[Tony Kloiber]

Agreed. I don’t have a bunch of money sitting around doing nothing and so buying a new Windows license is not a going to happen (even if I was willing to work on windows).

Motion I have already and Shake is $499, but more then the cost is the time I have invested in AE and the time it would take to get up to speed in these other programs.

I guess what I’m saying is I’m getting very close to the point were it IS worth the TIME and money to change.

I know the situation is what it is, just wondering how many others are at that point.

TonyTony

[Tony Kloiber]

You might try the lightning plugin to generate a matte layer. If you can find an image of some cracks you like, you could reveal them using the paint plugin.

To shake the final comp place a null in the comp and wiggle it’s position and scale and then parent the other elements to it. The problem of course will be that your bkg plate will show it’s edges so you have to scale everything up just enough to prevent that from happing. Add another null and parent the first null to it and then scale up as needed.

TonyTony

[Tony Kloiber]

If I understand what you looking for, the simplest way it to place your clip in a comp (12 sec or more).
Select the clip layer and go to Layer>Time>Time-Reverse Layer (Option-Command-R).
Expand the timeline so you can see the [In Out Duration] fields and set you duration (you could skip the above step and go right to here but make sure you use a negative value).
In the frame blending check box make sure you have a solid line next to you layer (as I understand it this invokes the same fame blending algorithm as time warp.

TonyTony

[Tony Kloiber]

Well, Frame Blending is more if you have changed the speed of a clip in a comp (an overly simple explanation). Motion Blur is more of what you might be looking for.

Does it look ok in a preview within AE?
Does the rendered output look ok when viewed in say quicktime player?
Are you rendering with an alpha and then laying this text over some other shot in Avid?
Is the AE output file being rendered in Avid as well?

I know some times I forget the simplest of things. It’s at that point when I only feel superior and not my usual vastly superior self 😉

TonyTony

[Tony Kloiber]

Well, Frame Blending is more if you have changed the speed of a clip in a comp (an overly simple explanation). Motion Blur is more of what you might be looking for.

Does it look ok in a preview within AE?
Does the rendered output look ok when viewed in say quicktime player?
Are you rendering with an alpha and then laying this text over some other shot in Avid?
Is the AE output file being rendered in Avid as well?

I know some times I forget the simplest of things. It’s at that point when I only feel superior and not my usual vastly superior self 😉

TonyTony

[Tony Kloiber]

It’s all relative. If your working on a Quad G5 now, your going to feel a Mac Pro is slow in AE, in FCP it will feel faster. If your working on a lower speed G5 or a G4 it will feel about the same in AE but hugely faster in FCP and other applications that have been keeping up to date with apple’s hardware development.

I’m still working on a G4 and feel its well worth the change. I might even get better at motion which should be great on the Mac Pro.

TonyTony

[Tony Kloiber]

After you tracked the monitor did you apply the tracking data to a null layer then parent the layer you want on the monitor to the null? Once you have done that you can adjust the layer so it lines up on the first frame and then it should track a long. Make sure with a four corner track that your null is the same size as the layer you want to paste in.

Haven’t done a four corner track in a long time so I might be wrong here.

TonyTony

[Tony Kloiber]

So rendering with a small a mount of wave warp has greatly reduced the shudder/stutter seen on an interlaced display at the edges of the keyed subject when they’re in motion.

I have done a number of keying projects that used dv footage but never have I seen this kind of a problem until using AE 7 and Keylight. I’ve used Keylight in 6.5 and it looked fine, as well as using color difference keyer to some success.

I’ll try the foundry forums as well as some more tests.

TonyTony

[Tony Kloiber]

The problem doesn’t show up in any one frame or I should say any one field that I might export from AE or FCP it only is visible on an Interlaced display (NTSC Monitor). Tomorrow I could render out a small dv file (~12meg) that you could then playback.

TonyTony

[Tony Kloiber]

Dave your right I’m technically “NOT deinterlacing footage” I misspoke (typed). I am in-fact as you said “interpreting the footage”. AE is doing the separating and I am then asking it to re-interlace the footage when rendering. (AE User Guide: “After Effects creates field-separated footage from a single formerly interlaced field by splitting fields into two independent frames…”)

My point was that I feel I’m handling the fields properly and is not the cause of my problem.

As far as “What you’re seeing is how the key differs from one field to the next. That’s DV for you.” Differing from one field to the next is a problem for any interlaced format and I am seeing some of that but this is (it seems to me) much more.

And to had to the weirdness. As part of the final rendering I added an adjustment layer with a small amount of wave warp (hot day kind of thing) and test rendered a section and now it seems as if the shudder/stutter has gone away.

I’m rendering a longer section tonight and will report back tomorrow on the render results.