All requests and remarks posted on this blog, have been shared with the developers of the concerning products. The Feature Requests blog is my independent way of sharing, and recording both ideas and annoyance about software. Improvement is the main goal.

dinsdag 28 november 2017

After Effects Stereo Mixer

OK, AE is a graphics app, not audio. But maybe that's a good reason to make the basic audio features even more basic. So - why not make the Stereo Mixer simply having 2 parameters: Level and Pan.
Instead of 2 levels and 2 pans?

Or even better: make Pan a standard part of the Audio Levels parameter.

dinsdag 21 november 2017

Add some Artificial Intelligence to Adobe Media Encoder / Smart Presets

Most of the time, my encodings are quite predictable:

-Convert .mxf from Avid to ProRes422HQ for use in Mocha AE
-Convert .m4a recorded on iPhone to 48kHz .wav for audioguide purposes in After Effects
-Convert DNxHD.mov to H264.mp4 for mail / Previews

That's 90% of my AME jobs.

Wouldn't it be great if there was something like 'Smart Presets' (turn on/off in preferences), that adds the right scheme to a dropped file?

Smart Presets should be defined by user - but maybe even by artificial intelligence! AME can figure out my wishes after a while, I guess.


maandag 13 november 2017

Ai: 16 bits for Adobe Illustrator?

When creating  Illustrations with gradients, we can only use 8bits. When imported in Photoshop or After Effects 16bits projects, the gradients stick to this poor 8bits - resulting in banding.

Especially when working on normal/displacement maps for 3d materials, 8bits is not enough.

How great would it be if Illustrator had a possibility to switch to 16 or 32 bit mode!

donderdag 2 november 2017

Generate Report does not reflect actual Collect Files operation

Today I ran into an interesting situation.
I wanted to make a safety backup of a project, by ussing the Collect Files… command.
My project contains 3d renders, .ai-files, .psd-files and a lot of imported footage.
The footage was copy pasted from Premiere Pro, which I use to preselect clips.
The clips were shot on Sony XDCAM-discs and some of the clips had the exact same name (e.g Untitled_00030.mov).
AE does not make any problem of this, and worked like a charm.

When I collected the project, though, I got a warning that several files were not collected, without any explanation.
Investigation lead to the double-name issue.

So, to solve this, I generated a report, hoping to get a list of double trouble. But the report did not mention any possible failures.

I think that AE should give a more discriptive warning, and that the report should include a warning about uncollectible files.
Best would be if the doubles were placed in folders that copy the names of the os-folders where the files were found.
In that way, doubles can not appear in the same folder.