[Ron Lindeboom]

[Franklin McMahon] “Clients very often need to be nudged into decisions.”

Franklin is right on the money with this one, and some clients need to be nudged almost to the point of bruises, it seems. ;o)

They need to remember the old adage that Time Is Money — and it is. After all, they would not work for free and throw a full week or more into something without being paid.

Somehow you need to communicate the relativity of it to them and make them make a decision. The ball is in your court.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry

[Ron Lindeboom]

They hide their company and who they are and where they are from. Their domain is registered through a proxy service and I sure wouldn’t trust them. These kinds of here-today-gone-tomorrow companies spend a few bucks with GoDaddy.com for a business domain and they are in business.

No thanks, not my way to buy. Stick with a known company. You won’t likely live to regret it, if you do.

If you insist on doing business with an unknown because they “dangle the worm of a low price” — remember the lesson that the fish learns: the worm is tasty but the hook is not.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry

[Ron Lindeboom]

The Compression Techniques forum is where this kind of topic is handled.

I would check there.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Tom Scott] “…while I didn’t account for the one you’ve pointed out, you didn’t account for the one I’ve mentioned here.”

We’ve been doing this for 14 years now. Trust me, we have tried all kinds of things over the years.

As I said, why on Earth would we have the forum default to a basics forum when 80% of our traffic over the years is made up of people who work with the software?

Sadly, the ones who POST most frequently are the ones searching for answers. And as I pointed out, if we made an Advanced forum and set the Basics forum as the default, they’d just push on over to the Advanced forum and start there.

I wish there was an answer…

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Stuart Elith] “I agree with this suggestion, that the naming of the default AE forum is making it seem like the obvious choice for all kinds of questions that may be better suited to the Basics forum.”

While this may make sense, it would ignore the fact that 80% of the COW’s user base work with these tools for a living. There are less than 11% that are both students and educators. The balance are hobbyists.

But as I said in my other post in this thread, human nature is such that the noobs for the most part do not think that the leaders in the Basics forum are real pros — we know, we have written many and asked why they won’t post there.

The leaders in the Basics forum ARE real pros and many know an INCREDIBLE amount about After Effects. They are the people that tend to be “pre-wired” to be able to handle newbie questions and have a disposition that allows them to walk newer users through repetitive explanations until they get it.

But unfortunately, were we to set that basics forum as the starting place, the preponderance of newbies would search out the Advanced forum — were we to add one — and THAT is where they would post.

It’s that human nature thingie, again.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Tom Scott] “I don’t blame the “noobs”, I blame the current layout of the After Effects forums (or, more precisely, the links configuration).”

Tom,

Do you know anything about human nature or do you just jump to conclusions based on your lack of evidence?

The truth is, we have tried to curtail this by having both entire basics sites (creativecalf.net — that died because no one wanted to use it) and by having basics forums that leaders and admins moved basics posts to, to forcibly get the newb questions there. But human nature being as it is, these people regularly get incensed and take great exception to having their posts moved there. Why? Because they want the “real experts” answering their newb questions.

After all, they are more important than all the other newbs and do not want to have anyone but the advanced leaders answering them. If we were to have an Advanced forum, THAT is the forum they would post in…

We are working on breaking out the forums by TASK rather than level. Rendering in one forum; effects techniques in another; dealing with 3D layers and lighting in yet another, etc., etc. It will likely fail but it may be worth a try. We are kicking around the idea.

In the end, people like it all in one place rather than breaking it out because they don’t have to go through forum after forum, as it is at adobeforums.com, etc.

Over the years, we have learned there is no perfect solution. We have tried many and it almost always comes back to what we have. It’s far from perfect, but with human nature being what it is, to get it perfect would require every post being moderated and placed by admins that worked on it full time.

So, the bottomline is this: most of us look at the posts that interest us and avoid the ones that don’t.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry

[Ron Lindeboom]

[alex martucci] “I heard from someone apple is trying to sell fcp…..”

Yes, without a doubt they are — one box at a time.

Or you can get the site license.

With the new FCS3, a single box comes with the Care Bears interface but the site license comes with the Strawberry Shortcake interface and network gaming plug-in. (If you notice at the Strawberry Shortcake site, the only fruit filling missing from the game is Apple — this, due to contractual limits awaiting the forthcoming WWDC announcement wherein it becomes part of the big roll-out announcement.)

Ron Lindeboom

PS: I forgot to mention that Apple will also announce as part of the WWDC that all of the Strawberry Shortcake videos were edited in Final Cut Studio 3. Rumor has it that Strawberry herself will take the stage at WWDC and take part in the festivities. Eat your heart out, Disney.

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Alan Okey] “I’m really looking forward to the full native support of codecs like BFD, WTF and LMAO. Unfortunately, LOL will not be supported in this release, although OMG support is rumored to be coming soon in a point release update.”

I swear I damned near spit my morning coffee up all over my keyboard and screen reading this, Alan.

But thanks for getting coffee up my nose, man.

🙂

It was time to clean up my keyboard anyway, although I won’t be needing it now that Final Cut Studio 3’s Mind-Meld features are coming.

Ron Lindeboom

[Ron Lindeboom]

Oh, and P.S.: As Richard says elsewhere, Garbage In = Garbage Out. There is only so much that this technique will do and then it’s just up-rez’d garbage.

As Michael states: he takes his footage into Color and other things and does as much as he can to “hide” some of the things that make it clear that it’s up-rez’d SD footage.

It’s an art and as Zane Barker says, there are no technical solutions to artistic problems. (But with practice, you can overcome some of the limitations.)

In closing, to quote Walter, he gave you a good starting point when he mentioned Instant HD in FCP. But you weren’t listening…

Richard Harrington also closed by telling you that there is a search function here and you will find lots of previous threads on this subject if you use it.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

PS: Do I win the prize for quoting the most people in a single post?

:o)

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Michael Mench] “Export the clip as an image sequence and take those files into your beloved Photoshop and up rez them all there. Should work great!!!”

Funny, Michael, I was just going to suggest that very option.

And when doing it, if you want to get real fancy, use Genuine Fractals plug-in during the up-rez. If you don’t, then make sure that when you rescale the Image Size menu choice that you also opt for the Bicubic Smoother (Best for Enlargement) option.

Here is the pulldown found in Image Size…

Maybe he’ll actually listen to one of us, now.

So Kenton, go bitch to someone else. Okay?

Ron Lindeboom