[Walter Soyka]

Check out Color management and color profiles.

In AE, start a new project. In Project Settings, set the working space to HD (Rec 709). Import your footage, put it in a new comp, then make sure Interpret footage > Color management > profile is set to SDTV. (Avoid NTSC 1953.)

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 Till] “The multiple frames render setting is allotting .75GB per core for BG operations.”

From Memory (RAM) usage in 64-bit After Effects:

RAM Allocation Per Background CPU Specifies the minimum amount of RAM that will be allocated to each background process, each of which runs on its own CPU (processor core). Setting this value lower can allow more CPUs to be used simultaneously with a limited amount of RAM. However, if you set this value too low for the kinds of frames that you are rendering, then the background processes will fail to render frames at all, and only the foreground process will be used to render frames. For example, you should not set this value to low value of 0.75 GB if you are rendering frames with the pixel dimensions of high-definition television or digital cinema.

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]

[Dave LaRonde] “Y’know, Walter, there’s a certain irony to all this.

I recall when lens flares were a hallmark of a photographer who couldn’t do the job properly. Over the years they’ve become a design element, like intentionally shaky images or distressed typefaces.”

And lens vignetting. If I bought camera lens that vignetted like the trend, I’d want a refund! I think originally this started as an effort to make something look like it wasn’t created digitally — but it’s gone way over the top, and clients are asking for it.

A very subtle lens flare can make a difference in selling a shot… and then there’s the J.J. Abrams approach, which I ran across in another forum here on the COW:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbJ-y6BWfUc&feature=player_embedded

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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[Walter Soyka]

[Bob Zelin] “Do you actually think that Apple is rewriting FCP and compressor to support the 12 cores? If I am wrong, I will send you $100 each. “

I certainly hope that Apple will update FCP so that it will be multithreaded and 32-bit. This would be overdue.

Compressor can use 12 cores today. You have to set up a virtual cluster and submit your job to your cluster instead of “This Computer.” Compressor will launch multiple instances (running on multiple cores), split the job, compress the segments, and then stitch them back together seamlessly into a single file.

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]

[Ady Le Roux] “With all these music video using lighting flares in ambundance – (using anamorphic lenses I know!), I am wondering if there is a plugin or a technique which can make me get the same or similar result!???”

There’s Optical Flares from Video Copilot, and Knoll Light Factory Pro from Red Giant Software.

Optical Flares is CS5-ready now; Knoll should have an update for CS5 out soon.

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]

[adam taylor] “i thought the AE system needed to have FCP installed to use the Prores codecs?”

FCP must be installed to be able to encode ProRes, but ProRes can be decoded on both Mac and Windows platforms. The most recent version of Quicktime includes a ProRes decoder. For older versions of Quicktime, there are also separate decoders available for free download from Apple:
https://support.apple.com/downloads/Apple_ProRes_QuickTime_Decoder_1_0_for_Mac
https://support.apple.com/downloads/Apple_ProRes_QuickTime_Decoder_1_0_for_Windows

If the artist is using CS3, there will be a gamma shift in AE on ProRes footage with the default interpretation rules. The solution to this problem is here.

[Shannon Bedford] “What settings should I be using? My vision is HDV1080i50 and I have my timeline set to match.”

Unless you are going back to HDV tape, you might consider transcoding and working in ProRes timeline. HDV is very heavily compressed, and it’s not really suitable for effects work.

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]

Have you accidentally clicked the Draft 3D mode button at the top of the timeline panel?

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]

[Jessica Bartoshewski] “I wanted to import wmvs becuase they take up less space than an avis or movs. I can import avis and movs just fine, but AE won’t let me import wmv. “

WMV import is supported on PCs (going back to at least CS3 and possibly further), but not on Macs. See the Supported input format page of the help for more.

You will have to either output original files in a supported format, or transcode your WMVs to a supported format which AE will use.

Pre-CS5, AE had a lot of trouble with footage with interframe compression (meaning frames depend on other frames elsewhere in the stream to decode), like most MPEG files, WMV, h264, etc. It’s best to use footage with intraframe compression (meaning each frame is independent of any others in the stream), like Uncompressed, Animation, Quicktime with PNG compression, ProRes, DV, etc.

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]

[Nick Christoff] “So it does seem that the only way for me to achieve the look I want is to bring all of my particles into one comp and then orbit around everything, and even then I may be limited.”

Just to clarify this — Particular would show this same behavior even if everything were in one comp.

Particular doesn’t create particles in AE’s 3D space. Every Particular layer has its own 3D space which the plugin, using the same camera settings as the comp, renders into a 2D plane.

As Kevin mentioned, the best solution is to use a particle system in a true 3D app to avoid this problem in the first place. As you’ve mentioned, you can fake it with some careful compositing. I’d also add that you can set up Obscuration Layers (under the Visibility tab), but these will only work with true 3D layers.

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]

[Scott Davis] “I know, wrong forum, but does anyone use a DVD player with RS-422 controls? Looking for one in a non-edit environment.”

Scott, Pioneer makes a line of industrial DVD players with RS-232 control. You’d need an RS-232 / RS-422 translator; perhaps an Addenda Rosetta Stone might work?

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