[Shawn Marshall]

Hi:

I posted this request a month or so ago.

Thanks.

Shawn Marshall

[Shawn Marshall]

Sorry, I didn’t see that reply.

Thanks.

Shawn Marshall

[Shawn Marshall]

I don’t suppose CS5.5 brings back wireframe previews? I still use CS4 for 90% of my work, and when I recently had to use CS5 to take over a project I was dumbfounded to find that wireframe previews had been removed. Why would you REMOVE functionality? Yes, I can set Fast Previews to wireframe and hit the spacebar to get realtime playback, but I don’t get audio nor the rough shape of the layers. When I’m flying 50 HD layers of video wireframe previews allow me to tweak the timing much faster than running a RAM preview that has to call up 50 video layers for every frame.

Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[Shawn Marshall]

Did Adobe reinstate the wireframe preview? I don’t understand what the point was of removing it in CS5.

Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[Shawn Marshall]

Thanks for the reply, Rob, I appreciate it.

Yes, I’ve played around with the Fast Preview settings and set it to Wireframe. Unfortunately, you can’t RAM preview it that way. If you hit “0” to run a RAM preview it reverts back to the fully shaded mode.

It even says in the “What’s New” list for CS5 that Wireframe Preview has been removed. Again I ask, why would Adobe REMOVE functionality?

With Fast Preview set to Wireframe I can hit the spacebar and have the layers play back realtime, which kind of solves the problem. But that’s still inferior to the old Wireframe Preview because I don’t get audio with the spacebar playback. If I’m timing a bunch of layers to hit on certain audio cues, I’m hosed.

Again, if I’m missing a way get the audio with a spacebar preview, please tell me. I’m not seeing a keyboard shortcut or preference that enables audio playback.

And I’m not griping for the sake of griping. I’d like to know whether other power users have been affected by these changes or whether there are workarounds. If other users are unhappy I urge them to contact Adobe.

Thanks again.

Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[Shawn Marshall]

Hi:

Thanks for the replies; I appreciate them. I’ll probably try cloning my system drive first, upgrade it to Snow Leopard and see how things behave. If I have problems I’ll restore from my cloned Leopard drive.

Shawn

[Shawn Marshall]

Thanks for the reply.

As I said in my initial post, I don’t want to create a template for every conceivable permutation of video and audio codec. I’ve made ten or so of the ones I use the most, but for those times when I modify those presets I’ve created in the Output Module I’d rather have a better indication of what it is rather than a generic “Custom: Quicktime.”

My whole gripe is that having the Output module say “Based on Photo JPEG sRGB” or “Based on ProRes4444 16 bit Auto Gamma” worked great in CS4 and earlier. Why change it?

In one render I might have one Output Module preset with an Avid DNxHD codec for the client final, one with a ProRes codec for myself, and one with the Photo JPEG codec at medium quality that I can upload. In CS5, if I modify any of those in the Output Module I get the generic description, and it’s harder to tell which is which. I’m losing efficiency for no apparent reason.

Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[Shawn Marshall]

Hi:

Thanks for the reply. The final animations, compressed with the Pro Res 4444 codec, are playing off an internal RAID 0 array which can handle the 30MB/sec data rate at 1080p with no problem. And the artifacts sometimes manifested themselves during a RAM preview and at smaller sizes, codecs, and data rates, so I don’t think it’s a hard drive issue. I think it’s a video card issue. My Radeon HD 2600 card is feeding two monitors.

I’ve outputted the final animations and compressed them in Compressor as h.264 QTs with 6000k-8000k data rates, and they play pretty smoothly, especially at full screen. The stuttering seems worse when played within the Quicktime window. The h.264s also play pretty well on our Mac Mini hooked up to our HDTV (Mini-display port to HDMI).

So who knows?

Shawn

[Shawn Marshall]

Hi:

Thanks for all of the replies; I really appreciate you all taking the time to help.

The frame rate is essentially constant in the Get Info window in QT player. It holds steady at 30fps, very occasionally dropping to 29fps for a fraction of a second, but those drops don’t correlate to the stutters I’ve been experiencing.

I did try upping the shutter angle from 180 to 360, but that didn’t really help. I added a slight blur to some of the elements, and that might have helped a bit, but I’m not sure.

Since this is playing off of a laptop into a projector I’d rather not interlace this piece.

The piece uses only one video clip, and it’s compressed with the ProRes HQ codec (the video clip appears in a different section than those that stutter.)

I’ve found that the animation actually seems to play smoothest when I play it full screen. Not perfectly, but better. The frustrating thing is the location and intensity of this stutters varies slightly each time the piece is played. One time it will be almost perfect, the next there will be stutters here and there.

The stutters do occur on different computers. Again, the intensity and timing vary a bit, but can generally be correlated to when a certain block of text and screen capture start to slide in from the right.

I’m rendering out the finals now, and will then compress that to a 1280×720 h.264 QT for the deliverable. I’ll keep you posted.

Thanks.

Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[Shawn Marshall]

Hi:

Thanks again for the reply. I’ll try the Spherify a vector map approach first. It’s not super important that a particular photo correspond to a particular clone, so your index ratio approach should work. I might create a separate batch of clones for the beginning when I have to show a batch of specific photos.

Shawn