[Steve Roberts]

Bezier warp?
Bulge?

[Steve Roberts]

Do you have any 2D layers between 3D layers? That can screw up things a bit.

If not, consider that layers stacking order is irrelevant with 3D layers. X,Y,Z-position is all that matters. Have you checked the Z-position of your layers?

[Steve Roberts]

Have you tried the Zaxwerks COW forum?

[Steve Roberts]

30fps PAL? Not 25?

Normally, I’d cite “judder” (search), but in your case, I looked at the jerkiness, and it’s irregular. That tells me there’s a 24/30 or 25/30 issue going on. Do you have any sub-comps or nested comps that are of different frame rates from the main comp?

Could you please check your comps and render settings to make sure all frame rates match?

[Steve Roberts]

No worries. AE’s help is better than most, but some stuff is still buried in there, requiring deeper (yawn) reading sometimes. 🙂

[Steve Roberts]

Googling files of type “.mov” are not supported led to Mylenium’s page — the error is the second one listed. Not good news.

But alternately, have you contacted Video Copilot?
Can you import any other MOVs from the DVD?
What codec are the troublesome MOVs?

[Steve Roberts]

Ah, duelling sarcasm.

Many do post here without checking the Help.

Does this help? Open the “use RAM preview” section. You might find “Select From Current Time to play from the current time; otherwise, RAM Preview will play the work area or from the beginning of the composition, layer, or footage item.”

If that doesn’t help, please feel free to post again.

[Steve Roberts]

RAM preview? As described in the Help?

[Steve Roberts]

How about using “turbulent displace” to distort the text to make the blob? Maybe scale up the text, use matte choker …? Add bevel alpha for some depth?

[Steve Roberts]

Yep.

Why 864, not 853?
Because DV is D1 with 3 pixels lopped off the top and 3 off the bottom.
D1 widescreen is 864×486, which is 16×9 proportion if you divide each dimension by 54.
So. Lop 6 pixels off and you have 864×480.

To rephrase: DV comes from D1, so when calculating 16×9, start with D1 height (486) to get 864 width, then remove 6 pixels from the height. Don’t start with 480 height then calculate 16×9 from there to get 853 or 854. It just ain’t right.