Thursday, June 11, 2015

How to continue drawing an interrupted Mask in After Effect

It's frustrating in AE  that if you interrupt the drawing of a Mask, the app makes a new Mask instead of continuing the first one.

First be aware of the interruption, then go back to the Pen Tool, select the Convert to Vertex Tool, and then click on the last point of your interrupted Mask.

Then go to and select Pen Tool again, and continue to draw the same Mask. Aaaah!

Monday, June 8, 2015

Apple Motion - How to stop (hold frame) the Numbers Generator

Trying to Hold Frame on the Text Generator - Numbers, does not register in Apple Motion.

I wanted to have a ramp and then hold onto the last number, but no go as the Hold Frame Effect has no traction on the Generator, nor on a Group containing the Generator.

The solution: uncheck the Animate checkbox in the Text Generator/Generator, and then add keyframes to Values, voilà!

Now I wanted to have 2 digits at a larger size than the 2 decimals, but I can't find a way to do this easily. I suppose I can always animate two sets of digits, the second one being smaller and then group them together to simulate a single counter, but it's a bit long and convoluted.

Tip anyone?

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Media 100 for $99 - Yosemite supported!

UPDATE: Media100 now FREE!

Good old Media100 is available for a paltry $99! The price includes a copy of Boris Red.

It used cost x100 times that much back in the days... With cards and all, and it only did SD. Still a fraction of what an Avid would cost, for a very high quality, and it crashed less.

I labored on this marvel of technology for a few years in the 90's At some point the switch to FCP was made. The two co-existed for some time, and then HD came along and M100 was abandoned. FCP was more fluid in daily use, so even if M100 had survived the HD shockwave, there was no coming back. 

I think I once downloaded the software only version after the acquisition by Boris Effects, I had to re-open an old project, and it did that just fine if I remember right.


Now M100 is revamped to deal with resolutions up to 4K, Aja cards are supported for I/O, 60 days trial available. The UI looks just like the same old though, and it looks like it still has all the same convoluted ways of doing things. Talk about back in the future!

I'm not sure I would recommend it to anybody, but for the curious among us, here it is:

http://www.media100.com


Scrolling down that page, I also found a Boris Continuum Image Restoration Promo ($99 instead of $299) good until June 30, 2015 "MacVideo Promo".
http://www.macvideopromo.com/products/boris-continuum-image-restoration-unit-for-mac-or-win

Update:
Actually Toolfarm has a similar Promo, good until end of Sept 2015. Toolfarm Exclusive Promo - July 1 - Sept. 30, 2015
http://www.toolfarm.com/buy/boris_continuum_unit_image_restoration