gothamboy2000

Jeez Daniel!  Talk about understatement.  You know more about the software than just about anyone on the planet...  

BTW, LTNS!  notice my change of address...  no longer at Warner Bros...   will send an email with the new contact info.

I SWEAR I didn't bribe him to say that...

Just when I think I have that program figured out, I talk to Brian Maffit for 60 seconds. Pretty much puts my knowledge base back in perspective.

Hey Rick! Speaking of which, I'm looking for a job... hehe...

Danielsan-->
daniel AT downloadculture DOT com

Hi
Well after messing around with After Effects here and there over the years, I downloaded the latest version from Adobe to see how it goes to maybe make some motion stuff like Camdiver has.

The trial download was like over 1 GIG in size...but once loaded up it looks and feels better to drive than the earlier versions.

Have tried it out with HDV (cineforem AVI) material and it even handles that, but due to the endless complexity of the program, I was wondering if anyone else out there uses it. Maybe a few tips would be good.

I would suggest you have a 3 GIG+ processor and lots of ram if you are going to try it out. I was using all of my 2 GIGs up for Ram Renders and it even can network render but have not worked that out yet.

Hmm... Well, I've used it a fair bit and used to work for the After Effects team so I might be able to help.

Rendering speed can be affected by a DOZEN things (render preview resolution, processing speed, size of the source footage, how many frames you skip during a preview, how much of the frame you render during preview, etc.) In short, second only perhaps to 3-D rendering applications, After Effects can bring even the beefiest machines to their knees. Motion tracking got a great deal faster in 6.5 (orders of magnitude faster in fact) and, though I left just before version 7 was released, I assume that's been increased further. Naturally, the Open GL functionality makes 3-D work jaw-droppingly faster provided the card supports what you're trying to render.

As for hardware recommendations, I don't know that a mega-machine is necessary for simple color correction tasks, but certainly if you'll be blending footage into a 3-D show intro with mulitple layers, that rendering time will take a hit.

As for the Grid Iron software that's included, it increases rendering speed by distributing rendering across multiple machines. AE has, for years, supported multi-machine processing, but required that the footage be cloned across all machines in the network. Grid Iron's X-Factor plug in uses the much-touted grid rendering approach allowing multi-processor rendering WITHOUT the distribution of footage.

By all means, post any specific you want to know. I may need to dust off my AE skills a bit but I can certainly ask the team if an issue arises I can't answer.

Daniel Brown
Recovering Adobe Dude
www.adobeevangelists.com