export timeline to after effects.

2. Do compositing work with pro-res proxies.

3. Nest each clip and re-online the original R3d files for output.

4. Export each clip as Animation codec (or DPX?) with handles and drop back into original FCP timeline.

5. Send EDL to Scratch. Yeah we actually have someone who’s going to run this footage through scratch for final color.

6. Output the final movie back to Final Cut as ProResHQ. Now this is where it gets a little unclear for me. Is it common to render out a final baked movie or should we leave more flexibility with single clips and handles when going back to Final Cut?

Thanks.

OSX 10.5.8
Equipment: 2.8 ghz 8 core Intal Mac Pro, 20 gig of ram
Aps: CS3 Production Bundle, FCP Suite 2, Avid Media Composer

[Reuben Fink]

Thank you all for your replies. It looks like the intensity is the way I’m going to go.

OSX 10.5.8
Equipment: 2.8 ghz 8 core Intal Mac Pro, 20 gig of ram
Aps: CS3 Production Bundle, FCP Suite 2, Avid Media Composer

[Reuben Fink]

Thank you I’ll look into the intensity. Can you tell me what kind of problems may I encounter using two card setup?

OSX 10.5.8
Equipment: 2.8 ghz 8 core Intal Mac Pro, 20 gig of ram
Aps: CS3 Production Bundle, FCP Suite 2, Avid Media Composer

[Reuben Fink]

Thanks for the reply. I’ll stop trying to find a way 🙂

In regards to mapping custom keys, the way I cut in FCP is very similar to how I’m learning to cut in Avid. So I really don’t think I would go that crazy. In a lot of ways I’m finding quite a few similarities. Then again maybe I’m already crazy.