[Whitlock Dunbar]

Thanks Shane. The P2 store looks great, but to curb costs we’ll have to go the laptop route for now.

[Whitlock Dunbar]

Busted…

[Whitlock Dunbar]

Thanks for the help everyone. Porcelain is such a bear of a font to write on because of all the strokes and the wide range of widths; I was somehow hoping there may be a shortcut. I wasted a lot of time trying to get create outlines to work, so I had to go with the down and dirty stroke plug-in to meet my deadline.

Back to Steve’s question, it just seemed in my apparently flawed logic that once I created a shape layer (via create outline) I should be able to set a keyframe for fill set to 0% and another to 100%. For simplicity sake picture a typical progress bar; 0% would be empty (ie no fill) and 100% would be full.

Don’t worry about explaining why this isn’t possible, I have accepted that it isn’t and have moved on to greener pastures. Thanks again though!

[Whitlock Dunbar]

That’s exactly what’s happening, the stroke is following the path not filling it.

I’m not trying to be lazy, just efficient here. If I use the shape layer generated by “create outlines”, isn’t there some way to keyframe the Fill parameter? I tried using “Trim Paths” but it fills outside the shape.

[Whitlock Dunbar]

Thanks Vince! That sounds like the way to go.

[Whitlock Dunbar]

Sounds like creating a solid and adjusting the opacity will be the most efficient strategy. Forgive me if i sound like a whiner, but shouldn’t “fade to black” be a simple drag and drop effect like “dip to black”? In my years of editing spots for broadcast, 99% of the spots fade to black. Is there an obvious reason (again I’m new to Premiere) that this isn’t a simpler process?

[Whitlock Dunbar]

I’m sorry I should have been clearer. I understand how it was shot, my interest is in how to achieve the clear image quality and smooth motion after compression for the web. I’m using Squeeze and VP6, but based on your response to a similar post, I think I’m being much too conservative with the data rate.

In my failures thus far I never went above 400 kB/sec, and only varied the Keyframe Frequency and the Minimum Quality settings. The results were always very blocky with stuttery motion. I’ll keep trying…

[Whitlock Dunbar]

The Flash designers are building the site assuming the user has at least a 768kB/sec connection.

[Whitlock Dunbar]

Thanks guys! Between your two posts I see a lot that I have either overthought or done incorrectly.

Yes this is a wide-screen, not HD presentation so I’ll nest the master into a new comp. Also I’ll do the vertical blur trick and set the output to lower field.

I have Squeeze 4, and I’m suprised to learn that it is the better choice over Encore for creating a DVD (in terms of quality). I’ll be returning to this project mid-week so I’ll post the outcome.

[Whitlock Dunbar]

I’m not work right now but I can give more details tomorrow if need be.

2-Pass VBR
Data rate: 300 kB/sec
Auto Keyframe: 300
Minimum distance: 8
Maximun Quality: 100
Minimum Quality: 50

The original file is an 8 second .mov (Animation codec).