Troy Murison
Forum Replies Created
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Sorry, been out of touch here…
I mean in the AE prefs: Memory & Cache, there’s a button there to clear the database and cache. So cntrl + clear empties the cache? I learn something new every day…
-t.
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Hi Joey,
This sounds very similar to a problem I had a few months back. My AE renders looked ‘stuttery’ in FCP but fine in QT. There were repeated frames in the render file when stepped through or played back in FCP, but not in QT player. They were also repeat frames in AE if we imported them back in. If we then re-rendered to new QTs using those imported files, THEN those renders were ALSO stuttery in QT or any other app, so the problem was passed on (that’s how we actually discovered it- we were pre-rendering).
The only thing I found that solved the problem was to clean the database and cache and reboot the computer before rendering from AE. And hold my breath and do a dance on one foot while thinking positive thoughts….. 🙂 This seemed to solve the problem for us. This was happening across multiple machines too. I have not seen it since so it may not appear to happen on every project (?). I was at a loss at the time but that reboot thing worked for us and so haven’t thought too much about it since. Our QT has been updated a couple of times since then too. I seem to recall being on QT 7.3.? at the time as well as 8.0.1 in AE, but I’m not positive. I just figured it had been solved with 7.4.1 or AE 8.0.2 since I hadn’t seen it since. I can’t help but think it is or was a QT implementation thing within individual apps that’s reading something in error in those rendered QTs, but that’s my own un-educated guess.
Best of luck,
-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA -
Hi Joel,
We’ve done this a lot, and it’s simple really. The website was created in Flash using a .flv with a alpha channel for the video clip. Some web designers I’ve worked with want a uncompressed file with alpha so they can compress their own .flv, others want me to do the compression. Either way, when you pull the key for the footage, export the clip with the alpha channel present (RGB+Alpha) from your application. Note some codecs don’t support alpha (ie: Blackmagic QT). I usually use Quicktime None with millions+ colors (the + will get you the alpha).
Then import that file into whatever encoding software you use. It must support Flash 8 video (with the On2 VP6 codec) and alpha channel embedding. I use the Flash video encoder which comes with Flash. Then just encode as needed with the exception to be sure to check the ‘encode alpha channel’ switch (that’s what the Flash encoder calls it) in the video settings tab or area. The web designer will then be able to incorporate the resulting .flv with the transparency intact.
-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA -
If you’re looking to ripple across all tracks, just deselect any tracks (audio and video) and the ripple will effect all unlocked tracks. If you mark an in and out, the ripple or lift will obey that.
BTW, sorry to hear about everything you’re going through right now- I feel your pain on every level. I’m a longtime FCP/Avid/Quantel user who also uses Premiere enough to be as frustrated as heck with everything you’ve come across lately, plus a whole lot more. As some others have suggested, submit feature requests, although I’ve done that forever and almost nothing in the app has changed, especially in the realm of ‘pro’ features like proper TC and metadata support, but I keep submitting and hoping.
Good luck,
-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA -
Sorry to say, but welcome to Premiere ‘Pro’. EDL and other metadata support for working with other manufacturers is not great. Having said that, try these things which may or may not work:
In FCP, duplicate your final sequence and delete all the audio from the new sequence. Make sure all your video is on one track or export multiple lists for multiple tracks if needed. I always like to make sure the sequence TC is NDF (I don’t work in TV much so that always works for me and avoids any confusion, but that’s up to you) and that the program starts on 1:00:00:00 even. Export a CMX 3600 list from FCP. Disable all the audio tracks (‘none’ check boxes) in the edl export dialog. Also disable all comments, clip names, notes, etc, etc. Enable the ‘generic’ option (for b-reels) and make sure the sort order is in C (master) mode. Name the list with no more than six letters or numbers and avoid spaces. This goes for the sequence name too as that’s what’s used in the ‘header’ of the edl. Import that into PPro and see if it works. More than likely, the timeline will start at 59:56:17-ish (don’t remember exactly off top of my head) or some such TC because PPro assumes DFTC lists (maybe CS3 doesn’t, not sure). Just reset that and you’re off. If that doesn’t work, go back and try stripping off all your effects and transitions from the clips in the FCP timeline and try re-exporting as above. FCP usually will put out a good list, but it’s not perfect either. If that still doesn’t work, there may be some other weirdness going on including the possibility you have mixed TC ‘dropness’ in your sequence which, in any other system is fine and works as expected, but in PPro for some reason still occasionally causes issues in my experience.
I should mention too that PPro’s project settings must match the frame rate of the sequence in FCP (ie: 29.97 sequence in FCP requires 29.97 project in PPro). Otherwise, you’ll have a mess on your hands. If you’re coming from a FCP perspective, you can’t have different frame rate sequences in the same project in PPro as you can in FCP. You must pre-determine and be stuck with a frame rate upon creating your project. Just a heads-up. And, stating the obvious, the FCP project’s metadata is only as good as the logging/capturing was (ie: bad reel numbers, broken code, etc, etc.) so hopefully that’s all good too. Once you’re in PPro, you’ll be in good, if you’re coming from FCP it’ll seem real familiar and you’ll be sailing.
Good luck,
-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA -
Ah, good to hear! Glad to assist.
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Have you tried making sure that the track the clip is on is the ‘target’ track? I’m not in front of PPro right now, but if you have more than one track, it seems to me for match frame to work, you have to ‘tell’ PPro which track to match to and that’s the way you do it. I might be mistaken though….
-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA -
Is your project a field-based format project (ie: NTSC)? If so, any animation you’ve done is rendered with fields. When you are encoding, are you deinterlacing? Most encoding programs’ deinterlacing features are really bad at deinterlacing (including AME) and result in just throwing away half the resolution. That works fine for small frame sized encodes but for 640×480 you’ll actually get a worse result than what you’d think, but of course you can’t leave the interlacing in there either. And with the text size you mentioned plus the fact you’re animating these rasterized stills that contain that text (is that right?), I’m not surprised at your description of what you’re seeing.
So, first make sure you’re working in frame-based project. And then I seem to remember PPro rendered fields anyway (at least in 30p) when doing transitions. I can’t remember what it did with transformations and I don’t have PPro in front of me to check, but I do remember this being a issue for me in the past. I also don’t remember if I’m thinking of 1.5 or 2.0. (sorry). My workaround was to use AE for animation and render w/o fields. Or if you have to, deinterlace outside of the encoding program with some other software or plug-in that is purpose made for that before encoding. You might want to do the scaling outside of the encoding software as well- it’s surprising how bad some of the pre-processing functions of those programs are!
Also, I’m not surprised your result was better in Flash Encoder. If you want the best quality, use the process that works the best for you even if it costs more time, or live with the inferior quality.
-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA -
As Aanarav mentioned, there are some good solutions out there for $, but there is also Windows Media Encoder free from Microsoft that is both fast and the quality is as good as any 3rd party as far as the actual encode goes ’cause it’s the same engine. The pre-processing it does have isn’t even too bad for free, but it doesn’t do a lot in that dept. And you can do batches with it or encode live to file or web via input from a capture card even with a pretty low-end machine. It’s not as intuitive or as user-friendly as most of the good software out there (go figure), but if you’re not doing too much in way of volume of clips and if you can either live without or do your pre-processing in your editing app before encoding, it can work well. And you can’t complain about the price!
-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA -
Yes, you can find links to and past posts about Automatic Duck’s OMF plug-in for PPro, but Wes stopped selling it when PPro 2.0 was released. I tried it and it worked great with 1.5 for me, then Wes stopped selling it. I never tried it with 2.0 (not sure that’s possible). There’s a Automatic Duck forum here at the Cow, you might try asking there.
-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA