Tim Kurkoski
Forum Replies Created
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Encore 1.x isn’t very good with QuickTime at all. (1.0 couldn’t import ANY QT file.) Encore 2.0 is better with QT files.
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You’ve got a bad MPEG decoder on your system.
Since you can have multiple MPEG decoders installed at once, Windows has a priority system for deciding which one should be used. The problem comes when the one with the highest priority (also called merit) doesn’t play nice with other programs.
There are utilities you can download that will allow you to change the merit of the MPEG decoders on your system. I’d recommend setting the MainConcept decoder to the highest priority.
I’d also recommend you uninstall any unnecessary decoders, DVD players, and media player apps that you have installed. That’s probably where you got the bad decoder.
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Yes, the demo version has burning disabled.
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Premiere is caching the files in it’s scratch disc. You can define the scratch disk locations in the preferences. Keeping the cached files won’t really do you much good, though. Premiere will rebuild the cache files each time you re-open the project and export to DVD, and there’s no way to tell it to re-use old cache files.
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The limit on FAT32 is actually 4 GB, which should get you about 18 minutes of DV video. FAT16 has the 2 GB/10 minute limit. The only way to get beyond those limits is if he has WinXP or Win2k, then he can convert the drive to NTFS.
Another possibility: is your friend using a capture card? Some Canopus cards have a built-in 2 GB limit. There’s an option in the Canopus settings to get around it- it’s something about “reference files” if I recall.
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Try using Illustrator. It’ll probably give you some warnings, but I tried it now with Illustrator CS2 and it worked fine. Export clip notes from Premiere and it showed the changes I made. Also, the PDF file is read-only, so you have to disable that option in the file properties in Windows Explorer.
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In theory, a higher burn rating shouldn’t stop your drive from being able to burn the disc at slower speeds. But sometimes newer media like that just may not be very compatible with older drives.
You may actually want to try burning at a slower speed, like 1x or 2x. Sometimes that gets around some burning problems.
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When you import the QuickTime file from Flash file into Premiere, do you see the white background? Premiere should show black where there’s alpha. So I think the problem is not that Premiere isn’t generating alpha or AE isn’t reading it, it’s that Flash isn’t generating it, or you haven’t made an alpha for Flash to generate. I’m not familiar enough with Flash to help much more past that, but if you watch the QT file you made from Flash in the QT player, does it show white or black behind it? (QT, I think, should show black for alpha areas like Premiere does.)
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If you’re coming from Photoshop, creating an alpha channel works, but all you really need to do is make sure that your background is transparent. If you’re starting a new doc, choose Transparent instead of White for the background. If you have an existing doc witha Background layer, double-click on the layer and name it, then delete it. Or, if you have content on that layer, use the magic wand tool to select the white and delete that. In the end, you should have the transparency checkerboard showing through where you want transparency.
PSD files really are the easiest way to get alpha, because where that transparency checkboard shows, AE will automatically apply an alpha channel.
Oh, also, if you import an individual PSD layer into AE instead of the whole doc, AE will use the transparent areas on that layer to generate the alpha channel.
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You probably need to reconfigure your computer’s MPEG decoder merits. Basically, when you have multiple MPEG decoders on the system, they set their priority for use, and some are incompatible with AE.
Use a program like DSFMgr to make the MainConcept MPEG decoders (which come with AE and PPro) to be the highest priority.