[Steve Roberts]

I think you might need to buy Trapcode Particular for this. It allows you to use a layer as a Particle emitter. You could hide the logo layer, use it as an emitter, then fade up another logo layer to resolve it at the end.

Anyway, here’s something on the Trapcode site that might help you:
https://www.trapcode.com/help/particular/layer_emitter.html

You might want Trapcode Starglow as well.

[Steve Roberts]

Well, if there’s no update on Adobe’s site, then there’s no bug fix yet. Be patient, we must. Yessss ….. 🙂

https://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=13&platform=Macintosh
https://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=13&platform=Windows

[Steve Roberts]

Yep, good one, Mike. You know, If we apply some slider expression controls to a null, then pickwhip the sprig (?) scale values to those sliders, the growing of multiple sprigs could be managed at once. Maybe three pairs of sliders (each pair handling X,Y scale) could animate three groups of sprigs so they all don’t grow at the same time. Just a thought …

[Steve Roberts]

Yeh, sometimes the OpenGL modes don’t show everything. Glad it’s fixed!

[Steve Roberts]

We probably all agree, but there may be a semantic thing going on, I think.

1. Most of us should avoid the term “deinterlacing” with regard to AE. When we need to move/blur/rotate/scale/distort interlaced footage, we need to SEPARATE FIELDS. (please excuse the caps, I have no bolding options with the COW on Mac) I think Darby was talking about “separating fields” when he said “deinterlace”.

2. Deinterlacing is often destructive, while separating fields is not.
When you let AE separate fields, the fields are not gone. They are effectively held, but not shown. In draft mode, the first field is duplicated for display. In high-quality mode, the fields are interpolated for display.

3. Deinterlacing with Fieldskit is a different manner, as you interpret (not “interpolate”) the footage as “no fields” for that plugin to work. I only use it when I know I wan’t to get rid of a field altogether, and never want to see it again.

4. When we render field-separated footage as an interlaced movie, two things happen: 1) any animation done in AE becomes field-rendered and 2) the same operations performed on the visible field are done to the held field. So if we fly an interlaced movie around the screen, we do not lose the second field — AE renders the first field (interlaced) then it moves one field forward and renders the second field interlaced with the first. This is easy to test:step 1) make an interlaced 10-frame movie of an ellipse crossing the screen and import it. 2) Let AE separate fields, or make sure AE separates fields. Drag that movie onto the new comp button to make a comp. Render that comp and reimport, but don’t separate fields — you want to see interlacing. You should see both fields. Now … if that second-field data was lost when the first movie had its fields separated, where did it come from?

Here’s a doc on the subject:
https://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/8.0/help.html?content=WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7f37.html

5. In case anyone (outside this thread) ever uses the term “field dominance”, we’re not talking about separating fields and field order. Dominance refers to the field chosen by an editing system when making a cut: cut on the upper or lower field. Field order refers to the location of the first (in time) field in the frame: does field 1 occur before field 2, or vice-versa? (Apple uses “field dominance”, but they really mean “field order”.)

Anyway, separating fields is done all the time. Deinterlacing is not — I’d prefer we only use that term when specifically referring to Fieldskit Deinterlacer. But that’s just me … 🙂

[Steve Roberts]

1. twice the normal frame rate: in your case, 50 fps, no?
2. If all you do is roto, the footage should not degrade due to the deinterlacing, since you are not dropping fields and recreating them. Yes, you are doubling the lines (filling in the missing lines), but then you are removing them and reuniting the original lines back into an interlaced movie. You see?

(Note that AE always recompresses when it renders. So, depending on your codec, there may be some degradation due to recompression. Rendering to the Animation codec is one way to minimize this degradation due to recompression.)

At any rate, if you are concerned, you should do a test by separating fields, dragging into a 50fps comp, dragging that into a 25fps comp and rendering that interlaced. Then, to do the test, reimport the thing you just rendered, drag it into a new 25 fps comp along with the original footage (which has not had fields separated). Compare the two, either by masking off half of one, or by using Difference mode for the upper layer … if it’s completely black, the two are identical.

By the way, you can have a piece of footage interpreted two ways in a project. Duplicate the footage item in the Project window, then re-interpret it differently. Make sure you use the Comments panel in the project window to differentiate the two differently-interpreted footage items.

[Steve Roberts]

Caps Lock on? Preview set to Adaptive Resolution (bottom of comp window buttons)?

[Steve Roberts]

The “view options” can be found by clicking on the little triangle at the top right of the Comp window.

If that doesn’t work, try clicking the little button at the bottom left of the Comp window. It switches off mask visibility. If you hold your mouse over it, it will read “toggle view masks”.

[Steve Roberts]

You probably made an uncompressed AVI. Unless you have a RAID setup, your computer cannot play back uncompressed movies of any type, AVI or Quicktime. The movie needs to be compressed. In any app that makes videos, the video is compressed using an algorithm called a codec, which is short fo COmpressorDECompressor. The codec is chosen when you choose to export or render from whatever program you are using to make your videos.

So. You should compress to which codec? I don’t know. This is now a Dreamscenes question. You need to look on the web, and find out what the Dreamscene-maker will accept from you. MPEG? MPEG-2? WMV?

Now it is common to make uncompressed movies that cannot be played back, but are sent to another application that makes the playable file. Maybe there’s an app that accepts AVI movies and makes them into playable Dreamscene movies? I don’t know — that’s for you to find out.

At any rate, uncompressed AVIs can’t be played on most computers. Try searching the web for “AVI” and “dreamscene” to see what you need to make. Then get back to us if you don’t know how to make that (MPEG or WMV) in AE.

[Steve Roberts]

Hey, Clasby’s fine by me. I thought it would be “Dorkman” or something.