Masking Finished!

• Finally, I finished all the masking, although not satisfying, if I had more time, I would do more detailed on each frame.
• I gave Shira the ".aep" file for coding.
• we plan to do the usability test on Saturday, with my laptop. Considering Shira uses Mac; so, I asked her to give me the files which PC can operate without any problems. One is ".swf" another is ".exe"
• she gave me a trial version of our interface to test at my home. If any problems, we have to solve before we start to do Usability test.
• after testing, the ".exe" works (my Flash Player 9 is not working)

After Effects

• It's my first time to learn how to use After Effects
• When I do the masking via After Effects, I have to import the video to each layer. When I did render videos, I have to wait for a long time.
• Today, I compressed each video by QT Pro again. Checking together with Shira, we found the re-compressed quality is still good enough to fit on our final interface and it save me time to work.
• Originaly, I thought, the ".aep" After Effects file contains lots of video, it should be a large file. But after exporting, I am surprised found it's very small!
• the masking took me long time because I have to pay attention to the position alignment on same background, to be careful and more details on characters overlapping part.
• I have to speed up to give Shira final file for coding
• Shira found solution to use Flash replacing Director. I am not quite understand how, she suggested me to have a look on her blog which is helpful! http://nln-sg.blogspot.com/

Updating my Premiere and download trial After Effects

• I use Premiere 6.5 , Shira suggested me, I should update to Premiere Pro which can save time in redering video. Besides, I need After Effects to do "Mask", so I download both the legal trial version from Adobe.
• To download and install took me almost the whole afternoon and I can't do anything
• Finally, both softwares installed in my laptop. But when I open the software, my laptop shut down... I close and restart my laptop, still not solved...
• another classmate said, this is because Premiere Pro and After Effects will cause problem on my PC system and Chinese interface. I am not sure whether it's true or not, anyway, I can't open it, I have to remove them to let my laptop back to normal operation.
• again, it took me long time to remove and I can't do anything in video editing or masking...
• final solution is: I still use Premiere 6.5, and download the Mac After Effects trial version to studio computer to do mask.

Premiere - Quicktime Pro - iMovie

• I started to do the intro video editing.
• Since most classmates use studio's computer and not every computer has installed Premiere. I decided to bring my laptop to work with my teammates. But when I use premiere to export the video, I found one error. I gave Taz the ".avi" format to do sound editing, but it can not be opened by i-Movie...
• so, next time, I will make sure each video all exported by both accept format ".mov"

Export DVs to computer

• we spent long time to export DVs to computer. I started to question, why there is no faster way to do export. But it seems, all we can do is to be patient and wait. DV file is original video format, uncompressed, the file is huge.
• why no technicians trying to find a better solution to do quick exporting?
• we use QuickTime Pro to compress all the DVs' to be ".MOV" format, because I will use Premiere to do video editing.
• Taz will also help me in video editing, she used i-movie. To make sure we can edit the file by two different softwares, she exported the video via QT Pro.
• QuickTime Pro is an important bridge allowing the connection between our editing softwares.

Director and Quicktime

To be honest, I tried to understood what my teammates discussed, I am a beginner about coding or software problems.

They explained to me in a simple way, what I understood are:

• we planed to use Director to do coding to connect each timelines/videos.
• but the version of Director is not compatible with Quick Time 7 Pro
• if solutions can't be found, we may try to use Flash to support.