[Vincent Rosati]

Can you open the clips in a standalone player, like windows media or QuickTime?

Is premiere indicating that the media files are no longer linked?

You may have a corrupted project file. Try creating a new project, than import the old project.

Vince

[Vincent Rosati]

Not sure exactly why that would happen. Many playback issues are a result of using codecs that are not ideal for editing.
I’d check the file’s codecs with SGpot, than compare them to Premiere’s accepted codecs.
I’d also try decompressing the video before import. I use AVS Video Converter.

Vince

[Vincent Rosati]

Sorry, I guess I totally didn’t answer your question before.
Maybe this’ll do it…

Here’s Spirals-Redux

https://www.newinelabs.com/rosati/tutorials/spirals_redux_cs2.ai

Vince

[Vincent Rosati]

IMHO, I’d just jump right into Premiere.

As far as proficiency goes, read the manual.
Understand the functions of the editing tools, and why they exist.
Also, train yourself to keep one hand on the keyboard for shortcuts. It’s faster, and it makes you look sexy. 🙂

Vince

[Vincent Rosati]

There’s probably a better answer to this, but I just had to do this.

I just saved each layer as it’s own AI file…

Vince

[Vincent Rosati]

There might be an Illustrator script out there somewhere that can do that.
But, here’s a file that will show you the procedures that you could use to do that manually. You’d have to add some steps, overlay the operation on top of itself to get all of the colors, but this’ll get you started…

http://www.newinelabs.com/rosati/tutorials/spirals_cs2.ai

Vince

[Vincent Rosati]

A good way to start with Encore menus is to find the menu templates folder in Encore’s application folder, they are PSD files.
Open one in Photoshop so you can see how the PSD file needs to be structured to create usable buttons.

As far as a quicktime file. Maybe try to export it as an uncompressed MOV or AVI. You could possibly use it as a background movie, in the menu.

Vince

[Vincent Rosati]

Check out this doc…
https://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/PremierePro/3.0/help.html?content=WS90137890-4F9E-4394-977B-378D664B39F2.html

It’s about Premiere’s Titler.

It’s hard to see, but in the panel labeled ‘C’ is the fill options. ‘Fill’ is in bold text near the bottom of the panel – Just before Strokes and Shadows.

You highlight the text with the text tool, The same tool that you used to create the text.

The ‘drop down’ is a little triangle next to the word ‘Fill’ in the titler.

Hope this helps..

Vince

[Vincent Rosati]

Generally, I’d recommend using square pixels for desktop video.

Not all codecs will handle aspect ratio information. MPEG2, MPEG1, WMV, and many QuickTime codecs will.
Note, to get WMV to use a particular aspect ratio you need to add an ‘Audience’ in the export settings.

Try using Export/Adobe Media Encoder or Main Concept MPEG Pro

Download GSpot. It will tell you what aspect ratio data your file is holding.

Also, you might want to try PowerDVD. It’s pretty accurate with previewing video.

Vince

[Vincent Rosati]

As far as exporting a sequence of JPEGs, I’m not sure. You could Export/Movie as File Type: TIFF or Targa. But, you would need to run a batch on Photoshop if you wanted to make JPEGs or LZW compress the TIFFs (LZW TIFF is lossless).

To make the adjustments in Premiere, read this thread…
Scaling Multiple Clips
Be sure to read the whole thing, as there is a minor point in getting the ‘copy’ function to work.

Basically, the thread offers two solutions…
1 – To copy effect parameters from one clip and paste them onto a selected group of clips.

OR

2 – To nest a sequence (to place one sequence into another). Than apply the effects to the nested sequence. Which, when nested, behaves like a single clip.

Vince