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LAN Party Forums => Support Group => Started by: Agent4054 on July 08, 2008, 01:01:05 AM

Title: After Effects
Post by: Agent4054 on July 08, 2008, 01:01:05 AM
I figured I'd post this problem here, even though no one on the Adobe forums offered any bit of help ><

After Effects CS3 crashes whenever I try to drag any file into it. Images, movies, audio, etc... multiple formats, and everything basically. It just crashes each time. and not just dragging either. Opening, importing, etc. Kinda sucks. I downloaded the trial version a bit ago, and I get this. I can, on the other hand, open pre-made project files with images/movies/audio in them already and play and edit them fine, but that's about it. Really sucky.

Any first hand experience?
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: decepticon on July 08, 2008, 08:38:02 AM
Is it a codec issue?  I never personally used After Effects.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: Agent4054 on July 08, 2008, 08:41:54 AM
Not sure why it would be a codec issue when images crash it.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: decepticon on July 08, 2008, 09:12:20 AM
Tried deleting the preferences file?  And are you using Vista or XP?

Quote
C:\Documents and Settings\YourUserAccount\Application Data\Adobe\After Effects\8.0 you'll see your "Adobe After Effects 8.0 Prefs.txt" file.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: The Shoctor on July 08, 2008, 09:14:30 AM
I suggest you start drinking heavily.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: decepticon on July 08, 2008, 09:17:12 AM
Not sure if you have seen this already, but I read that sometimes if you disable the OpenGL support, that fixes alot of crash issues.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: Agent4054 on July 08, 2008, 09:24:55 AM
Heh yep, I've seen both of those things. I went through All of the topics on the adobe AE forums when searching for "import crash" as well as the same for many other community AE forums. I am surprised that with this problem being so common that there is no info on how to fix it.

For the record, Deleting the prefs file does nothing to help, as well as turning off OpenGL in the options. Another source says to remove the opengl plugin file from the AE folder, which I did do, and still no go.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: decepticon on July 08, 2008, 09:29:10 AM
I know you can probably get it if you wanted but have you tried the full version? If you can't...get it....I can find it for you.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: Agent4054 on July 08, 2008, 09:47:25 AM
Heh no need. I acquired the full version just a bit ago, and it's working fine now... thankgod
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: decepticon on July 08, 2008, 10:20:18 AM
Glad it worked out!
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: _!Rathe!_ on July 08, 2008, 10:40:38 AM
It figures that they make you get the full version just to get it to work right.  They are starting to sound like Microsoft.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: decepticon on July 08, 2008, 11:09:27 AM
Only Microsoft still doesn't get it right even after they have your money....*cough* Xbox360*cough*
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: Agent4054 on July 08, 2008, 04:57:08 PM
You know... I've been looking at a lot of the amateur after effects videos on youtube, and they look like Crap. It sorta discouraged me at first. Was thinking, "wow is it really that hard to do the cool stuff?" The answer: NO! Most people just suck at it!

After reading up on some basic program UI control tutorials for about 20 or so mins, I decided to take AE for a spin and see what I come up with on my own. The very incomplete video below is a result of 3 hours of use from a complete NOOB to After Effects (me):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eoEm2X7_tY

Pffft... I know it's nothing special at all and is almost pointless, but even that short 15 seconds is better than the majority of the amateur stuff out there.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: sully! on July 08, 2008, 10:56:22 PM
This might give you a little something to work with.

http://www.colbertnation.com/?p=1593
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: Agent4054 on July 08, 2008, 10:59:15 PM
SWEET. I knew about the one awhile ago where the winner made an ipod commercial, but I thought it was only a one-time thing. Awesome.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: decepticon on July 09, 2008, 07:34:59 AM
That's pretty damn good for a first try!  Looks like a professional commercial.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: The Shoctor on July 09, 2008, 08:30:34 AM
Looks hella good. BTW What song is that?
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: Agent4054 on July 09, 2008, 08:44:54 AM
Simon Mahler - Hipdahop
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: Agent4054 on July 09, 2008, 11:08:39 AM
Uploaded my progress:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D-QAbR3MMI

Lookin' better!
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: decepticon on July 09, 2008, 11:47:17 AM
Hmmm, I may have to get into some after effects.  I like the blurred text look!  Is that a built in effect?
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: Agent4054 on July 09, 2008, 12:19:19 PM
Yup. It's called motion blur lol. All you have to do is flag the layer to accept motion blur. And that's it. quite nice.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: Agent4054 on July 09, 2008, 01:39:27 PM
Before, when I thought of After Effects, the first thing that came to my head was an extra add-on for Adobe Premiere. F*ck that! AE is wicked powerful.

One of the coolest things about it is it's not actually 3D. It's more like 2.5D. You can do some REALLY amazing things with it that makes it look 3D... and in a sense, it is. Think of it this way:

Photoshop has layers to make up one 2D image. Well what if you were able to rotate those layers and give each of them a Z-axis? You could then create a cube. Cool. After Effects does exactly that + animation. You can even import a photoshop document and manipulate those layers. It's awesome!
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: sully! on July 09, 2008, 05:38:15 PM
Haha, I saw you try to sneak in "beer" and "sex" there at the end and have it whiz by real quick so we wouldn't see it. You can't fool me, I know what's on your mind! ;)
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: Agent4054 on July 09, 2008, 06:10:00 PM
Haha I actually tried to slow them down some, because they are pretty hard to make out, but I wanted to have the varied speeds in there too, so I left them as is
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: Mr.Tibbs on July 09, 2008, 06:29:55 PM
Well since you are venturing into After Effects; try this out:

http://www.videocopilot.net/index.html

The tutorials are pretty sweet.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: sully! on July 09, 2008, 07:29:29 PM
Wow, Tibs has actually contributed something quite useful. I'm impressed, those tutorials seem very well done indeed and the price can't be beat. I did notice, however, that I had to disable AdBlock in Firefox to let the tutorial play properly.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: decepticon on July 09, 2008, 07:36:10 PM
I just noticed in Tibs' signature he OC'd his 2.4ghz AMD 4000+ to 2.5ghz....do you need water cooling with that?  I mean 100mhz is pushing it to the extreme!  j/k
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: Mr.Tibbs on July 09, 2008, 08:15:48 PM
Wow, Tibs has actually contributed something quite useful. I'm impressed, those tutorials seem very well done indeed and the price can't be beat. I did notice, however, that I had to disable AdBlock in Firefox to let the tutorial play properly.

Funny I didn't have to. It just played outright, and it is active.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: Agent4054 on July 09, 2008, 09:21:25 PM
Well since you are venturing into After Effects; try this out:

[url]http://www.videocopilot.net/index.html[/url]

The tutorials are pretty sweet.


Already knew about it, but thanks anyways hehehe
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: sully! on July 09, 2008, 10:22:56 PM
Wow, Tibs has actually contributed something quite useful. I'm impressed, those tutorials seem very well done indeed and the price can't be beat. I did notice, however, that I had to disable AdBlock in Firefox to let the tutorial play properly.

Funny I didn't have to. It just played outright, and it is active.
I'm using AdBlock Plus with the Filterset.g Updater add-on, so my AdBlock settings may be a bit more aggressive than yours.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: Agent4054 on July 09, 2008, 10:34:07 PM
http://www.theblight.org/Jordan/hipdahop.mp3

^^^ music used
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: Agent4054 on July 11, 2008, 01:50:01 PM
See, this is the kind of stuff I want to get to do:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_v5_ZmQmkIc

Done completely in After Effects, except for a couple of complex 3d objects that were done in Maya.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: The Shoctor on July 11, 2008, 02:23:39 PM
Video not there for me.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: Agent4054 on July 12, 2008, 04:12:11 PM
Oooooooooooh. I got a wicked sick idea. Anyone here know how to use any 3D modeling program and animate with it? If not... I guess I'll have to learn to do it myself :P
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: Agent4054 on July 13, 2008, 07:48:12 PM
Alright... new render. I figured I can use this name to base all of my videos under. Spent about 4+ hours on it. Done completely from scratch, though I tried my best to emulate some of the video copilot stuff that I saw in their promo vids. Has sound fx this time! Looks pretty good, IMO. Adding depth of field and lens blur effects tacks on like 20 mins of rendering ><

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbk-Ejhedrs
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: decepticon on July 13, 2008, 08:01:17 PM
Ooohhh nice.
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: The Shoctor on July 13, 2008, 10:40:11 PM
http://www.fotone.net/audio/hipdahop.mp3
Title: Re: After Effects
Post by: Agent4054 on July 13, 2008, 10:45:04 PM
Yep, that's where I got mine :P