[Todd Kopriva]

Why would you be using Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously when you’re running out of memory trying to render a single frame?

Turn Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously off. Only when you’ve got plenty of resources to render a single frame should you even consider dividing up your resources to try to render more than one frame at a time.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

I think that what you might be seeing is a QuickTime issue, not an Adobe software issue. Apple decided that certain codecs were “legacy” codecs and so you have to go and enable them in QuickTime. They don’t appear by default. It’s Show Legacy Codecs (or something like that) in the Advanced tab in the QuickTime preferences.

It’s a little different on Windows, since the QuickTime preferences are set up differently, but the idea is the same.

(I’m typing this on my phone, so I can’t check the exact wording or steps.)

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

You can also do some basic extrusions using the Shatter effect. Another way is by duplicating a layer several times and offsetting the copies in z space.

An After Effects Community Help search for ‘extrusion’ brings up several useful resources, including some tutorials here on the COW.

An After Effects Community Help search for ‘waving flag’ is similarly useful.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

You’ve already got Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously turned off, right?

And RAM To Leave For Other Applications turned all the way down?

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

As Dave said, for your current use you only need RGB for your “fill” output. But, in the future, you should understand what caused that halo.

Read about premultiplied and straight channels. You can choose whether to output straight or premultiplied channels; the same choice is also sometimes relevant on import. It’s all explained in the page that I linked to.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

As Dave indicates, you can set your output modules up to create two movies: one with just the matte (Alpha) and one with just the fill (RGB).

The trick that a lot of people miss is the one that Dave led with: Have two output modules for the same render item. That way, you render once, and After Effects uses that same set of rendered frames as the basis for creating both output types. This is one of those things that saves huge amounts of time when you’re encoding to various formats, et cetera.

Here’s a link to the output module settings section of After Effects Help.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

As the article that Gary points to says, this is a correction that has been a long time in coming.

There’s a section about the corrected pixel aspect ratios for standard-definition TV formats in After Effects Help.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

This is a dauntingly open-ended question. Good luck getting an answer.

I have a question, though. Your subject line confuses me. If you’re asking about a general professional project workflow, why does your title specify “plug-ins workflow”? I just wonder what it is that you think is special about plug-ins. A plug-ins is just a software library.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

Perhaps this excerpt from After Effects Help will help:

“To reset Deform pins to their original locations at the current time, click Reset for the Puppet effect in the Timeline panel or Effect Controls panel…. Sometimes, you want to animate an image from an initial position, through an intermediate position, and back to the initial position. Rather than manually dragging the pins back to their initial positions at the end of the animation, place the current-time indicator at the end time and click Reset. Only the keyframes at the current time are reset.”

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

> will a PDN (Paint.net) file work?

Never heard of it.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.