[Steve Roberts]

You should always do incremental backups of your files. 30 hours on one project file is just asking for trouble. Sorry, but I can’t stress this enough. Save as file01.aep, file02.aep … and let the time between saves be the amount of work you’re prepared to do over.

In this case, make a copy of the AEP and save it somewhere. Burn it to CD if you like. Then get in the habit of saving incrementally and backing up.

You save render settings and output modules under edit>templates. Look for the “save all” button at the bottom of the dialog.

Prefs are deleted all the time to fix little glitches. You may lose dialog window positions, “last save location” info and such, but your render/output templates would be lost too, and they should be saved.

To find the prefs in Windows, go here:
C:Documents and SettingsAdministratorApplication DataAdobeAfter EffectsPrefs
In OSX, look under yourusername>library>preferences

If you’re nervous, just rename the prefs file and relaunch AE. A new prefs file will be created when you close it again.

Steve

[Steve Roberts]

Wow. That’s the second weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.

I suggest that you save your render settings & output modules, then delete your AE prefs file and relaunch AE.

Let us know …
Stev

[Steve Roberts]

There’s no difference when running AE. However, if you want to run Apple’s Motion, you’ll need the best card you can get.

Steve

[Steve Roberts]

You can only import 3D objects into AE via the Zaxwerks plugin.

Otherwise, you need to use your 3D app to render the 3D text as a movie or series of stills to be imported into AE.

Steve

[Steve Roberts]

Indeed.

But if your chromakey is reeeeeally good (heh) you can apply Color Key many times to the layer, keying out a slightly different shade of blue with each application.

But if you have hair, spill, transparency, then you gotta get keylight. 🙂

Steve

[Steve Roberts]

Nope. You can do it in the “footage window” that opens when you alt-double-click (opt-double-click) on a clip in the project window. It has more stuff than the QT window that opens when you just double-click on footage in the project window.

If the footage is progressive and field separation was off, it will advance on every click of the pageDn key.
If it’s progressive and field separation was on, it will advance every two clicks.
… and so on, as in my original post.
If you interpret an interlaced clip as field sep off, you should see a comb-like effect in areas of fast motion.

Try doing it with an interlaced clip at different field interpretations.

Steve

[Steve Roberts]

There are some strange CC distort filters included with 6.5 that might do the thing for you. Sorry, but I’ve never tried them, and I’m not at the AE workstation now.

Steve

[Steve Roberts]

Maybe. I know nothing about it, sorry.

You just need to render out of Xara to a format that AE can use, in the frame size of your final comp. Quicktime movie, animation codec is good, as is a series of stills such as TGA or PICT. Make sure you render out of Xara with an alpha channel (transparency) if you want to composite something behind the text in AE.

Remember, if you are eventually rendering to DV, your final AE comp should be setup to the DV preset 720×480 comp size, but your render out of Xara should probably be 720×540, not 720×480. For more info on that frame size sort of thing, search the COW for “strangepixel”.

Steve

[Steve Roberts]

Sometimes — it depends on whether the camera was set to shoot progressive (non-interlaced).

Capture doesn’t change the interlaced status. It just copies data from tape storage (DV) to your hard drive.

If the footage is interlaced, and you want to distort it, blur it, scale it, move it vertically (everything except colour correction, I suppose) you need to make sure that AE separates fields as “lower field first” on import. Check the data on the thumbnail of the clip in the project window.

DV footage is always lower first. Other footage may be upper or lower first.

To tell if an imported clip is interlaced, interpret it again with field separation on, lower first (file>interpret footage>main). Alt-double-click on it in the project window. Step through the footage using the pageUp/Dn keys. If the footage changes on every click, it’s interlaced. If it jerks back and forth, the field order is wrong, and the footage should be re-interpreted with the other field order. If the footage changes every second click, it is not interlaced. If it does a weird 3-2 click thing, it is film footage that was converted to video. Look up “pulldown” in the docs.

Hope that helps,
Steve

[Steve Roberts]

VFX folks need to be good at explaining what they really want to do.
The missing piece of your puzzle was “3D text”.

Mentioning the source helped though. As I watch the sequence, I see that the chest logo is a 3D object, lit by a source from screen right, giving an edge-lit effect. After it flares up and rotates, the title text is revealed. It too is a 3D object. To get the edge-lit effect, perhaps the light source is in the center of the text, and shadows have been disabled so the letters don’t block the light from their neighbours. It’s also possible that the camera is very close to the text with a wide “lens”, allowing you to see the sides of the text.

At any rate, if you want 3D letters, you have three options:
1. Use the shatter effect to “cut out” 3D letters. There might be a tut on the COW for that.
2. Buy Zaxwerks Invigorator.
3. Buy a “real” 3D app such as Maya/Lightwave/Max/Cinema4D.

Does that help?
Steve