[Walter Soyka]

To build an effect like this, you want to create a new layer that contains only the two colors you’re looking for and blur them.

Try this: duplicate your footage, then add two Color Key effects (one for each of the colors you want to blur, the Invert Alpha preset, a Blur effect, and finally a Matte Choker effect (in that order) to the top layer. Adjust to suit. You may need to create an animated garbage masks to eliminate any unwanted blurring in areas of similar color.

The keys knock out the colors you want to blur, leaving only the colors you don’t. The Invert Alpha reverses that, so you keep the colors you want to blur, and knock out the rest. The blur is self-explanatory. The Matte Choker helps you tighten the blurred area, so it doesn’t overlap into outlines or areas of other other color.

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
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[Walter Soyka]

[Vadim Smolenskiy] “I’m working in AE7… using a 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB iMac… Snow Leopard if it matters… Is there a software update I need to install”

Yes, there is! AE7 is not supported on Snow Leopard, and it doesn’t run natively on Intel Macs (it runs under PPC emulation in Rosetta). You are two full versions behind, and you will find getting support for your configuration almost impossible. You might look into your upgrade eligibility for After Effects CS4.

On a separate note, if you’re using any interframe compression in your footage (like HDV or MP4), you should search this forum for “Dave’s Stock Answer #1” to read more about why that causes trouble.

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]

[Alex Pritchard] “I’m only using a single camera layer, moving it when ever I want a new shot. I’m not sure if this is a bad way to work, but I couldn’t see any advantages to using multiple camera angles and didn’t have any problems (until now) “

Does everything look ok when you RAM preview?

I’d suspect that this camera treatment is your problem. You might have accidentally created additional keyframes that you don’t want. If you’re not looking for one seamless camera move, it might be better to split your camera layer.

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]

The total delay will be the same, 2 frames, regardless of the number of times you transition. It’s not the act of mixing that creates delay; it’s the presence of the mixer itself in the signal path. The switcher has a digital signal processor in its mixing unit. That processor takes input, processes the mix, and outputs. The time between input and output — the delay — is one frame. The mixer is constantly working one frame behind the inputs.

Add that frame to the additional frame of processing on input, and whatever processing (if any) is done on output, and you get the total delay of the 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

[Walter Soyka]

Don’t believe in no-win situations.

This thread reminds me of a great Abraham Lincoln quote: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Even if you don’t get all the editing done by the time the crew returns from the shoot, if you can organize all the footage, the footage library will be infinitely more useful, and future work much, much faster — and this could be a big win after all.

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 seen Vimeo’s guidelines on compression?

https://www.vimeo.com/help/compression

Also, you’d want to use Compressor or Quicktime Pro to do this compression with the high-quality MOV files you already have, rather than trying to use After Effects as a 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

[Walter Soyka]

Your digital switcher’s M/E (which allows you to wipe or process effects) introduces delay, but it’s constant; it won’t be cumulative every time you transition.

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]

A couple general guidelines for how AE uses your hardware:

The graphics card doesn’t matter much to AE. Your money is better spent elsewhere for an AE machine. (Ignore this piece of advice if you are also running software that DOES benefit from a workstation-class graphics card, like 3ds Max or Maya).

RAM is critical for multiprocessing; get 2-4 GB of RAM per core. If you get a 4-core machine, you want 8-16 GB of RAM.

You haven’t mentioned storage — don’t overlook your hard drives! Depending on your workflow, your hard drive could become a bottleneck. A fast RAID, or at least multiple disks, might be beneficial for you working with HD.

Now for a couple items that are my personal opinion:

4 cores is not enough. I’ve got an 8-core workstation with 32 GB of RAM, and it has been well worth the additional money, especially when deadlines loom. I’d also go Intel, as they currently outperform AMD by a significant margin.

Finally, you might consider buying your system from an integrator instead of building it from scratch yourself. If something goes wrong when you are on a deadline, having customer support who will stand behind the system is invaluable.

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 agree with Michael on both counts — avoid USB video, and don’t worry about OpenGL for AE.

If you need more screen real estate, check out the line of Matrox GXMs like the DualHead2Go and the TripleHead2Go; they connect to the VGA/DVI/DP out on your MBP and allow you to connect multiple monitors.

Final Cut will perform no differently than it does now, because the Matrox units rely on your existing graphics card.

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]

[Brendan Coots] “Animation codec is a “finishing” codec, i.e. it’s uncompressed, archival quality. What you need is a distribution codec that looks just as good but has a much lower datarate.”

This is great advice in general, but it’s incorrect for this specific application.

h.264 is currently unsupported in Dataton Watchout, which recommends Quicktime v6.4. Dataton specifies Quicktime Animation for movies where transparency is required, and the only other option for preserving transparency is Quicktime PNG.

MPEG2 or Windows Media 9 are the only supported formats for high-def video. MPEG2 uses less resources for playback, but is limited in possible frame sizes; WMV9 is more flexible on frame size, but uses more resources during playback.

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