[Zvi Twersky]

Ok, I figured this out… My other layers weren’t on 3D. Silly me.

[Zvi Twersky]

First, I really want to thank you all for taking the time to respond, and with such depth too.

All that you wrote was very helpful.

I want to add some things, but I will not address each of you individually, although you all touched some point of my question.

When I program software (not video editing), I have a clear picture of what I want the program to do. I don’t need to think about how to do it yet. I can even think of something unrealistic. As long as I have a clear vision of what I want this software to… then I’m ready to move on to the next step of breaking things down.

An example might be… I would like a program that will be connected to all the hospitals in the world and would get data about all born babies… height, weight, sex, etc… so at all times I can know things like how many people are in the world, and what is the average weight of all the girls in the world. (Wacho whoever would make such a program :-)))

Forget about the problems like babies that are born outside the hospital etc… (THAT’S the only problem?! 🙂

Or even… I want a program that can grow hands and make me coffee when I whistle. The main thing is that I know what I want and I can visualize the final outcome of my program. I can see myself whistling and hands growing out of the computer, and making me coffee.

Now back to after effects. I was asking more about visual effects because once again, with motion graphics I actually have less of a problem because I am dealing more with visual images and I can picture them in motion. Where with visual effects… I can’t seem to picture from blank, where a streak of lightning might blend in nicely with blue spots that might be rotating around a logo that perhaps will explode into some spinning cube…. (see where I’m getting?)

You see these 10 second logos, or 5 second introduction to a commercial, full of visual motion effects (90% effects and about 10% the words that the artist wants you to read)… and this is where I have the blank mind about where to start.

Some of you said to take it from the top. Ok, so lets say I decide I want my effect to be bright. So I will need nice light. So lets have streaks of light. Now, without any picture of what I’m doing… it’s hard to try to compose any light because you don’t know what else will in the picture WITH the light.

I think the best example would be a logo that you want to create for the beginning of your productions. So there’s no real message you’re trying to get out with your effect. You just need people to see your name, so they should know who produced the movie, and all the rest of the effects is just for the “WOW”, like someone put it here. The “WOW” is where I get lost.

But one of you provided links and I’m definitely going to check them out now!

Thanks!
So with visual effect…

[Zvi Twersky]

Nice work. I think I’ll do that too. I’ll call myself and record the phone call with a mic. 🙂

[Zvi Twersky]

Thanks. I’ll try that.

[Zvi Twersky]

well, 3 of them are auto saved by the program. The 4th auto save I had replaced it with my final save by doing “save as” and saving the final project as auto save 4, so I should of had 2 project files of the same thing (my own manual backup) and 3 auto saved backups. The 3 auto saved ones work but like I said, I had done a lot of work after that so they don’t help me. The manual saves are the ones that don’t work. Thanks for the reply.

[Zvi Twersky]

I have 4 automated backups. Each backup was created by PPRO at different times. The backups work fine but I had made so much changes since the forth backup that I am not going to do it again. (The files are the same in all of them).

I tried moving the source files, hoping that he’ll ask me to relink when opening, but that doesn’t happen. Like I said, it just gets stuck on “loading”. Because the backup files work fine, that is why I think it’s a problem with the project file itself.

I’m just lucky that this isn’t a project that a worked on for weeks… just a few hours. I am afraid to use PPRO now on big projects! I can’t have this happining on big projects and lose weeks of work!

[Zvi Twersky]

I moved all the files but he still gets stuck on “loading” and doesn’t ask me anything. It’s so frustrating because I have all the media and redered files!! It seems that just the .prproj file is corrupt! Isn’t there any way to create a new project and have the Premiere “create” a working sequence based on the redered files I already have?

[Zvi Twersky]

No, I have each on its own. This is the reply I got on another forum:

(quote)If you use Production Studio you get an invisible app called ‘Dynamic Link’ which manages this for you. you can insert an AE project on your Premiere timeline and have both open at the same time. Change the clip in Ae and it automatically changes with no need to re-render in Premiere pro.

That is the ‘correct’ way of doing it. However, it is only available to you if you buy both apps as part of Production Studio. If you didn’t then are stuck with doing it the long way as described above.(end quote)

Thanks!

[Zvi Twersky]

Believe me, I read all the help and manuals I can before I posted this. How do you think I found this form if not googling around for hours on this issue?

[Zvi Twersky]

The footage is captured clips right from my SONY digital video camera into the Primere Pro. No compression at all. My computer is a Compaq Presario P4, 2.56 Ghz, RAM: 512 with plenty of space on the HD. Never had computer problems or software problems. (No BSOD… lucky me… tfu tfu tfu)