[Stephen Neary]

I got it!

Export out at apple ProRes 1080 24p. From there I exported to Animation compression 4×3 letterboxed in quicktime pro. Then used compressor to export to mpeg2.

[Stephen Neary]

Yeah, I’m thinking about dividing it in a couple parts. Either that or having a separate project for every shot. I also might end up using different cameras to switch shots when the character action is continuous. And I think I’ll still end up cutting it in an editing program.

Thanks for your help!
steve

[Stephen Neary]

Sure, it’s a confusing explanation.

1) I made all the characters as different projects. Within these projects, there’s a main charater comp, along with several more comps nested within the main character comp for the face. (The face then has more nested comps for eyes, and a mouth layer, etc). But the expression controls linked to these nested layers are always in the main character comp window.

2) I was hoping to import more than one character into the project to streamline the animating process. There are about 70 shots, and rather than keframing pose changes that might happen from shot to shot, I figured it would just be easier to quickly re-import the established character model for each new shot. Then I could have a separate character model for each shot, and if I needed to break the rig because of any certain poses, it wouldn’t affect the rest of the shots.

3) the final animation will be about 6 minutes long.

I thought about making separate projects for each scene. I know that’s what’s done with most after effects pieces like this. But I thought since having one main project could make it easier to switch working from scene to scene, match action across cuts, and make the big whale more managable in general.

[Stephen Neary]

I just started having the same problem (though I’m on AE 5.5), and it’s a huge pain. Audio preview only works once in a great while. I think I finally might have to shell out for the upgrade that I have been avoiding for so long. Any pointers?
thanks,
steve