[Roland R. kahlenberg]

This should work. If you’re using Write-on, ensure that the Paint-Style parameter (or something similarly worded) is set to Reveal Source (or something similarly worded).

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

[Aharon Rabinowitz] “That will do it. that should be easier, I think… Does that make sense?”

Hi Aharon, great solution there except for the trimming bit. There’s a preference setting to set the duration for stills. That alone will safe quite a bit of time for the trimmings.

I was wondering if Dan would be able to write a script to look for duplicates and then I thought about using a different matte to help locate identical, adjacent frames.

One way to go about this is to do the Sequence layers thingy. Then select all layers and duplicate them. After duplication, the duplicates will still be selected. leave them selected and precompse those.

Now apply the Difference Matte for the first frame (layer) and set the precomposed layer as the Difference Layer. Save as Animation Preset. Select all single frame layers and then apply the Animation Preset. Nudge the precomposed layer one frame ahead in time.

Now stepping through the timeline looking for repeat frames will be quick and easy – just delete any single layer frame should the comp window be pure black.

Make ense?

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Copying from one layer to many layer is fine but it sounds like you want to copy from many layers onto themselves, all at once. Perhaps in a future release – seriously.

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Thanks for clearing that up. I still think they should re-word it cos’ it’s really ambiguous the way it is.

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

[Eric Goldstein] “I don’t understand, because in this case “current settings” should be the same as “on for checked settings.” Any thoughts?”

Hmmm. That “on for checked settings” stumped me too. They added that in AE7. I’ve stayed away from it cos’ it didn’t make any sense to me and I’ve always been using “current settings”.

If it had said, “off for checked settings” then that would have made more sense. 😉

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

You can Render out an OMF but I recall that there are restrictions on AE’s implementation. Check the manual and/or help files cos’ I recall seeing a writeup on the limitations.

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

The layer within the PSD file has to reside within the same comp as the layer that you are tracking. Sounds like you’ve nested the layered PSD file

Jump into the layered PSD composition. Select the layer and copy it. Then head on to the composition where you’re doing your tracking and paste this layer there.

HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

You seem to have too many Qs. Not a bad thing but it’s all over. I’m not even sure how to sort things out for you.

But I’ll try. First off, you’ll need to ascertain the playback device for the presentation – computer/DVD/HD DVD/BR DVD etc.

Once you know that, you’ll have a definitive answer to what your comp settings should be.

On a seperate but related issue, what are the pixel dimensions of your images? And with regards to the Expression, what are you intending to do with the images, in AE? You’ll need to provide more info on this.

Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

I would work in a square PAR comp – 720×540. Make a copy and nest each into a 720×480 and a 640×480 comp. Then resize the nested comps to fit comp – CTRL+ALT+F.

This way, your designs won’t be compromised as the safe title area is a consisten 20% across all SD formats.

The downside is that you’ll have to render two different comps. If that’s going to be an issue then you may want to look into working in 720×540 and nesting that into a 640×480 comp and send that to the render queue. Then add an Output Module to stretch to 720×480.

The downside to this is that your field ordering is dictated in the Render Settings. If they’re the same then you’re fine, if the’re not then you’ll have to crop out one pixel from one of the Output Modules to reverse the field ordering.

HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

[Francis the dude] “Important: I need the alpha channel data in the export, so is my only choice in the end the “Animation” codec ?”

That would be what I would choose and with a quality setting of 94%. Of importance is the screen size of the files that they’re expecting. If they can make do with something less than broadcast specs. then you’ll be able to save even more on storage.

HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace