[Steve Roberts]

[Dave LaRonde] “Everybody thinks working at a film frame rate is soooooooo cool… but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can really screw yourself.”

… which is why 30p is so nice. Progressive, with no pulldown worries.

[Steve Roberts]

Then my first post holds. Do not try to separate fields. If you interpret it as sep fields “off”, and you see no interlacing in AE, then there’s no interlacing. Don’t try to separate fields — that will give you ghosting if there were no interlacing in the first place.

Are we there yet?

[Steve Roberts]

Odd. I just did it and it worked.

1. make one solid – call it “solid”.
2. make another solid, call it “flare”
3. draw a mask on “solid”.
4. apply lens flare to “flare”.
5. select solid’s “mask shape” property, copy.
6. select flare’s “flare center” property, paste.

The flare center follows the mask shape exactly.
Both solids are the same size, filling the comp, 2D, no scaling or repositioning.

Any help?

[Steve Roberts]

I spoke too soon. Sorry – of course it has fields, since it’s 29.97 (60i) on the tape. If you have been given footage that way, you need to remove pulldown before you roto.

So:
1. Import the footage into AE, and set field separation “off”.
2. alt-double-click on the footage and step through it with the pageDn key. If you see interlacing, it’s 29.97.
3. Re-intepret the footage, field sep “lower first”, and remove pulldown — try guessing.
4. do step 2, for about 10 clicks or more. If you see fields, AE guessed wrong, and you need to re-interpret with a different cadence.
5. Once you’ve eliminated the fields that way, drag the footage onto the “new comp” button at the bottom of the project window and go to work.

Did that help?

[Steve Roberts]

23.976 has no fields. If you try to separate fields it will look weird.

[Steve Roberts]

Also, consider checking the Broadcast Video COW. Give them your budget first.

[Steve Roberts]

Thanks, Darby!

Steve

[Steve Roberts]

Set up an AE comp using one of the two DVCPRO HD presets, depending on the desired frame rate. Your Render Settings should be Best Settings, and your Output Module should be Lossless, or Quicktime Animation. Render that, then open the result in Quicktime Player and use it to Export to H.264.

[Steve Roberts]

[Dave LaRonde] “You can’t turn off the front side of the sphere in CC Sphere like you can with other sphere plugins.”

I beg to differ Dave, but I can do it … (CS3) … but yes, your square layer trick would work. It would be as if the rest of the sphere were transparent.

[Steve Roberts]

Hmm … maybe the flare is following the path, but the *text* is offset from the path?

(on a different note, try applying “grow bounds” before the lens flare effect so you don’t have to scale it up)