Rick Gerard explored the latest offerings while at NAB 2004 and came away with one of his show favorites, the new HD capabilities found in Premiere Pro 1.5 as seen in systems like 1 Beyond's HD Pro which Rick reports "...uses the latest PC technology in the internal structure to speed up data throughput. It uses the wide 64 bit fast PCI-X bus and unlike consumer computers that have one PCI bus, it has three separate PCI buses. This avoids the limitations of even the fastest PCI-X buses from becoming the data path bottle neck." Focusing on a totally rewritten Premiere Pro which has been optimized to harness all the powers of WindowsXP, has Premiere finally shed its compromised past of trying to be "all things to every OS" in its move to professional editing in HD? Rick thinks so. Here is his report...
Rick Gerard takes a close look at Stephen Walker's latest set of Plug-ins for Adobe After Effects. Walker Effects 2.0 is the second release of a serious toolset for the compositor that needs channel, matte, and color control tools to simplify the workflow and improve the final product.
Rick Gerard takes a close look the new release of Adobe After Effects 6.0. Powerful new features, OpenGL, advanced keying, a new text engine, paint, motion tracking and scripting support make this release of After Effects a must-have for any motion graphics or visual effects artist that needs to 'get the job done.'
Rick Gerard takes a close look at Cinematography Theory and Practice by Blain Brown. This is his third book and for the aspiring or experienced cinematographer the best reference book Rick has ever seen.
Rick Gerard takes a close look at ''Pause and Effect The Art of Interactive Narrative'' by Mark Stephen Meadows. This new book from New Riders Publishing (ISBN: 0735711712) is a fascinating study of how interactivity has changed the narrative art and opened unlimited new avenues for creativity.
Rick Gerard explains the use of the Light Transmission property added to Layer Material Options in After Effects 5.5. Basic and advanced techniques demonstrate only a few creative possibilities opened up by this exciting new feature.
Rick Gerard gives a glimpse of the inner workings of Adobe After Effects and explains exactly how AE mixes square and rectangular pixels. Youll never worry again about how to interpret footage. DV, HD, Wide Screen and Film comps will be a walk in the park.
Rick Gerard, a frequent visitor and contributor in the Creative COW After Effects Community explores some methods of morphing text using new features in Adobe Illustrator 9.0.
Rick Gerard explores some methods of simulating a camera lens. In this tutorial, Rick uses Adobe Illustrator and Adobe After Effects to create the aperture.
After Effects 5 has some powerful 3D compositing features and some new tools that make complicated animations a snap. In this tutorial we will use parenting, expressions and Boris 3D text to recreate the Universal movie opening (sort' a). A new way of thinking about layers in AE is required. It's easy to grasp once you stand back from the project a little. Let's proceed.
