Simon Bonner
Forum Replies Created
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If I understand your problem correctly, there is a way you can do this. Open a new AE project. Then import all your other projects into that new project. Actually, seeing as you have 150 projects, that might be a stretch. Especially if they’re render heavy. But try it with 20 or so to begin with and see if you get a crash.
Drag one of the comps into the render queue panel and set the output location to where you want your file to be save. Then select all the comps in the project panel and drag them into the render queue panel – they should all now automatically share the output location of the first listed item. Set the output module to your preferred codec, hit render, and go for a long walk!
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
MPEG-2 is the format of DVD – all video that’s going on a TV watchable DVD gets transcoded to MPEG-2 at some point, either by your editing software, AE or your DVD software.
However, some programmes do a better job than others. AE is not the best programme for compressing your video. What I would advise you to do is render out your videos from AE at as high a quality as possible (e.g. QT anim / photo jpeg, lossless avi) and have your DVD programme (e.g. Encore) do the transcoding to MPEG for you.
You’ll end up with huge files – probably many GBs – and you won’t be able to play them without your computer slowing down, but since you don’t actually NEED to watch them until they’re on the DVD, that’s not a biggie. But you may need to give the files to your friend on a removable hard drive rather than uploading them to the web / burning them to a DVD-ROM, which you could probably get away with if you were compressing ahead of time.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
No, you don’t have to prepare two projects. Just go to build your disc and in the settings section of the dialogue box change disc size from 4.7gb to 8.54gb. If you also specify the layer break to be manual (if you have a single long timeline, it’s best to set it manually so it’s located away from talking etc) you will be shown the Set Layer Transition dialogue where you can do this.
You may also have a problem if you try using -R DVDs. I believe Encore only supports +R DVDs.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
If you want to avoid precomps, add a solid white layer above the text and draw your mask onto this layer. Then set the text to use the solid as an alpha matte.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
With keylight you can choose any colour you want to key out, so it doesn’t have to be a very specific shade. The proper paint will be a standard colour, but as long as you paint all your props with the same batch of paint you should be ok. A lot of the work is in the lighting; making sure you eliminate shadows etc.
I use green felt for a cheap backdrop greenscreen and it serves me just fine as long as it’s lit well.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
The obvious solution would be to reshoot. Painful and embarrassing, but the truth is that you’ll never be able to fully restore the footage to how it should have looked if the exposure setting was really off.
Having said that, you could apply the levels effect to a copy of the footage and crush the blacks / blow out the whites to make a matte. Apply colour correction to an adjustment layer and use the matte as a luma inv. matte. Only the underexposed parts of the footage will be affected by the adjustment layer. Add a fast blur to the matte layer to feather the transition from black to white.
To summarise:
Layer 1 – Footage, with levels applied. Eyeball off.
Layer 2 – Adjustment layer with desired colour correction, e.g. exposure.
Layer 3 – Raw footage.Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
I don’t think so, but if you write some text, select the layer in the timeline panel, then click in the typeface dropdown menu in the character panel (actually in the menu, not on the arrow to the right of it), then hit up and down on the arrow buttons your text will cycle through the typefaces, giving you an idea how each of them will look.
If anyone else knows of a way of getting the fonts to be named in their own style in the cropdown menu, let me know too!
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
If you have quicktime pro, you could run it through that programme after your Prem render.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
You need to change the output module settings in the render queue (don’t use the export command, add to the render queue – hit ctrl+m). Click on where it says ‘lossless’ and alter the settings to quicktime, etc. You’re planning to edit the footage further, so don’t compress it too much.
I don’t use FCP, so I’m not sure if it’s interpreting the rendered footage incorrectly upon import, but make sure that AE is intrepreting it correctly to begin with. For example, my copy of AE routinely misinterprets my 1.42 assets as 1.07. You can check this by looking at the hop of the project panel with the asset selected. Hit ctrl+f to change the way the asset is interpreted. Drag the file over the make new comp button at the bottom of the project panel to make a comp with those settings.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
You just bring your pictures into AE, drop them into whatever size comp you want (e.g dv ntsc for US TV), then scale and position them so they’re how you want them to be at the start of the animation (hit S to reveal scale, P to reveal position and S followed by shift+P to reveal both), hit the stopwatch in the timeline panel to create keyeframes for both properties, scrub ahead in time, rescale / reposition the photo so it’s how you want it to be at the end of the animation, hit the add new keyframe button for the properties (the diamond shape at far left of timeline panel) and you’re done. You can select the keyframes and hit F9 to make the easy ease so you get a smoother animation.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX