[Richard Smith]

But aren’t tif, tga, png lossy image formats? I would prefer to not lose quality.

[Richard Smith]

[Steve Brame] “Nor should all 80-210 minutes of a feature film be on a single working timeline in an editor.”

Excuse me for the off-topic, but won’t it be necessary, in an editor (eg. Premiere), to have, at one point, all the footage on a single timeline? How else could one merge all comps into the final render of the movie?

[Richard Smith]

Firstly, by “regular computer” I don’t mean “with average specs”.
By “regular computer” I mean PC’s, as opposed to Macs and Workstations.
Also, 4K is too much. How about 1080/2K?
So my question is:
Can a Windows PC, with top-of-the-line specs, have a chance of editing full-length movies, within a reasonable time (not a whole year:))? Or, even with top gear, this is a domain reserved for Macs and Workstations, PC’s just can’t cut it?

[Richard Smith]

For example, a full-length, regular movie.
(Regular meaning “no 3D CG involved”. I understand those things really up the requirements.)

What I’m most interested in is: when upgraded, can a PC edit the above movie at speeds comparable with the Workstations or Macs? Does it stand a chance? Or it’s limited just for small-time stuff- ads, shorts etc.?

[Richard Smith]

[Todd Kopriva] “you have to convert them using something else to even get them into After Effects.”

Yes. I mean to convert the file via Total Video Converter. And as I don’t want quality loss to occur, I’ll use your suggestion- Quicktime Animation codec.

I selected MOV as converted filetype but.. in the Codecs list there is no mention whatsoever of any Animation codec.
Where can I find it?

[Richard Smith]

[Todd Kopriva] “I use the PNG video codec in a QuickTime (MOV) container”

Can this be done in Windows, with AE?

[Todd Kopriva] “losslessly encoded”

Is it really lossless? You don’t lose any quality?

[Richard Smith]

Well, I thought once AE is officially accepting .wmv, .mpg etc. as importable filetypes, it doesn’t matter what codec version they’re made with- it’ll work!
Seems I was wrong- but still, they could pop a warning window to say: “Codec version not supported” or something.

Anyway, I’ll try upgrading.

[Richard Smith]

I run After Effects 6.5.

[Richard Smith]

[Dave LaRonde] “you’d have to convert it”

OK, but with what? Some footage isn’t importable into either AE or Premiere Pro, so how do I convert it?

[Dave LaRonde] “If AE says it’s missing a codec to use the footage”

Unfortunately, that is all AE says. How do I know which one?

[Dave LaRonde] “If you have widescreen footage, it may not look great”

Not looking great would be fine; I get big, multicolored squares all over the picture some frames, while in other frames, all is OK.

[Richard Smith]

Oh, I see now…
Thanks for your patience.
And the images are much appreciated.