[Scott Morrison]

Listen to Dave here, he knows the score.

I had a similar problem, only I used Sony Vegas for initial editing/compression. To solve this, I rendered from Vegas as an UNCOMPRESSED .avi (or .mov), using the HD settings as needed. All my work was done in AE, but don’t be surprised if AE bogs a bit…after all, it has to do with hardware capabilities (physical memory, GPU etc.) as well as pesky software dorks. And some of your files may be massive. There are, after all, limits…

Anyway, after the AE work is complete, I re-render out of AE (still using an UNCOMPRESSED format), then re-import into PPRo (or whatever). In other words, I am using an UNCOMPRESSED workflow until the last possible moment, then I render compressed for the final output.

Hope this helps. It seems to work for me.

Scott Morrison
Just an amateur trying to learn

[Scott Morrison]

Sheesh…what a pain. I think all software engineers should be flogged.

Anyway, thanks for the valuable information. Just to re-hash…

If I have footage which is destined for AE, then render (or convert) it to an uncompressed .mov format (for example). That way, AE is happy and all will be right with the world. Correct?

Once again, I am in your debt.

Scott Morrison
Just an amateur trying to learn

[Scott Morrison]

Ahhh…the light has come on. Thanks Dave. I didn’t know that. Dang, we c++/c# software engineers sure are pesky.

So as long as I have your (or anyone’s) ear, here’s my workflow. Please let me know if I could/should be doing things better…

From my HD video camera, I do initial editing in Sony Vegas (someday to be replaced with Premiere Pro…maybe). I render the raw .m2ts files to .m2v from Vegas. MOST files then go straight into Encore, where the DVD will be built and burned.

Sometimes, however, I add titles, special effects and animation, all composited in AE. From AE, I render out as raw, uncompressed .mov files. Then, these are added to the Encore project and the DVD is burned.

Sound reasonable? Yours and everyone’s help, very much appreciated.

Scott Morrison
Just an amateur trying to learn

[Scott Morrison]

Thanks Todd. That helps…but I have a question…
Is the interim step necessary? I am using Adobe Encore for the DVD production. Does Encore not have a suitable compression method built within? If so, in theory I should not need the Adobe Media Encoder at all correct?

Lastly, why doesn AE NOT use the same compression methods as Encore and Media Encoder. It seems to me that all products should be using the same codecs and therefore have identical quality output.

Just a curious software engineer’s mind working too hard. Your help appreciated.

Scott Morrison
Just an amateur trying to learn

[Scott Morrison]

Tyler – I feel your frustration. I just purchased a new Microsoft Wireless Mouse 5000 and it does crazy things in AE. Updating the driver, changing settings etc. does nothing. No fix as far as I can see, and I am not alone in my dismay at this.

Little consolation is that the mouse also acts strange in Sony Vegas. Something has changed in the mouse operation and it’s a mystery as to what exactly this is. Sorry, just venting along with you.

Scott Morrison
Just an amateur trying to learn

[Scott Morrison]

I can think of two options:

VideoCopilot has a “Twitch” plugin which is powerful and has lots of options to get a similar result. Also, you could use the wiggle() expression, which is less powerful, but may give you what you need fast and easily.

Hope this helps.

Scott Morrison
Just an amateur trying to learn

[Scott Morrison]

I have done something similar using Maya. Although I am relatively new to all of this, I’ll try to answer your questions (others feel free to correct if necessary).

– As long as the “wall” in AE can use textures, there shouldn’t be a need to track anything. In c4d, render your projection as a Tif sequence with an alpha channel. In AE, the wall should be a 3d object. Then import the tif sequence and make it a 3d object as well. Align the two and you should be good to go.

– You can change the opacity of the c4d animation OR the wall in order to have the wall color/texture show through. Playing with the opacity of both should yield the results you want.

– In order to accurately interact with “the real world”, then the easiest thing to do would be to animate ALL objects in c4d. That way you have complete control over timing, etc. But if you want to interract with actual, live humans, then your timing will have to be carefully orchestrated. The only help I can give here is to have the “live” footage loaded in AE, and then adjust and render your animated footage to match. It will likely require many test renders, but is certainly do-able.

Hope this helps.

Scott Morrison
Just an amateur trying to learn

[Scott Morrison]

Thank you kindly David. Exactly what I was looking for.

[Scott Morrison]

Lynda.com has some great tutorials on creating bubbles. In the DVD “After Effects, Beyond the Basics” they show how to make convincing bubbles using particles. As to the water portion, browse through the videocopilot.net tutorials.

Best of luck!

[Scott Morrison]

I was SOOO excited to try this after being frustrated as all heck with my Wireless Mouse 5000. I followed your instructions (albeit with the changes necessary because I am running Windows 7).

No good. Same problem.

I went to Microsoft and updated the drivers for the mouse…still no good. I even tried every possible driver I could think of..

nada.

But thank you for the tip. I’ll keep fussing with it.