[Thad Ciechanowski]

Try using
“align & distribute”, you can open up it’s window under “window/align % distribute”. The icons to distribute and align are vague and although they may have improved in CS3 you’re going to have to figure out what does what by trial and error.

The other option is to do your grid placement in AE instead of Photoshop. Save yourself a few steps.

Good Luck

[Thad Ciechanowski]

There is a stand alone program called “Mazaika” that creates the mosaic. It only does one image at a time however. So you would need to create a tiff sequence and then generate a mosaic for each frame. Then put all the stills in a timeline. Probably easier to use a NLE rather than AE for that last step.

This could take a while since you have to do each frame individually. And if there are a lot of inages, processing can take a while; so my hunch is they are using some other plugin or streamlined workflow. But the method I described will work.

Good Luck

[Thad Ciechanowski]

You could also use CCFoam. Type your letter in a text layer, hide it, apply foam to a solid. Then under user defined choose the txt layer. Then you can use the letter(s) as a particle. No 3d in Foam though.

[Thad Ciechanowski]

The echo effect is probably your best option as long as the camera is in lockdown. Echo “blurs” the values over time so if your background is moving, that will blur too.

The next and more time consuming option is to:
Turn motion blur off
Duplicate the layer
On the top layer mask off what you don’t want blurred
Turn on motion blur on the bottom layer

Good Luck

[Thad Ciechanowski]

There is a plug-in called Free Form FX (or something like that)that will do this. I don’t have the link with me, but if you google it you should be able to find it.

Unfortunately, you can’t “bend” stuff like that in 3d without a plug-in.

[Thad Ciechanowski]

I’m sure there is, I’m just not sure how to find it. (CTRL + Click, show contents?) My greenness around a mac, sorry.

[Thad Ciechanowski]

When you say option to uninstall did you mean it’s under “show package contents” somewhere? I couldn’t find that option am I SOL?

[Thad Ciechanowski]

The trouble is I don’t have any real HD equipment. So I’m stuck bringing in my footage via firewire which won’t allow for “offline” resolutions.

Could I bring in the media from the P2 cards as DNxHD36 and them batch import later? It might be a waste of time even if I could though because it already exists as data on my storage.

I might just import everything in a 1080i project and then convert the project to 30i so I can monitor the output and use the Adrenaline (although in SD) and then at the end convert the project back to 1080i and take it offsite for finishing.

[Thad Ciechanowski]

I don’t have any HD gear, ie: monitor, DNXcel board, or a deck. The plan is for an online at another location with the HD gear I need.

I suppose I could do an offline via firewire and stay in HD, which I might end up doing if I can’t figure out something, but I’d still have an issue when it’s time to output to tape and monitoring, etc.

The thing that’s sticking me is the MXF’s from the firestore. I know what tape will do, but I’ve never used P2’s in a scenario like this. If I bring them into an SD project, will they stay HD while I edit or wll they get downconverted? What will this mean for an online to a DS?

Very confusing.

[Thad Ciechanowski]

OK so I made a new project in Version 1.0. Everything worked OK. I’m starting to think There’s a glitch somewhere. I already re-installed the program however so I guess I’ll try it on another machine.