Re: a few operational questions

Hi, I'll try the best I can...

[dan jacobsen] "1) how do i make the default setting globally auto key off? to me it's logical to not use kfs until you need to animate. and it drives me nuts having to keep turning it off the whole time. or forgetting and having to go through and remove unwanted kfs.
- Hmmm... I don't there is a global off for auto key frame... I've just gotten used to clicking on the A next to the soft effect in my time line before I start working on something... I know that doesn't help your question. I quick way to clear those pesky unwanted key frames in the time line: click on the button of the parameter you want to clear the key frames on. Like click on scale to clear any scale key frmaes.

2) in the animation menu i like to have the filters set to 'Exp and Col' and 'Hide All' i thought these would save when saved defaults but they seem to go back to defaults all the time. is there a way to keep them as i like them as the default in all menus?
- One way would to open up an empty Action, and set all the settings the way you like and save the preferences... But then you would have to load the preferences every time you start a project...


3) what's the difference between hard commit and commit fx?
- Hard commit, is just that, you commit any effects to a clip and make them permanent, so you can no longer make changes to those effects. I'm not sure commit FX does.

4) is there a player in batch? i can't find it. or anyway to play processed clips without returning to desktop.
- I'm still on 2008 SP4, so I don't have batch yet. :( I just need some down time to upgrade to 2009.

5) in batch, i'm slipping shots in 'timing' and slipping kfs in 'tracks' but can i do i them together? ie slip a layer up the time line keeping kfs locked to the footage they're acting on.
- see above.

6) when drawing a gmask, shouldn't touching briefly with the pen create a pointed vertex? with me all vertices are drawn with tangents whatever i do, and then i have to go back and break them.
- You can either turn off auto tangents in Mask Setup, or you could try click then press the ALT key to remove the tangent.

7) i expected shift to limit dragging gmask vertices to x or y but it doesn't. is the quickest way to use x and y scale?
- press space+x then click on a vertices to translate x, press space+y to go into y translation mode. space+m brings you back to move mode. Another one to know is space+b for break mode, if you want to break a vertice and remove its tangents, or add tangents...

8) can i just draw a rectangle in gmask? or do i have to load one then drag out vertices using x and y scale? I would just tap out the points of the rectangle, then use space+b and then break all the vertices.

9) i'm using ctrl g and ctrl 5 to take snapshots and then show them. ctrl g only works in some menus, is there a more global framegrab? when showing the framegrab buffer the picture is racked down, is there a way to show it at it's correct position?"
- again, dont know about this one... never used the framegrab on my smoke



moody glasgow
smoke artist / editor