[Walter Soyka]

[Mark Suszko] “OTOH, there are corporations that have banned powerpoint, because in the wrong hands (more often than not) it is a huge time waster as well as an actual barrier to communication. Google up powerpoint plus Ed Tufte, you’ll see what I mean… most rank and file people don’t use powerpoint; they perpetrate it.”

Agreed. Just like having FCP on your computer doesn’t automatically make you a good editor, having PPT on your computer doesn’t automatically make you a good presenter. Further, as you and Tufte point out, PowerPoint’s designs and templates actively discourage good communication.

My presentation clients recognize this, and that’s why they hire me. They focus on their business and their message, and I focus on helping them convey it to their audience. Slides are a medium, and PowerPoint is a tool; both can be used either effectively or ineffectively.

To learn about slides done well, don’t skip the Tufte, but also read up on the work of Nancy Duarte and Garr Reynolds.

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]

[Matthew Chiumento] “You would be amazed on how Power Point is seen as a Skill set in many corporations these days.”

“Powerpoint” is a skill set, and just like video production, it’s really easy to underestimate the complexity.

I see three parts to it in my work: actual Powerpoint technical fundamentals (creating proper, easy-to-maintain decks), graphic design (making the slides work well), and presentation design (crafting the story of the presentation as a whole, including the speech and visual support).

Having skills in all three of these areas makes you a valuable communicator indeed.

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]

[Jordan Woods] “But a Geffen extender, or something like that, put a monitor and keyboard in the studio, control your MP remotely and plug the esata boxes into your MP. “

I’ll second this — this seems to be by far the simplest and most reliable solution for your current needs. You didn’t mention if there were any VTRs, but if so, everything can go in the machine room.

If you go this route, don’t just extend the keyboard, video and monitor — I’d also look into the Gefen USB and Firewire extenders to accommodate the inevitable sneakernet flash drives or hard drives.

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]

[Beau Baker] “But there is only so much I can do with limited upgrade ability on my 32bit.”

The topics I posted about (changing RAM preview preferences, proxies, regions of interest, pre-rendering) are all about getting more preview performance with less hardware. Taking an hour or two to get to know them now will really help to streamline your production work.

If you’re running a 32-bit operating system, you will be somewhat RAM-constrained. I’d suggest keeping multi-processing off in order to avoid RAM problems.

[Beau Baker] “I’m sure Adobe has way of knowing how much each effect/plugin uses”

I think it’s a little more complicated than that; the processor and memory usage of different effects will vary depending on your source footage and effect settings. Experience is a good teacher here; you’ll find that blurs, glows, time-remapping with pixel motion, warps, and big particle systems are generally render hogs — but they’re also all necessary and irreplaceable. Knowing when you’re using a render-intensive effect, and working around it with the tools above, will help you speed up your workflow without having to avoid specific, useful tools.

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]

[Beau Baker] “Anyone know if a list exist that has the order of effects by ram usage for after effects?”

I don’t know if such a list exists, and I don’t think it would help you speed up your workflow even if it did. If you’re waiting on RAM previews, you’re probably limited more by processor usage than RAM usage of particular effects.

While we’re on the topic of RAM usage, though, check out Todd Kopriva’s excellent blog post “Don’t starve your applications of RAM.”

[Beau Baker] “I can’t stand being hours into a job and spending all my time waiting for ram previews. If I had a reference to know what combination of effects to avoid or use a comparable alternative effect to speed up composting, I’d be in heaven.”

It sounds like you could see a productivity boost if you fine-tune your workflow.

Adobe has some truly excellent online help, if you know what to look for. In particular, you should read up on these topics:
– RAM preview/Shift+RAM preview resolution and frame rates
– Region of interest
– Proxies
– Pre-rendering

There’s also an entry specifically about improving performance.

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]

Creating faux 3D out of 2D images can also be done with projection mapping. Essentially, you create some geometry in 3D space, and then project the image onto that geometry.

The benefit of projection mapping over the multiplane technique others have described here is that you can get additional parallax effect in floors, walls, and other planes that extend in z-space that you cannot achieve with a simpler multiplane setup. The downside is that it’s a bit more complex to understand and do.

If you decide to go this route, you might check out Digieffects’ Camera Mapper, which will save you a lot of time and frustration versus doing this exclusive with built-in AE features.

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]

That’s a very big image buffer — 678 MB. You might find enlightment in Todd Kopriva’s blog entry “Don’t starve your software of RAM.”

Can you tell us about your system? How much RAM? How many processors? Is multi-processing enabled?

If you render to an image sequence instead of a movie, how many frames does it create successfully (if any) before it fails?

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]

It sounds like you might have clicked the “Track Motion” button — you want to click the “Stabilize Motion” button in the tracker instead.

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]

[Caspar Stracke] “I am working in a monster Hi res 6400×3600 and need to re-import rendered out QTs into AE. I am working in ProRes, all lower resolutions work when re-importng, but for the big one AE tells me “…MooV file damaged or unsupported… Also, Animation codec wont work in this size. Try to increase memory, no luck. Anybody knows a trick, or have I simply reached the max?”

This seems to be a bug in After Effects. Quicktime supports these large resolutions, but AE won’t read them.

You should render out to an image sequence instead; AE will have no trouble reimporting this.

Another big benefit to rendering image sequences with hi-res projects like these is that if you make tweaks, you only need to re-render the changed frames; you can save a lot of time by not re-rendering the entire movie.

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] “I bet when you play the files, you see a white screen. This is because you don’t have the proper codec. You may have to purchase it. What was the codec you used in FCP? “

You might have been editing with one of Apple’s codecs: either Uncompressed, Intermediate, or ProRes. Of these, only ProRes is supported on QuickTime on Windows, and the free decoder is not included with QuickTime; it must be downloaded separately from Apple.

Another option is to compress the video before viewing it. An h264 MP4 file would be playable on QT for Windows.

You might also consider “burning in” the time code into the video, either with a filter in FCP or Compressor.

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