Walter Soyka
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In addition to the resources Todd pointed out, Frischluft Lenscare is a really nice third-party DoF plugin.
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 -
[Asaf Billet] “During the dark, cold hours (or minutes) of watching the render bar fills, I was thinking – does AE take more time processing h264 files, opposed to working on ProRes ones ?”
AE must decode any incoming video in order to use it, and h264 is particularly resource-intensive to decode. In particular, h264 uses interframe compression (meaning some frames rely on data stored in other frames), so the computer must often access and effectively decode multiple frames of video in order to retrieve a single particular frame.
You have to decode the video sometime; I prefer to do it upfront so it doesn’t slow me down as I work.
Also, unless you are using CS5, you should stay away from interframe-compressed media, including h264 — it can cause unpredictable results in your renders.
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 -
Noise reduction is one of the most computationally-expensive (translation: slow to render) effects that you can apply.
NeatVideo in particular does a really nice job, but it takes a very long time to process, regardless of which host application (After Effects, Final Cut, Premiere, etc.) you’re using.
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 -
[Jim Scott] “A little math tells me that you probably have a 24fps comp, but are rendering it at 30fps. The render then is playing your original number of frames at a faster rate (1.25 X), so the 3:17 becomes 2:38. (197 seconds divided by 1.25 equals 158 seconds)”
I agree. One quick addition: though I’m not familiar with how Vegas in particular handles 24p, almost all video 24p really runs at 23.976 frames per second. After Effects is very precise, so if you need to output 23.976 frames per second, you must be sure to set it at 23.976 frames per second (not 23.98, and not 24).
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 -
[piff aroni] “My question is, in final cut I have it set up as a 24p timeline, yet the format of the clips says 23.98, in after effects I have the option to make it 24FPS or 23.98 or even 23.976. what should I make after effects render the clips as so when I import back into FCP I wont need to render the clips each time they are moved in the timeline. thanks”
Final Cut Pro rounds 23.976 up to 23.98 when it displays the frame rate.
You should use 23.976.
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 -
Great — and thank you for posting back with your solution.
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 -
[John Graves] “I’m trying to do some fairly simple scenes in AE 5.5 with audio lip syncing to animation layers. I have one very simple project right now with a single layer of art and a single layer of audio. When i first boot into it, it plays, but then moments later, I can’t preview the composition. A bell rings and it says “After effects error: opening sound component (-2166)””
This was a known issues with After Effects v5.5 and Quicktime 7. The solution was to downgrade Quicktime, or upgrade After Effects. AE 5.5 is over 8 years old now, and I’d suspect you’ll have some issues trying to run it on a recent computer with a recent operating system.
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 -
[Dirk D. Lopez] “I would like to know how I can install the AVI codec on my MAC”
AVI is not a codec; it’s a container. Like Quicktime and other container formats, it can hold a wide variety of codecs, like DivX, DV, or Uncompressed. If you are being asked to deliver AVI files, you should find out what video codec is expected for your delivery.
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 -
[Jason Brown] “In what cases would you want to use a Mac RAID card and when would you do a RAID as you are describing?”
If you’re referring to Apple’s RAID card — never. It’s a disappointment.
If you’re referring to third-party RAID cards, you might use one if you wanted a RAID level other 0 or 1, for both performance and redundancy.
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 -
[Franz Vorenkamp] “I’ve tried motion tracking, and Red Giant’s Steady plugin… both of them either cannot detect the movement,or go nuts. Money isn’t so much an issue, so if there’s some beastly plugin lurking around out there I’d be inclined to give that a look.”
Without seeing the shot, it’s hard to really advise — but since it sounds like you have a budget to work with, perhaps it would be worthwhile to hire a matchmove specialist to stabilize the shot for you?
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