[Todd Kopriva]

Have you updated to After Effects CS4 (9.0.2)?

That update fixed some crashing bugs, including some crashes on quit.

BTW, ranting isn’t quite as effective some other things.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

The GPU can be used to accelerate rendering for both previews and for final output. Most people (including me), restrict the use of OpenGL rendering to the OpenGL rendering to OpenGL—Interactive, which uses the GPU for rendering as you modify properties and drag things around; but it falls back to the CPU when you’re not changing properties.

If you enable the Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, And Footage Panels preference, the GPU can also be used to accelerate the drawing of images to the screen. (See “Improve performance”.)

Some effects (including the Cartoon effect) can take advantage of the GPU, too.

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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 just tried the Pulse Exposure text animation preset, and it works fine for me.

There are some caveats regarding the text animation presets, as described in the “Text animation presets” section of AFter Effects Help:

“The text animation presets were created in an NTSC DV 720×480 composition, and each text layer uses 72-point Myriad Pro. Some preset animations move the text on, off, or through the composition. The animation preset position values may not be appropriate for a composition that is much larger or smaller than 720×480; for example, an animation that is supposed to start outside the frame may start inside the frame. If the text isn’t positioned as expected or the text disappears unexpectedly, adjust the position values for the text animator in the Timeline panel or Composition panel.”

So, you may need to adjust some parameters after applying the animation preset to your layer, depending on the characteristics of your text and composition. (For example, you might need to change the stroke color from the default white set by the animation preset if your composition’s background is white.)

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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]

Did you just choose Position when you told After Effects what kinds of keyframes to generate during tracking? See “Track or stabilize motion”.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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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’m not sure what you mean by “scaling down” in this context, but this example might give you a start on the part about having random letters converge on a final word.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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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]

> why is it that ae will only use up to 3gb for maximum memory usage?

from “Memory usage and storage”:
“The operating system imposes certain limits on the amount of memory that an application can use. After Effects on the Mac OS X operating system can use up to 3.5 GB of RAM, although only about 3 GB is actually available to the foreground application, because Mac OS X uses approximately 500 MB to load the user interface libraries. After Effects on 32-bit Windows operating systems can use up to 3 GB of RAM; however, to use more than 2 GB in After Effects, you must configure Windows XP or Windows Vista appropriately…. After Effects on 64-bit Windows operating systems can use up to 4 GB of RAM with no special configuration.”

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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 interpret the footage item as being at a specific frame rate.

But, as I said, you may have a more fundamental issue if you’re not importing the P2 media according to the instructions given for this kind of media.

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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]

“Create shapes or masks from text characters”

I found this using this search.

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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 discovered my problem, which was quite odd. In my precomp, the audio came from a guide layer, which played fine, but for whatever reason didn’t render out.

The whole point of guide layers is that they are layers used for reference but not rendered and exported for final output, so it’s not surprising to me that audio on a guide layer wouldn’t be included in final output. You can, however, choose to include guide layers in final output. Just choose Current Settings from the Guide Layers menu in the Render Settings dialog box. (See “Guide layers”.)

> On another note, why the change with the custom camera not showing 2d layers with 3d layers in cs4?

Because it doesn’t make sense to show 2D layers in a strictly 3D view. Sure, it makes sense to show 2D layers in a camera view that is actually rendered (like the active camera view), but that is showing you a 2D composite of a 3D scene.

If you’d like the option to show 2D layers in orthographic and working 3D views, you can certainly make a feature request. Be sure to say exactly how and why you’d use this, though—because I know the engineer who’s going to be reading that request, and my previous paragraph is channeling him.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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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]

What happens if you import the project rather than opening it?

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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.