[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Could this be it?
Poser & Flash

HTH
RoRK
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Hi Chris, wouldn’t setting the Output Module to render just the Alpha Channel do the trick?

Cheers
RoRK
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

I suggest you head on broadcastGEMs and click on the Freebies/Download link at the top menu. Once you’re in the Freebies page, look for links to download Text presets. You’ll get to see some nice stuff that should interest you.

RoRK
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

I believe Adobe’s reasoning is that they biggest competitor is Apple and to get a leg up on Apple, Adobe had to spend a lot of effort on integrating their different software so as to provide a more complete and productive solution. If you use more than one Adobe product then chances are that you’ll love the upgrade. Otherwise, your feelings may be justified.

There is always the carrot waiting at the top of every ?.1 version of AE. Perhaps you’ll want to wait for that. Also keep in mind that AE7 may have gone to bat too early. Keep in mind that this is a bundle release and the decision to release it was very likely made by folks higher up the Adobe hierarchy.

If anything is at fault, it is how Adobe is marketing their bundled solutions. At this point in time, one has to purchase the bundle at one go.
This may have negative effects on product devlopment cycle and to-market schedules for certain products. In fact for all products. Just because one product is ready for the market in this cycle doesn’t mean that it will be ready for the next cycle.

Perhaps an opportunity to make piece-meal purchases and still take advantage of the price savings on a bundle deal, via discounts or rebates, is something they’d want to look at. Using discount/rebate coupons with a time limit may work best for Adobe and its users. This way, users have the option of making either single or upgrades, multiple upgrades, or suite deal upgrades at their discretion. And Adobe will only market products that deserve to be in the market on its own strengths rather than based on other pressures. The trick is in marking a level for the discounts for single, dual, multiple and suite purchases and upgrades. If they do it well, it could also be a good marketing gimmick and a win-win situation for all.

Cheers
RoRK
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Why not use QTs native Motion JPEG A or B CODECs. Just becareful of the field ordering if you’re using the “B” version. The choice it provides for field ordering is ambiguous. I can’t recall the specifics but if you have a Q, I’ll go check it out or perhaps someone can recall this issue by then.

RoRK
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

[Charles Simonson] “2)VP7 is a proprietary codec that none of the major desktop sw players support out of the box. VP6 had this same problem until Macromedia came along and licensed their codec and work for Flash 8. Maybe VP7 will gain some momentum in the future, but as of today, as far as current generation web and desktop codecs are concerned, it really isn’t a factor.”

I sort of figured that out but I was wondering why didn’t Macromedia license VP7 when the filesizes are smaller than WMVs with similar quality. Perhaps there are other issues. I remember ages ago when On2 were called the Duck Corporation and their Truemotion CODEC was supposed to be very good but unfortunately only very people got to use it.

And thanks for the input – very much appreciated. I may just go with a combination of CM and Flix8Pro.

The only concern now is backward compatibility with older players. For that, Squeeze sounds real good. But then again folks that are on Macs normally upgrade their players more often than those on PCs and there is a good chance that they’ll be able to playback QTs MPEG4. And PC users find it easier to upgrade their Flash players than WMPlayer. What do you think of such a reasoning?

Cheers
RoRK
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

I tried it earlier with a movie and the mechanics are essentially the same for a still image. Perhaps you’d want to check yourmovie to ensure that it has an Alpha Channel.

Cheers
RoRK
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

My bad. You’re right, I just made a quick check and YOU CAN use a movie as a Custom Bubble. Now all you need is to ensure that it has an Alpha Channel.

Cheers
RoRK
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

[Ben Waggoner] “Any modern software DVD player should interlace the video before it goes out to the projector.”

I believe Ben meant deinterlace here.

Cheers
RoRK
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

For L-R text effects, say for the word, Hebrew, you’d normally start with the following values:
Start=0
End=0
And you’d probably animate the End parameter until it reaches a value of 6.

To start from the right, set the Start and End parameters accordingly:
Start=6
End=6
Then you can animated Start so that it reaches a value of 0.

The logic here is that since Start and End are the same values, the selected range is nil. Then by lowering the value for Start, you will manage to select a range from the right, where the End sort of acts as an anchor and the Start parameter moves the edge of the other end of the range selector.

HTH
RoRK
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files