[Tim Kurkoski]

No, it doesn’t. AE7 on Windows comes with the Adobe MPEG exporter, but Adobe never wrote it for the Mac so it’s not there. You can buy the MPEG-2 pack from Apple (as well as QT Pro) and get MPEG-2 export added, or I’m sure there’s some other Mac codecs you could get (sorry, I spend 90% of my time on Windows so I’m not up to speed on all the latest Mac widgets).

[Tim Kurkoski]

I’ve played with using Illustrator CS2’s LiveTrace feature to sort of do this. Only problem is the batch feature for Illustrator limits you to 10 files at a time. You have to hack the script file used by Bridge to up the max number.

Go to this folder: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\StartupScripts\LiveTrace_AI.jsx.
Open LiveTrace_AI.jsx.

Change the following two lines:

var MAX_BATCH_SIZE=10;
to
var MAX_BATCH_SIZE=99999;

scpt += ‘var doc = app.documents.add();\r’;
to
scpt += ‘var doc = app.documents.add(DocumentColorSpace.RGB);\r’;

(This second one defaults it to RGB, which you’d otherwise have to do from within Illustrator.)

Then you simply select your source images in Bridge and choose Tools > Illustrator > Live Trace.

[Tim Kurkoski]

Ah, yes. Context and complete phrases do help to illuminate the issue.

When I mouse over the option I get a tooltip. It says “Show the Camera RAW dialog on the firest image to apply settings”. I would assume, then, that this dialog is meant to give you an option to choose the Camera Raw settings you want to use. It doesn’t actually appear to open the first image in your list, and I have no idea what it would do if you were only processing JPEG files.

[Tim Kurkoski]

Do you mean the “Use Open Images” option? That option will be available if you have images open in Photoshop at the time. If you have nothing open, that option will be grayed out and you can only choose “Select Folder”, which will give you an Explorer browser box so you can choose a folder of images to use.

[Tim Kurkoski]

How old is the project? What version of Premiere did you create it with?

Are you using a capture card with Premiere, or did you when you created that project?

[Tim Kurkoski]

The easiest way is to copy/paste a rounded rectangle shape from Illustrator. Like this:

1. Draw a rounded rectangle in Illustrator (or Photoshop with the vector drawing option for the tool).
2. Copy the rectangle shape.
3. In AE, draw a closed mask shape. Quicktip: double-click on the rectangular mask tool in the toolbar.
4. Open the Mask properties for the layer and select the Mask Shape property.
5. Choose Edit > Paste.

To do it manually in AE, you’ll need to set the mask points manually. 8 points are required- the hard part is getting the corners a perfect 90 degrees. There are probably other ways involving using four circles over a rectangle shape, but it sounds like a lot of work to me.

[Tim Kurkoski]

Yes. Adjustment layers will affect all the layers below it in the timeline layer stack, so all you need to do is move your layer above it in the layer stack.

Caveat: depending on where your layer is in Z-space and where the adjustment layer is, you may find that some layers overlap where they weren’t before. This is a side-effect you may be able to solve by pre-comping, but pre-comping and 3D interactions are a different ball of wax.

[Tim Kurkoski]

Encore’s menu editing system is based on Photoshop files. Everything is based on layers in a PSD files. Your button elements need to be turned into layers.

You don’t necessarily need to cut out the button areas from your background image, but you at least need to create a layer set for each of your buttons that contains the button region.

If I’m understanding what you have already (and I’ve never really used DVDSP), here’s what you want to do:
1. Open your background image in Photoshop.
2. Add each of your button overlays as layers.
3. Get rid of the empty space in the overlay layers.
4. Put each of the overlay layers in it’s own layer set. Make sure the layer set name starts with “(+)”, which is what tells Encore that the layer set defines a button region.
5. Inside the layer set, turn off the visibility of your overlay layer.

That should do it (again, if I understand what you’re starting with). Note that this won’t create highlights for the button, but you can do that in Encore. Select the button, then choose Object > Create Subpicture. That’ll give you a basic highlight, you can change the subpicture color sets and/or you can tweak it further in Photoshop.

[Tim Kurkoski]

Select one of your files and choose File > Get Info. In the Open With box, choose Photoshop, then click the Change All button. You’ll have to do this for each type of file you’re having the problem with: JPEG, TIFF, PSD, etc.

I’m not quite so sure about the duplicating business, but try that for starters and see if it helps.

[Tim Kurkoski]

No, AE7 doesn’t require SSE2, but it’s the only one of the new products from Adobe that doesn’t. Premiere Pro 2, Encore 2, and Audition 2 all require SSE2.