ProLost posted a nice After Effects 7 preset called Film Burn.
filmBurn.ffx is an After Effects 7.0 Animation Preset that automatically creates the overexposed “roll-out” effect, where the tail (and the head if you want) of a clip flickers into overexposure. It’s aware of the in- and out-points of your footage layers in the After Effects timeline, so you can experiment with different effects just by trimming your layers differently.
As a video stock contributor and buyer I tend to lurk around a number of different sites to see which one has the perfect video at the perfect price. The three sites I use are iStockphoto.com, Revostock.com and Pond5.com. I know for myself I contribute the same content on all three sites. However many people don’t realize this but the content is not priced the same. Take for example one of my most popular downloaded files the “Old Fashioned Leader”. On iStock this full resolution video sells for $63.20 (40 credits), on Revostock it sells for $25 (25 credits) and on Pond5 it sells for $20. What is even more interesting is how little I make from iStock than Pond5 or Revostock. The most iStock has ever paid me for a single download of this file is $8.80. Istock is only paying me 7.1% of the sale whereas Revostock is paying out 45% and Pond5 50%.
Is there an effective way in searching all the sites to make sure you cannot get the same clip somewhere else cheaper? I wish there was! I make it easy for the savvy consumer because I have used the same user name on all three sites “shiftback”. However it is not always that easy. For example I found this HD clip on Pond5 selling for $25 and a similar SD clip (actually not as nice) selling on iStock for $63.20. I wonder if there is a lot more overlap than I think?
I hope to have more information on this atrocity later and if you have any insights to share please do so.
I hope this chart will help you to understand the differences between the many video size standards available. NTSC is missing for some reason, but I suppose it could fall under the VGA (640×480) category. NTSC is 720×480 with a pixel aspect ratio of 0.9 giving it a video resolution of 648×480.
This chart demonstrats the magnitude of standard definition footage to higher resolution footage.
When I heard that Trapcode-people.net was abandoned I was very disappointed. It was a one of a kind community where people contributed there Trapcode plugin presets and allowed users to download them freely. Within the collection were a few very high quality files that became an important asset to my work flow. Whenever I had a project with a new challenge I would always click over to Trapcode-people.net to see if there were any solutions ready to be downloaded. More often than not I could find something that could be adapted to meet my needs. Now with the site gone I am at a loss and I know that other designers are too.
While the site was up I did manage to archive some of the preset files and find more using Archive.org. I want to offer all these files to you and hope that the spirit of Trapcode People will live on.
Here are some of the files the zip contains:
Download file
(Some of the files have errors in them and you cannot open them up directly. The workaround is to import the After Effects project file into an existing project file.)
3d-particle-line.aep, 3Dboxs2.aep, 3dlines.aep, 3dplant.aep, aboveclouds.aep, adifferentkindofsphere.aep, alphabet.aep, atom.aep, aurora.aep, birds.aep, confetti.aep, fireworks.aep, flare.aep, fuzzyflower.aep, glowball.aep, grass.aep, grassfreebie.aep, impacticular.aep, leavesparticular.aep, lines.aep, neon.aep, new_partiulcar_#8.aep, novaticularlux.aep, pyropackpalfireworkscascade.aep, rain.aep, slowrisingdust.aep, spermticular.aep, splaticular.aep, supernova.aep, text2circles.aep, tunnel.aep, volcanolavaexpl.aep.
Related posts:
A great place to find custom made After Effects scripts is aescripts.com. Lloyd Alvarez is the creator of the site and is a genius at creating AE scripts. He was even gracious enough to create for me a custom script that installs a video output control panel for my external video monitor. Go check out his work and see all the goodies that he has created.
It is very important to have a well tuned computer when working with high end motion graphics and video production work. Every part of your setup needs to be configured to provide maximum speed and power. I currently run a Mac Pro workstation and I have done what I can to increase performance.
Fast Processors and Lots of Cores
Computers today come with fast processors and multiple cores. When looking for a workhorse of a station it is best to find one with a fast processor and lots of cores. Currently Intel Xeon processors are rated to be very fast and an eight core processor is ahead of its game.
RAM
If you have a lot of cores, you will need a lot of RAM. After Effects can render files quickly by utilizing each core in your computer, however each core needs a minimum of 500MB of RAM to complete its job successfully. For example if you have a eight core machine you would need 4GB of RAM just for multi-processor rendering, plus more RAM for the OS and applications running.
Graphics Card
You want a graphics card that is fast, powerful and with a lot of memory. I think it is standard to find cards with 512MB of on-board memory. After Effects uses OpenGL for faster screen render times so make sure your card is supported by Adobe to make the most out of your system. Here is the compatibility chart.
Hard Drives
As for hard drives this can be very important because they are usually the slowest component of your work-flow. When rendering AE is reading and writing from your hard drives. This is why I like to keep one for reading (source drive) and one for writing (render drive). Currently I am using one fast Raptor drive for my OS and programs, one fast Raptor drive for my renders, one standard drive for personal files, one RAID 0 for my digital assets.
Operating System
Mac OS X is a great operating system and works well with the Adobe Production Suite. If you are working on a PC you might want to keep your workstation from being connected directly to the Internet. From my experience little peices of software from the Internet tend to get hijack your OS no matter how careful you are. The safest way to go would be to not have your computer exposed online at all.
Written by Jeff McIntosh
