Tim Kurkoski
Forum Replies Created
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The audio option depends on two things: if you have audio in your comp, and if the format you’ve chosen supports audio. AVI files generally should support audio, but make sure that’s what you’re using, it might be defaulting to another option.
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The setup for this isn’t too complicated. Make all of your layers 3D, then change their Z-depth so they’re spaced out appropriately. Then add a camera layer, though this is optional, depending on how you want to animate the layers.
Due to the perspective issues, depending on how far apart you make the layers, you’ll either need to make sure that the bottom layers are larger than the top ones, or that you use a camera with a longer lens.
To create the sense of motion, you can zoom in and/or move the camera layer. Optionally, you can move the layers closer to the camera. To create proportional movement without a camera, pre-compose the layers, make the pre-comp a 3D layer, turn on the collapse transformation switch, and animate the Z-depth property of the anchor point.
Be careful about the resolution of your source layers. Zooming in too much could get too close and make jaggies.
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Video:
Total Training – Expensive, but extremely comprehensive.
Lynda.com – No experience with this myself, but others recommend it. You can apparently buy a subscription for as long as you want.Books:
After Effects Classroom in a Book – Probably the best option for somebody starting at the basics.
Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects – The comprehensive, authoritative guide. Starts with the basics, but the book is more about learning the fundamentals than getting your hands dirty and practicing with the program. Once you learn the basics, this series will be your bible.There are some other good books out there, but off the top of my head I can’t think of the titles. Others might make more recommendations.
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The blunt answer, Kev: Buy more tapes.
Seriously, your tapes are your archival version.
If you absolutley must give up the tapes, and you intend to edit with this material in the future, you should keep the format as it was captured: AVI using the DV codec. The video data is identical to what’s on the tapes. To get the data small enough, you can either split it into smaller chunks during capture (appx. 20 minutes per DVD), split it up after capture, or compress them into zip files (do some experimentation to see how small it can squeeze them).
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Yes, make sure you’re selecting the RGB+Alpha option in the Output Module settings when you render from AE. Your codec also needs to support alpha channels (the Animation codec, for example).
I’m not familiar with FCP, so I can’t comment on how it interprets transparency data in a PSD file. You might have to make an explicit alpha channel, rather than relying on FCP to interpret the transparency data of each separate layer, like AE does.
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No application on Mac OS can address more than about 3 GB of RAM.
Here’s the deal: OS X is a 32-bit operating system. 32 bits means the maximum amount of RAM that a single process (ie, and application) can address is 4 GB. Additionally, OS X requires applications to reserve a certain amount of memory space for OS-related functionality, so the maximum comes down to 3 GB.
So this is correct, AE can only address a maximum of 3 GB of RAM on Mac OS. Why have more than that in your machine? You can run multiple applications at once, and they can each access up to 3 GB. So you can let Photoshop and AE hum along at the same time.
How do you get Mac OS to get past that limit? You don’t, not until Apple releases a 64-bit version of OS X. Feel good that you have a Mac anyway, because Windows XP limits apps to 2 GB, though you can force it up to 3 GB with a registry hack (which has been known to cause stability issues from time to time). The 64-bit version of Windows XP can address a LOT more memory, allowing each application to access something like 16 GB of RAM. AE is not optimized for 64-bit, however, so even then it hits the 32-bit ceiling at 4 GB.
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Yes, that was an extra channel.
Try a simple test. Create a new Photoshop file with a transparent background. Throw on some text or a brush stroke. Just something simple. Make sure it’s a bright color (not black), just to make sure it shows up easily in AE.
Import the file into AE, make a new comp, drop it in.
If that much is still failing, there’s probably something wrong with AE. Try dumping the prefs file. Might also want to dump the Photoshop prefs and re-trying the test procedure, just to make sure Photoshop isn’t doing something weird with the save.
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Well, I cranked open PS7 and AE5.5 just to check. No problems for me.
When does it come in white, and when does it come in black? Are you changing any settings?
When you import the image, you should get an option to choose which layer(s) you want, or if you want merged layers. Either option should work.
Are you defining an extra alpha channel in Channels palette in Photoshop? That could throw it off. That’s definitely not something you need to do for AE.
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Apply the Color Fill layer style to the layer with the image.
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If you’re using a PSD file, just make sure that your background is transparent in Photoshop. That is, make sure you don’t have a Background layer. (If you do, double-click on it, click OK, then delete it.) As long as the transparency checkerboard is showing through, AE will read the alpha channel automatically.
If that’s not working, you may need to tweak the alpha settings for the file in AE through the Interpret Footage dialog box.