[Walter Soyka]

[Sean Kapleton] “I am familiar with black magic cards / hdlink, AJA hdp2, HPdreamcolor, Flanders, etc but those setups have always been strictly for broadcast use out of FCP & Color and not necessarily for AE grading so i want to make sure i am covered for grading and QCing out of AE for Broadcast AND Film on a budget ; )”

I have an AJA Kona and an 8-bit FSI monitor, which I use with FCP, Color, and AE. It’s perfect for broadcast. Film may benefit more from a 10-bit monitor like the Dream Color or a 10-bit FSI (and you should definitely discuss your workflow with your lab before you dive in), but that will certainly impact your budget.

You might check out Scopo Gigio or Test Gear (CS3/CS4 only — no CS5 version yet) to add software scopes to After Effects.

I love Colorista II for quick touch-ups — it’s very powerful and easy to use — but isn’t grading in AE like using a screwdriver to drive nails? It doesn’t really have a proper toolset for grading. Why not use a purpose-built app like Color or Resolve?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Robert Paynter] “I have to request some 4k from a movie studio. They have asked what format I want. I’m wondering if anyone has had experience with this in CS4 and could recommend the best to work with. PNG sequence, QT uncompressed, Animation? This is not RED Footage and I’ve never used 4k before. Not sure what AE can handle.”

AE could handle any of these formats, and supports comps up to 30,000 x 30,000 pixels in size. I agree with Mr. Fuller that Cineon/DPX is probably your best bet.

I’d add one other comment — 4K frames are big! If you work in 32bpc, a single 4K frame will require just under 200 MB of RAM.

You didn’t mention how much RAM you have, but unless you need some 32-bit only plugins for the project, this might be a good time to consider maxing out your RAM and upgrading to CS5.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

I don’t think this meant to compete with FCP. I think they’re going after Autodesk Smoke on Mac, which is software-only and starts at $15k.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Monica Nolan] “Walter–I tried pre-rendering a nested comp and then outputting a small section of the pre-rendered, nested comp over the blue background and for the first time it worked at 1920×1080, animation codec. However the test section didn’t really play beyond the first fade up–more like it was jumping forward, freeze framing, jumping forward. Thoughts???”

If you’re watching it in Quicktime Player, there’s no need to worry. The animation codec is well-suited as an intermediate format because it’s lossless — but very few computers can play it back in real time, as the data rate is very, very high.

Once you’ve pre-rendered, you should be able to RAM preview in AE and see your work in real time.

Alternately, drop your animation-codec render into Compressor and make a playback-friendly encode.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Monica Nolan] “The situation is worse this morning–can’t play through my comp to make changes. Audio stops and starts, and seems out of sync. I just threw away my preferences and retried, no change.”

How are you playing the comp? Standard preview (spacebar) or RAM preview (0 on numeric keypad)?

[Monica Nolan] “I just turned off the Open GL.”

Good.

[Monica Nolan] “1920×1080 square 29.97–364 mb for 33 seconds. Does that file size say h.264?”

What does it say in the project panel when you select the footage? It should identify the compressor for you.

[Monica Nolan] “Here’s a screen shot of the artifacting: That is supposed to be an arrow with a shadow, and the blue dot is supposed to be inside the box, not floating in space.”

Is the dot also supposed to be perfectly round, or is it supposed to be an oval as we see here? It might a pixel aspect ratio issue. What is the source of the dot? A file, or a shape layer? Does it look this in the comp as well as the output? Can we get a screenshot of your AE user interface showing the problem?

[Monica Nolan] “Question: should I stop thinking the cause is my computer not having enough horsepower? Or is that still on the table?”

How much RAM do you have?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

What do the artifacts look like? Can you post a screen shot?

Can you precompose and pre-render the background?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

Ha! My wife is a photographer, and she showed me the video last night. I immediately ran for my laptop. I knew I had to post it right away before you got to it!

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

There are a few things that disrupt AE’s 3D space when you insert them in between 3D layers in your comp. The usual suspects include 2D layers, adjustment layers, and 3D layers with layer styles.

See 3D layer interactions, render order, and collapsed transformations in the online help for more.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Bailey Kalesti] “I’m importing uncompressed avi’s. I’m also rendering out uncompressed avi’s after my edits.”

“Uncompressed” is a pretty loose term. RGB, YUV, 422, 444, 8-bit, 10-bit, packed, planar, run-length encoded…

What flavor of uncompressed are you using? What uncompressed codecs do you have installed on your computer?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

Here’s a new HDR video, shot with 2 Canon 5DmIIs and a beam splitter:

https://vimeo.com/14821961

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

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